“Yemen’s Houthis,” Euronews reports, “have assured Washington that they would not attack US vessels in the Red Sea, following reports that the US cancelled its planned strikes on the group at the last minute, a senior Houthi official said on Monday” (September 21).

For more than a decade, the US has periodically thrown in with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in its attempts to conquer Yemen and impose rule by “the internationally recognized government,” a Riyadh-based, Saudi-funded puppet regime, usually on the justification that the Houthis are an “Iran-backed” movement and government.

For more than a decade, the Houthis —  formally known as Ansar Allah — have ruled a smaller amount of territory, but a far larger percentage of the country’s population, than that “internationally recognized government,” and recently launched a successful offensive to seize more, and more strategically important, territory. That new territory comprises key points on the coast of, and islands in, the Red Sea around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

If Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a knife to international oil shipping’s throat, Houthi control of the Bab el-Mandeb is a firm grip on international oil shipping’s testicles.

US president Donald Trump, it seems, would rather the Houthis didn’t squeeze. Or maybe he’s just trying to conserve limited military resources for continued war with Iran.

Either way, when Saudi terror kingpin … er, Crown Prince … Mohammed bin Salman requested a new round of US airstrikes, the answer was “no, not this time.”

And either way, that’s the right answer.

The conflict in Yemen has never been any business of the US government’s, and continued US military support of the Saudi regime, going at least as far back as Desert Storm in 1991, has always been a disaster for America.

Among other blowback: In 2016, declassified information established that some of the attackers were materially supported by the Saudi royal family.

I’m not going to try to tell you that Ansar Allah make for “better” governors  of the Yemeni population than some Saudi quisling (I’m an anarchist — do the math). That’s a decision for the Yemeni population to make.

But if we’re going to put up with political government over here, Thomas Jefferson laid out the best foreign policy for that government to pursue: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

Thanks to president Trump for veering toward that course, this time and on this issue. More, please.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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