Militarism turns inward

After suffering rough treatment at the hands of Yemen’s Houthis, Donald Trump is now looking for a showdown with an enemy he thinks he can beat: the American people.

This is the meaning of Tuesday’s chest-thumper at Fort Bragg in which a man who used “bone spurs” as an excuse to dodge the draft in 1968 bragged shamelessly about America’s military record. “Recently, other countries celebrated the victory of World War I,” Trump said, getting his global conflicts a bit jumbled up. “...The only one that doesn’t celebrate is the USA, and we’re the ones that won the war. Without us, you’d all be speaking German right now, maybe a little Japanese thrown in. But we won the war.”

Needless to say, “we” did not win anything. The Soviet Union prevailed in World War II by throwing everything it had against Axis forces for a full three years before US troops even set foot on the Continent. As is often said, American steel, British money, and Soviet blood are what won the war – not Tom Hanks at Tinseltown’s version of Omaha Beach. Undeterred by mere facts, Trump went on:

“Time and again, our enemies have learned that if you dare to threaten the American people, American soldier will chase you down, crush you, and cast you into oblivion.... The last sound you ever hear will be the chilling howl of Black Hawks in the dead of night, the thunderous boom of artillery fire, or the ferocious roar of a US Army infantry brigade charging over the horizon.”

Then came a lecture on current affairs:

“Before going further, I want to say a few words about the situation in Los Angeles, California.... where I’ve deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob. ... Well, if we didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles, it’d be burning today just like their houses were burning a number of months ago. Generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and Third World lawlessness here at home....

“What you’re witnessing in California,” he went on, “is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order, and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Which means, apparently, that all the firepower than a $1-trillion Defense Department budget can buy may soon be brought to bear on anyone daring to resist Trump’s atrocious immigrant policies.

But what Trump forgot to mention at Fort Bragg is a recent vanity project that did not go well at all. This was “Operation Rough Rider,” the 53-day air campaign against Yemen’s Houthis that the president launched in mid-March. The results were disastrous. Not only did the US lose seven MQ-9 Reaper drones at a cost of $30 million each, but it also lost two F-18 Super Hornets worth $67 million per unit. It’s an object lesson in how low-cost but highly effective military technology is making a mockery of expensive western weaponry.

The Houthis – proper name: Ansar Allah, or “helpers of God” – are ragtag Muslim fundamentalists whose fighting slogan speaks volumes about their political character: “Death to America, death to Israel, curse be upon the Jews, victory to Islam.” Nonetheless, they’ve learned a thing or two after battling for years against Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who thought it would be great fun to start bombing them back in April 2015. Beating off the Saudis may not sound like much considering that the kingdom’s air force is piloted by playboy princes reliant on US technicians and advisers to get them off the ground and on Anglo-American aircraft to refuel in mid-flight.

But the Houthis proved more than a match for the US Navy. As the Wall Street Journal noted last week:

“Officials are now dissecting how a scrappy adversary was able to test the world’s most capable surface fleet. The Houthis proved to be a surprisingly difficult foe, engaging the Navy in its fiercest battles since World War II despite fighting from primitive quarters and caves in one of the world’s poorest countries.”

Quite right. Essentially, the Houthi strategy was to lure the US into a trap in the form of a 200-mile-wide body of water in which maneuverability would be limited. The Navy poured some 30 ships, ten percent of the fleet, into the Red Sea where they came within easy striking distance of cheap drones and missiles. Tucked away in hardened bunkers in Yemen’s rugged interior, these were weapons that the Houthis were then able to fire off at will. Even though US forces struck more than a thousand targets, killing hundreds of Ansar Allah fighters – not to mention dozens of civilians in a migrant camp that also came under US fire – they were never able to establish anything like air superiority.

When an incoming Houthi missile forced aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman to make a hard turn on April 28, the maneuvers sent an F-18 was crashing overboard. Eight days later, the USS Truman lost another Hornet when it failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, forcing its two-man crew to eject. “And through it all,” the New York Times noted on May 12, “the Houthis were still shooting at vessels and drones, fortifying their bunkers and moving weapons stockpiles underground.”

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t prevail against a primitive Third World force. Hence Trump’s decision to declare victory on May 5 and get out

But now he’s itching for a fight against an enemy he’s confident he can defeat. After all, what are a few kids with rocks and Molotov cocktails against marines armed with M27 automatic rifles? According to conventional military logic, the fight will be over before it starts.

But Trump may have again miscalculated because protesters also have a weapon up their sleeve: numbers. Predictions are difficult especially when they involve the future. But with the administration aiming to triple arrests to 3,000 a day, one thing is certain: chaos will spread. Plainly, Trump is hoping for more resistance in the form of burning cars, Mexican flags waved in defiance, etc. so he can militarize the situation even more.

But what he forgets is that a tipping point could soon be reached as growth in the ranks of protesters begins to outpace those of the military. What can hundreds of troops do against thousands of demonstrators? Against tens of thousands? Conceivably, Trump could up the firepower, the equivalent of sending in the USS Truman. But what will this accomplish? After all, marines are not trained in crowd control. To the contrary, they’re trained to kill. So what are they going to do – open up with live ammo?

The mind reels, but this is clearly what Trump is working himself up to. Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the US run as high as 11.7 million. That’s better than one person in 30. Tearing them away from neighbors, family, and friends is like using red-hot pincers to tear out hunks of living flesh. It’s impossible while still retaining a shred of democracy. So if immigrants go, democracy – what little is left of it, that is – will go too.

Trump may seem like he’s in control, but the situation is highly unstable. Democrats are paralyzed and resistance is growing as America’s rickety 237-year-old political structure nears the breaking point. I warned that this would happen more than 25 years ago. And I was right.

Notes:

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have both run excellent back-grounders on the action in the Red Sea. For the full details, see https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/navy-houthis-maritime-war-5517a127 and https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/us/politics/trump-houthis-bombing.html?searchResultPosition=13.

For more on constitutional breakdown, see Daniel Lazare, The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996).