# Why is the US Getting Involved in Yemen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192 "2015-04-21T15:04:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/21 "2015-04-21T19:45:40Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Iranian control of the Gulf of Aden directly or through proxies would give them the capability to close the shipping lanes either totally or in a targeted way. It would then give them greater diplomatic clout and space. How would they gain such a capability given US naval power? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/22 "2015-04-21T19:47:59Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Iranian control of the Gulf of Aden directly or through proxies would give them the capability to close the shipping lanes either totally or in a targeted way. It would then give them greater diplomatic clout and space. > > In IR you look at capabilities not intentions. When it involves potentially getting dragged into another shooting war, you kind of have to look at both IMHO. And again I just don’t think the Houthis are going to fall into a clear-cut “proxy” territory. The Yemeni hill tribes don’t strike me as anyone’s willing stooges. > [@](#): > > Plus, FWIW, I think the Shia/Sunni split is a rather poor way to describe the Yemen conflict, last time the Saudis supported the Shia groups. No argument from me - I completely agree. The element is there, but it is just one of many. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/23 "2015-04-21T19:57:10Z")
[QUOTE=Tamerlane] Excuse the cynicism ( or perhaps complacency - tomato/tomahto ), but I’m not seeing it. [/QUOTE] Seeing what? The OP was asking why the US is getting involved in Yemen (answer…we aren’t, actually, we are simply supporting the Saudis and that pretty minimally as far as I can tell). > [@](#): > > Why would a Houthis government be so threatening? They’re not going to overthrow or seriously threaten Saudi Arabia - they have no constituency there. The Twelver Shi’a of SA are NOT the Fiver Shi’a of Yemen and live nowhere near the Yemeni border. They may try to readjust the border slightly to gain more access to the relatively minor oil fields in the region, but SA’s rights there are no firmer than Yemen’s. You tell me…why were the Saudis doing military operations in Yemen? Why were other countries assisting them? > [@](#): > > I see no reason why they would be interested in threatening the Red Sea shipping lanes if left unmolested. Iranian proxies? Hardly. Iranian allies of convenience? Probably. But I see neither Iran interested in molesting shipping lanes nor a Zaydi Yemeni government interested in doing it for them even if they were. Push them into a corner? Then it could happen. Well, I can see reasons why they COULD threaten shipping and also threaten oil production. Will they? No idea. Like I said, the Saudis obviously have some reason for air strikes and military operations in Yemen, but the reason the US is ‘Getting Involved in Yemen’ is simply to support the status quo and a regional ally…and our involvement seems pretty minimal. Much less than it was a year or two ago when we were still doing constant drone strikes in the country against AQ targets. > [@](#): > > Saudi Arabia has very long-standing and not entirely benevolent history of intervening in northern Yemen. The Iran thing is really a side-issue. Though I doubt that a Houthis government will be particularly charming, they’re going to end up spending most of their time trying to suppress jihadist-salafists. Yemen will undoubtedly descend into a hellhole of even greater anarchy and quite possibly will be de facto partitioned. But I see no way the U.S. could practically prevent that and given that lack of ability to achieve anything good, brutal realpolitik would suggest just letting two unfriendly factions beat the shit out of each other. The thing about countries that descend into hellholes is that you don’t want that level of chaos bordering a country as strategically important to the US (and pretty much the rest of the industrialized world). As for the US, I’d say our actual role in any of this, which was what the OP was asking about, is pretty minimal. AFAIK, we are providing the Saudis with intelligence information, and probably most of it is stuff they wouldn’t need us to give them (or we would have, regardless) anyway. [QUOTE=Donald Rump] You’re welcome to both your assessment and the gratuitous rudeness, but I’m hardly the first to have made the comparison. [/QUOTE] If you think it’s ‘gratuitous rudeness’ feel free to inform a mod. It wasn’t. Nor does the fact that others share your opinion make the comparison any better. It’s a silly comparison that has less of a real world connection than the folks who used to attempt to make similar comparisons to Iraq. Just a way to attempt to connect things and appeal to emotion. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/24 "2015-04-21T20:08:35Z")
> [@XT](#): > > …and our involvement seems pretty minimal. Much less than it was a year or two ago when we were still doing constant drone strikes in the country against AQ targets. Once you get involved, it’s hard to keep things minimal. There’s a natural tendency to want “your side” to win once you’ve invested in it, and once you’ve picked a side there’s also a tendency to begin seeing the opponents as being much worse than you might see them as an outside observer. In addition, you provoke counter-hostility by the opponents, which then gets you even more convinced that they need to be put down. And so on. Based on recent history in that region, this would seem to have a big possiblity of unfolding in unanticipated ways and turning a lot messier than some might have anticipated at the outset. And once you’re in it, it can be hard to get out. So I would think you need a compelling reason to get involved. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/25 "2015-04-21T20:11:44Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Once you get involved, it’s hard to keep things minimal. There’s a natural tendency to want “your side” to win once you’ve invested in it, and once you’ve picked a side there’s also a tendency to begin seeing the opponents as being much worse than you might see them as an outside observer. In addition, you provoke counter-hostility by the opponents, which then gets you even more convinced that they need to be put down. And so on. > > Based on recent history in that region, this would seem to have a big possiblity of unfolding in unanticipated ways and turning a lot messier than some might have anticipated at the outset. And once you’re in it, it can be hard to get out. So I would think you need a compelling reason to get involved. Are you anticipating Obama unleashing the dogs and boars (or the kraken) and getting all medieval on Yemen?? At MOST our involvement might go back to what it was a few years ago when we were doing drone strikes every week…but even that seems unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/26 "2015-04-21T20:13:17Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Are you anticipating Obama unleashing the dogs and boars (or the kraken) and getting all medieval on Yemen?? At MOST our involvement might go back to what it was a few years ago when we were doing drone strikes every week…but even that seems unlikely. The thing about the drone strikes is that it wasn’t opening a new front against a new enemy. It was fighting an enemy that the US was already engaged with, in a different location. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/27 "2015-04-21T20:18:04Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The thing about the drone strikes is that it wasn’t opening a new front against a new enemy. It was fighting an enemy that the US was already engaged with, in a different location. True, but I haven’t seen anyone outside of a few Republicans suggest we start sending in the clone army to do…something…either. All we’ve done, as far as I know is stop drone strikes against AQ and it’s merry men in Yemen and give some info to the Saudis (who, IIRC, stopped air strikes themselves this week). ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/28 "2015-04-21T20:30:01Z")
> [@XT](#): > > It’s a silly comparison that has less of a real world connection than the folks who used to attempt to make similar comparisons to Iraq. Just a way to attempt to connect things and appeal to emotion. The situations are plainly unconnected, but IMHO the US experience in Vietnam offers two cautionary lessons that I think are relevant to what’s going on in Yemen. One, the US insistence on viewing Ho Chi Minh as a pawn of international communism rather than more of a nationalistic, anti-colonialist figure informed our decision to get involved and was critical to building political support for the intervention. Much of the commentary I have seen justifying what Saudi Arabia is doing does so on grounds that Iran = bad, Houthis = Iran, therefore Houthis = bad. Two, when these interventions run into problems, they have to be escalated. But in order for an escalation to stand a prospective chance of working, it must be meaningfully large compared to the last escalation. So unless things happen to go really well early on, a country’s investment in the intervention tends to grow exponentially, until before you know it you’ve incurred 58,000 American deaths in what started out as a limited intervention. We’re already seeing Saudi Arabia talk about [ground troops](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/18183-saudi-arabia-to-deploy-ground-troops-in-yemen) because the air campaign isn’t working well enough. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/29 "2015-04-21T20:37:48Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > The situations are plainly unconnected, but IMHO the US experience in Vietnam offers two cautionary lessons that I think are relevant to what’s going on in Yemen. > > One, the US insistence on viewing Ho Chi Minh as a pawn of international communism rather than more of a nationalistic, anti-colonialist figure informed our decision to get involved and was critical to building political support for the intervention. Much of the commentary I have seen justifying what Saudi Arabia is doing does so on grounds that Iran = bad, Houthis = Iran, therefore Houthis = bad. > > Two, when these interventions run into problems, they have to be escalated. But in order for an escalation to stand a prospective chance of working, it must be meaningfully large compared to the last escalation. So unless things happen to go really well early on, a country’s investment in the intervention tends to grow exponentially, until before you know it you’ve incurred 58,000 American deaths in what started out as a limited intervention. We’re already seeing Saudi Arabia talk about [ground troops](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/18183-saudi-arabia-to-deploy-ground-troops-in-yemen) because the air campaign isn’t working well enough. So, what you are saying is that if we predict the future and extrapolate that we will view the Houthis as the communists, that Saudi will be defeated on the ground and will ask for our aid (they would be playing the French, presumably in this little drama), we will then support the old Yemen government, who will be corrupt while the Houthis will be supported by Iran (playing the role of the Soviet Union AND China in the super power supporting role), we will fight a multi-year engagement and eventually sue for peace while North Yemen invades the South and eventually wins the day? Or something along those lines? Yeah, if it plays out that way or even vaguely like that you are free to play the ‘it’s just like Vietnam!’ emotional card. At this stage it’s basically nothing like Vietnam. There is no analogy at all between the two situations. I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings or you feel it’s insulting but it’s pretty laughable that you’d pull this out in the discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/30 "2015-04-21T21:18:08Z")
> [@XT](#): > > So, what you are saying is that if we predict the future and extrapolate that we will view the Houthis as the communists, that Saudi will be defeated on the ground and will ask for our aid (they would be playing the French, presumably in this little drama), we will then support the old Yemen government, who will be corrupt while the Houthis will be supported by Iran (playing the role of the Soviet Union AND China in the super power supporting role), we will fight a multi-year engagement and eventually sue for peace while North Yemen invades the South and eventually wins the day? Or something along those lines? > > Yeah, if it plays out that way or even vaguely like that you are free to play the ‘it’s just like Vietnam!’ emotional card. At this stage it’s basically nothing like Vietnam. There is no analogy at all between the two situations. > > I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings or you feel it’s insulting but it’s pretty laughable that you’d pull this out in the discussion. Vietnam is frequently used in political discourse and general discussion as a byword for a foreign intervention based on strategically wrongheaded assumptions that resulted in enormous cost overruns in both blood and treasure and was later bitterly regretted. That is why Iraq has frequently been likened, to your evident displeasure, to Vietnam. Yemen IMO stands a good chance of developing into such a situation for Saudi Arabia. One, Saudi perception of the nature and gravity of the Houthi threat may be inflated and of a basically pathological nature, much as I think our perception of Ho Chi Minh was distorted by our hysteria WRT communism and prevented us from setting the right strategy in that part of the world. Two, they seem to be positioning themselves to get sucked into an ever-escalating intervention that will in the end look nothing like they expected it to. Exhibit A is that they’re now already talking about sending troops. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/31 "2015-04-21T21:25:11Z")
I recall a SNL Weekend Update segment from the mid-1970s: Graphic shows “YEMEN vs. URINE.” JANE CURTIN: “According to a recent survey, 47% more Americans know that a sleeping person will urinate when you put their hand in warm water than know which side the United States is on in the North Yemen-South Yemen conflict.” And **that’s** why the U.S. is getting involved in Yemen! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/32 "2015-04-21T21:29:17Z")
The problem is that since every war since the 1970s has been compared to Vietnam, it’s no longer worth listening to in any respect. In 1990, protesters warned that ejecting Iraq from Kuwait would result in a war worse than Vietnam. In reality, the war was as far from Vietnam as any war could possibly be. In 1999, some commentators warned that Kosovo was going to be another Vietnam. It clearly wasn’t. Some people talk about Afghanistan being like Vietnam, but let’s get real: it isn’t. Afghanistan has not been an easy experience for this country, but during the worst year in Vietnam, 16,000 Americans were killed. The worst year in Afghanistan left 711 Americans killed. If you want to say that Yemen is going to be another Vietnam, you better be saying that foreign countries are going to lose tens of thousands of troops and suffer serious domestic unrest at home. Otherwise your invocation of Vietnam is hyperbole that deserves to be disregarded. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/33 "2015-04-21T21:34:48Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The problem is that since every war since the 1970s has been compared to Vietnam, it’s no longer worth listening to in any respect. > > In 1990, protesters warned that ejecting Iraq from Kuwait would result in a war worse than Vietnam. In reality, the war was as far from Vietnam as any war could possibly be. > > In 1999, some commentators warned that Kosovo was going to be another Vietnam. It clearly wasn’t. > > Some people talk about Afghanistan being like Vietnam, but let’s get real: it isn’t. Afghanistan has not been an easy experience for this country, but during the worst year in Vietnam, 16,000 Americans were killed. The worst year in Afghanistan left 711 Americans killed. > > If you want to say that Yemen is going to be another Vietnam, you better be saying that foreign countries are going to lose tens of thousands of troops and suffer serious domestic unrest at home. Otherwise your invocation of Vietnam is hyperbole that deserves to be disregarded. Iraq, OTOH, **was** another Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/34 "2015-04-21T21:37:18Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The problem is that since every war since the 1970s has been compared to Vietnam, it’s no longer worth listening to in any respect. > > In 1990, protesters warned that ejecting Iraq from Kuwait would result in a war worse than Vietnam. In reality, the war was as far from Vietnam as any war could possibly be. > > In 1999, some commentators warned that Kosovo was going to be another Vietnam. It clearly wasn’t. > > Some people talk about Afghanistan being like Vietnam, but let’s get real: it isn’t. Afghanistan has not been an easy experience for this country, but during the worst year in Vietnam, 16,000 Americans were killed. The worst year in Afghanistan left 711 Americans killed. > > If you want to say that Yemen is going to be another Vietnam, you better be saying that foreign countries are going to lose tens of thousands of troops and suffer serious domestic unrest at home. Otherwise your invocation of Vietnam is hyperbole that deserves to be disregarded. Or “Vietnam” in the sense that these wars were long and bloody, with no “victory” at the end. Vietnam ended in a defeat for the USA. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/35 "2015-04-21T21:55:08Z")
It boils down to what bar you need a historical analogy to clear in order for it to be meaningful. I definitely get fed up with how often the Munich analogy gets trotted out, especially when it concerns pipsqueak powers that have little capacity to threaten their neighbors, so I dig where you guys are coming from. But the fact that Vietnam had a five-digit body count while Iraq’s was only four digits strikes me as irrelevant to the analogy. The point is that the US went in on wrongheaded assumptions, got sucked into a ballooning series of escalating investments, and in the end got little out of the enterprise. Saudi Arabia risks doing the same in Yemen. Apologies to the OP for the unintended hijack. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/36 "2015-04-21T22:53:59Z")
Let us all keep in mind that the Saudi Arabian government is even less admirable than the Iranian government – theocratic absolute monarchy/kleptocracy v. theocratic partial-democracy. The House of Saud is worth supporting/preserving only in the sense that the governments of Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad were worth preserving – because chaos and war would certainly follow its collapse. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/37 "2015-04-22T04:48:30Z")
I’d agree that conflating the goals of loosely affiliated enemies brings to mind Vietnam Cold War logic. On the other hand, people don’t often talk about how the new conflict is just like, I dunno, The War of Jenkins’ Ear. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/38 "2015-04-22T14:06:12Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I’d agree that conflating the goals of loosely affiliated enemies brings to mind Vietnam Cold War logic. On the other hand, people don’t often talk about how the new conflict is just like, I dunno, The War of Jenkins’ Ear. [That war](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear) was “ostensibly to encourage the Spanish not to renege on the lucrative _asiento_ contract (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America).[6]” Where’s the similarity? ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/39 "2015-04-22T14:25:45Z")
A good (IMHO) piece of commentary from [Foreign Policy](http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/06/misunderstanding-wars-in-yemen-vietnam-and-yemen-once-again/). The article highlights the potential unintended consequences of Saudi intervention, including perversely pushing the Houthis closer to Iran than they were to begin with. > [@](#): > > “This is treated as a sectarian battle between Iran-backed Shia and Saudi Arabia-backed Sunnis, but really when you look at the essence of Yemen’s problem, that’s not really it,” Baron told NPR. Iran actually has very little stake in the Yemeni Houthi rebels, which ousted the country’s transitional government from the capital in January and had been advancing toward Aden until the Saudis began airstrikes last week. The war in Yemen is a struggle between domestic forces: the Houthi rebels; the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted in 2011 and whose support has been essential to the Houthis’ success; the current nominal president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi; as well as a host of others, include a secessionist movement, Islamist politicians, and a branch of al-Qaeda looking to exploit any opening it finds. > > … > > The Saudis have miscalculated and the United States is enabling its recklessness. The Saudi intervention will inevitably push the Houthis closer to Iran — which, despite press reports and Saudi paranoia, has relatively little stake in the rebels. It will also turn Yemenis against Saudi Arabia. There have been large protests against the strikes, which have hit civilian targets including an internally displaced persons camp and a milk factory. The blockade of the country threatens to create food shortages and a humanitarian crisis — some Yemenis are already fleeing to Somalia. “We will all be Houthis if troops come to our country,” a shop owner in the capital city of Sanaa told Yemeni activist Farea al-Muslimi. “This is our home and no one is allowed to break into it.” Saudi Arabia and Egypt still don’t understand the battlefield in which they are fighting. ETA: I was able to access the link the first time but now it’s asking for login info… hm. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192/40 "2015-04-22T14:29:38Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I’d agree that conflating the goals of loosely affiliated enemies brings to mind Vietnam Cold War logic. On the other hand, people don’t often talk about how the new conflict is just like, I dunno, The War of Jenkins’ Ear. This seems accurate to me, as I see here people making very loose connections between the Houthi - Shia! Iran! Hamas! - without any real ideas about the Yemen or the Zaidis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-us-getting-involved-in-yemen/718192.md?page=3)