Western mainstream news of a ceasefire between Yemen and the US really signal an American defeat
Tarik Cyril Amar
May 7, 2025
Tarik Cyril Amar
May 7, 2025
Imagine the US as a mafia clan whose rule is built on two things: violence and fear. Every time, this recipe is shown to fail, it is becoming less effective. Because the reality is that even America cannot really hold down everyone all the time.
The American leadership, with president Donald Trump in the lead, has announced that the US is stopping its massive bombing campaign against Yemen. (While the US usually clings to the fiction that it is not bombing a country but “merely” a movement – namely, Ansar Allah, pejoratively labeled “Houthis” – it has, de facto, been at war with Yemen, most of which Ansar Allah rules.) This also de facto sort-of-ceasefire now – which Trump, for some reason, does not want to call a “deal” (for once) – has been engineered with the help of Omani mediation; on the American side, Trump’s inevitable man-for-everything-and-then-some Steve Witkoff played a role.
What exactly the American announcement means – indeed whether it has an exact meaning known to anyone, especially in a White House busy with producing pope and Jedi memes – has remained unclear: For instance, has Ansar Allah agreed to desist from all attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and especially the Bab al Mandab choke-point strait? Or just from attacking US ships? Or merely American military vessels perhaps? An Ansar Allah spokesman, in any case, stated that Israeli ships remain targets. Also, as it happened, Trump informed the media first; the US military second, if at all. Even Israel – certainly something Trump defers to much more than to his own generals or the American people in general – claimed to have been taken by surprise.
Usually, such questions of scope and procedure really, really matter in grown-up-politics world, but hey, no biggie: it’s probably a little too much to expect from the leadership of the “Indispensable Nation” currently very busy with getting “great again” by tanking the world economy through a trade war that isn’t merely aggressive but stupid as well as failing on its own very ill-conceived terms.
After all, bombing Yemen for seven weeks was just a matter of life and death – and, as usually, other, not Americans deaths: Since the fresh US escalation of violence against Yemen in mid-March, American forces have attacked a thousand targets – according to the US – and they have, as is their wont, massacred civilians, including migrants targeted with bunker-busting bombs, Israeli-style, as it were.
One thing is certain: Trump’s claim that his Yemeni opponents “have capitulated” is nonsense. Ansar Allah declaring, in its turn, that “Yemen defeats America” is not: While rhetorical and hyperbolic – no, Yemen has not sunk an aircraft carrier – that claim, actually, has a large kernel of truth, counterintuitive as that may seem. Here’s why:
For one thing, the US, the much stronger power, has signally – no pun intended – failed to achieve its declared war aims. How do we know? Not only from the fact that the current ceasefire-or-something is so vague, but also, actually, from Trump himself.
It was Trump who began the bombing campaign by declaring that it would not even be “a fair fight” – true, for once, from the Great Boaster, but then American warfare never is – and that his Yemeni opponents would “be completely annihilated.” Whatever you think of the current outcome, almost two months later, that certainly has not happened. Not at all.
Yet when a massive bully attacks, shouting it will stomp you into the ground, and you resist, keep standing, and make the bully walk away, you have won – even if you have not stomped the bully into the ground.
Usually, such questions of scope and procedure really, really matter in grown-up-politics world, but hey, no biggie: it’s probably a little too much to expect from the leadership of the “Indispensable Nation” currently very busy with getting “great again” by tanking the world economy through a trade war that isn’t merely aggressive but stupid as well as failing on its own very ill-conceived terms.
After all, bombing Yemen for seven weeks was just a matter of life and death – and, as usually, other, not Americans deaths: Since the fresh US escalation of violence against Yemen in mid-March, American forces have attacked a thousand targets – according to the US – and they have, as is their wont, massacred civilians, including migrants targeted with bunker-busting bombs, Israeli-style, as it were.
One thing is certain: Trump’s claim that his Yemeni opponents “have capitulated” is nonsense. Ansar Allah declaring, in its turn, that “Yemen defeats America” is not: While rhetorical and hyperbolic – no, Yemen has not sunk an aircraft carrier – that claim, actually, has a large kernel of truth, counterintuitive as that may seem. Here’s why:
For one thing, the US, the much stronger power, has signally – no pun intended – failed to achieve its declared war aims. How do we know? Not only from the fact that the current ceasefire-or-something is so vague, but also, actually, from Trump himself.
It was Trump who began the bombing campaign by declaring that it would not even be “a fair fight” – true, for once, from the Great Boaster, but then American warfare never is – and that his Yemeni opponents would “be completely annihilated.” Whatever you think of the current outcome, almost two months later, that certainly has not happened. Not at all.
Yet when a massive bully attacks, shouting it will stomp you into the ground, and you resist, keep standing, and make the bully walk away, you have won – even if you have not stomped the bully into the ground.
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