Killing People Is Worse Than Mishandling Classified Information

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On March 15, several high-ranking U.S. national security officials discussed plans to strike the Houthi militia in Yemen using the encrypted messaging app Signal.¹ Also in the chat was Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and an Iraq War cheerleader who should be thrown into a volcano.

According to records released by The Atlantic, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth updated the chat (with Goldberg in it) with information about strike plans 31 minutes before warplanes were supposed to leave the ground and at least 121 minutes before bombs were supposed to be delivered. Vice President JD Vance replied, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

Then, about two hours later, the United States bombed Yemen, killing 13 civilians and injuring nine. In the week that followed, U.S. operations killed at least 25 civilians, including four children, and injured 28. More than 55% of strikes hit non-military civilian targets, including a school, two medical facilities, a wedding hall, and a university. Only one of 38 strikes was confirmed to hit a military target.

Killing these civilians was a needless choice. American military personnel do not target civilian infrastructure on purpose, but military planners and defense policymakers routinely make decisions to kill large numbers of civilians when they design and authorize campaigns with inappropriately broad objectives and a high tolerance for so-called “collateral damage.” No serious observer believes airstrikes are going to stop the Houthis from attacking international shipping — apparently the goal of the “Houthi PC small group” — unless the United States engages in a sustained bombing campaign and kills a lot of civilians in the process. Houthi capabilities were not seriously degraded by the Biden administration’s year-long precision bombing campaign, and the group only emerged stronger from a seven-year air war by Saudi Arabia — backed to the hilt by the United States — that plunged Yemen into a humanitarian crisis and killed at least 377,000 people.

Whether you think it’s the right decision or not to bomb Yemen and blow the limbs off dozens of innocent people, the decision to do so ought not to be taken lightly or without robust public debate. There are conditions under which it is appropriate to kill civilians, even for economic ends like protecting shipping. But it is not appropriate to kill civilians without a good reason, or to engage in military action when you haven’t methodically considered the risks and costs of intervention or the possibility that it won’t achieve its goals.

Nearly 23 years into sustained military operations in Yemen, there still hasn’t been a reckoning in the United States about the risks and costs of war. Last year, there was only one off-handed mention of Yemen in the presidential debates. None of the major media outlets pressed Trump, Biden, or Harris on their Yemen policy. Nor was it mentioned at all in the Democratic or Republican Party platforms.

Congress, despite having passed a broad authorization for the use of military force after 9/11, has never authorized the use of force against the Houthis, nor has the administration even pretended that it has Congressional authorization to attack Houthi targets. There was a bit of a dust-up last year when Biden started bombing Yemen and some members of Congress demanded he seek their permission to continue, but the White House ignored them and the whole thing blew over in a few days. It’s an unwritten rule that the administration doesn’t even have to make up a legal rationale anymore. Not in these United States of Exception.

You might think that Yemen turning up in the news again would be the right occasion to ask if we have a good reason to kill dozens of people and bomb schools and medical centers in a country where over half the health facilities are completely non-functional and two-thirds of the population relies on international humanitarian aid. Not so, however. The media is much more concerned about the security of the process by which the strikes were ordered than the fact that they were ordered in the first place. Even the members of Congress who once demanded a justification for war now content themselves with sending strongly worded letters about the handling of classified information.

The thing about the death of the republic, according to our media and popular culture, is that you don’t know about it until it happens. But that’s not true. It happened a long time ago, and still nobody seems to notice. If the president can engage in an illegal war and kill dozens of people without raising an eyebrow, he’s no longer the head of a constitutional republic but the sovereign of an extraconstitutional empire. And we’re all too preoccupied arguing over the stitching on his new robe to see that he has no clothes.

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1. This is, of course, very weird. If I was discussing plans to attack the Houthis, I would probably plan to use bombs and other military hardware, not Signal.