Radio War Nerd EP #420 — Bomb Back Biden

Hi War Nerds! I’ve been a listener for about 2 years now but just decided to make the jump and subscribe. Thank you guys for your incredible content!

I think my subscription lapsed right when John's anti-travel book was sent out- how can I get that at this point? Or who should I contact? Thank you in advance!

Is there any where to read what John wrote about Yemen? Like a back issue of the news letter?

Chapo trap house put it best …. “Operation Amazon prime”

Operation International Markets Garden.

Excellent episode! From what I've seen bombing the Houthis is very popular in the USA, the general idea seems to be "they're pirates bombing commerce, so if we want to turn their country into a parking lot that's our prerogative". Given the deep level of strategic cooperation between Iran and the Houthis, alongside growing cooperation between Iran/China and Iran/Russia, I've had the nibbling sensation that Yemen is going to sprout advanced air defenses from its friends to the North. Pure speculation though.

As the rightful internationally-recognized government of Estonia, I beseech the United States to stop bombing the Iranian-backed rebel militias of Yemen and start bombing the Iranian-backed rebel militias of Estonia. It's bad enough that the Resistance Axis stretches across the Middle East, aren't you worried about them gaining a foothold on the Baltic Sea? Iran already controls Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, and all other countries besides Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.. The liberation of Estonia would mean adding one of the most powerful economies in Europe to NATO's warchest for its epochal struggle against Iran's global hegemony, with up to dozens of dollars and as many as three soldiers.

BBCs article Who are the Houthis? Is incredible. No mention of the blockade and deliberate starvation campaign and no mention of the US role in said campaign. Shameless. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67614911

420 blaze it

speaking of the failing PR war, Cradle just had an article about how the IDF was responsible for most of the deaths at that rave on Oct 7, so my hope is that that starts a trend of people talking about what really happened that day.

Operation Market Guardian

Surprising that Britain's colonial history in Yemen was not discussed or even mentioned. It seems like this is important context given UK rushing back in with it's tail wagging.

Regarding Blinken's role in original Yemen assault, he was actually the first U.S. official to go to Riyadh in the first weeks of the war to pledge full U.S. support and expedited arms shipments. During the Trump years he tried to cover himself by telling the New Yorker he had always privately believed the Saudi goals were unrealistic: "The Administration declined to directly join the campaign, but, soon after the war began, Tony Blinken, the Deputy Secretary of State, flew to Riyadh to meet with M.B.S. 'He told me his goal was to eradicate all Iranian influence in Yemen,' Blinken said. He was taken aback; to purge Iran’s sympathizers from the country would require a bloodbath. 'I told him, You could do many things to minimize or reduce Iranian influence. But eliminate it?'" https://archive.is/ccIof

Joe Biden’s first 6 months sucked too. He split his “agenda” into 2 bills, then passed the one that Mitch McConnell voted for, and watched the 2nd bill with anything good in it get slashed to 10% of what it was.

Really appreciated this episode. Anyone have a link to the Houthi video mentioned in the episode? The english-narrated announcement about why Houthi attacks on shipping are happening. Googling and twitter searching not turning up anything.

Didn't the Houthis get all the gear from the Yemen Arab Republic Army in the 1990s?

Very good episode. One thing I'd note though about Jamal Khashoggi is that the least important thing about him was that he was a "journalist". I may be overly cynical, but as far as I can recall Khashoggi's case is probably the only time in our history that a CIA director has publicly traveled to investigate a murder of a journalist. I would tend to put his case to the side. Of course our government should be making the murder of journalists in Gaza a much more high profile issue, but I'm not surprised that it isn't given the large gap between our nation's stated values, and the values that our political class and de facto state media demonstrate through their actions.

Hats off to John and Mark for being a very rare voice back in 2015-2016 yelling about the atrocities in Yemen, the never changing figure of "10K dead", and the deafening silence from nearly everyone else who should have been covering the genocide. Garden vs. Guardians - who cares. They raised their voices and covered Yemen extensively when it really mattered.

A little put off by how quick they were to dismiss the Houthi's relationship with Iran. They are a proxy in the same way Ukraine is a proxy for the US against the Russia or Azerbaijan is for Israel against Iran. That's not to say they're not independent actors with their own means and motives for doing things. But they are supported by Iran for various strategic ends. That's kind of an important thing to get about Iranian foreign policy, which is focused around making sure any fight happens well outside their borders with as little exposure to themselves as possible, namely by investing in things like drones/ballistics missiles and clients. To this end they've played their hand pretty well insofar as they've enabled an ally to considerably undermine their rivals while risking little themselves. And for the Houthi this means they probably do have some sophisticated weaponry that could hit naval vessels ands aircraft, or at least could get them with relatively little issue

Applauding discussion of mercenarism ~46:00.

In the early days of War Nerd, Syria included, felt like the world made more sense. Back then we were simply Assadists for doubting that the Zenki Brigade were anything less than Liberal Democrats. And for the record War Nerd coverage of Syria holds up, especially the Gas episode.

One thing this episode could have used was more of a serious rebuttal of the "Iranian proxies" claim. It's right to be sceptical of that claim, but not to the point of ignoring the evidence. In 2017, the head of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corp first admitted to playing an advisory role to the Houthis. In 2019, the Iranian Chief of Staff reiterated that Iran provided "advisory and intellectual support" to the Houthis. It seems universally accepted that Iran arms the Houthis. The mainstream view in need of a rebuttal is not, as Mark strawmanned, that the Houthis are mercenery puppets doing it all for the cash but that (echoing how this episode describes U.S. support for the KSA or Israel) local interests coincide with Iranian ones, resulting in the rebels becoming dependent on arms and intelligence from Iran and increased Iranian leverage over their military policy. Or, as the U.S. Institute for Peace (irony alert) put the matter yesterday, "It is believed that Iranian intelligence, technology and weapons have enabled the Houthis to conduct their attacks in the Red Sea." If this is true, it is not a stretch to say that the Houthis are Iranian proxies, let alone Iranian-backed (which is much harder to dispute). One of the things the War Nerd has been good at in the past is deflating such claims with careful analysis of all the evidence.

Biden has never done anything good or progressive in his life and never will. Mark giving him credit for not being more right wing than any previous president (remember, Obama was at the same point on the left-right spectrum as Reagan) is fucking delusional.

This discussion of the Houthis reminded me of an anecdote I once read, I think, by the historian William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples and many other books. McNeill said he was once approached by some faction of the US military back in the 1940s or so for advice on how to subdue insurgencies among populations of mountainous peoples, and he answered that the only way would be to repatriate all of them en mass to lower ground. I looked up the topography of Northern Yemen, and it is indeed a mountainous area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Yemen#Elevation

NEVER QT. SCREENSHOTS.

Belief systems and politics aside, the Houthis are hard motherfuckers.

Prosperity Guardian, not "Garden." This kind of mistake lowers the credibility of the episode

civil war diaries pt. 3? think again, fucker

Emergency Pod! The alarm bell goes off and Ames and Dolan slide down the fire pole and into the studio

Happy 420!

"Like anyone hasn't tried that before"

*Jan 12, 2024