If you're opposed to the war on Gaza, there is no moral basis on which to support the attack on Yemen
I’m not going to argue the rights and wrongs of the war on Gaza here. My purpose is more narrow. I’ve seen a bunch of people on Twitter, American liberals mostly, try to thread a fine line like so:
Of course, I’m opposed to the war on Gaza- it’s gone much too far.
Nevertheless, this war against Houthi piracy is necessary, we must defend freedom of navigation.
This is the position of the urbane, morally sophisticated pro-pax-Americana liberal, and like many such halfway houses, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I will show this position is morally incoherent. If you oppose the war on Gaza, you must oppose the war on the Houthis.
I know that this will seem childish, but I think this is one of those times when the best way to get to grips with the case is to turn it into a thought experiment to view the morally essential features without the grime of accumulated discourse. There’s an alphabetical names convention. Alfred is the strongest, Bob is Alfred’s favorite, Bob and Charlie fight all the time, and Bob is much stronger than Charlie. Denise likes Charlie and doesn’t want him beaten up.
Bob is beating up Charlie. Some people even think he might be going to kill Charlie. His actions are, by hypothesis, deeply immoral. Alfred chooses not to stop Bob, in fact, Alfred helps Bob as he beats Charlie up. Denise, in order to try and protect Charlie, starts throwing things at anyone nearby, as she can’t directly intervene in the fight.
Now Alfred wants to restore order to the room. Should Alfred do so by:
A) Forcing Bob to stop attacking Charlie OR
B) Attacking Denise
Essentially, any time you have a choice between solving a problem by starting a fight or war and solving a problem by doing something you should be doing anyway, you should pick the latter. Thus if the war on Gaza is immoral, so is the war on Yemen. This applies regardless of whether you think Denise/Yemen’s actions are noble, ambiguous, bad, or even if you think they are worse than tens of thousands of dead civilians.
Counterarguments:
How do we know the Houthis would stop if there is a ceasefire: The Houthis have made a commitment to that effect. Perhaps they will not keep that commitment, but the US should at least try that route first.
I’m not convinced the US could force Israel to stop: The US is the global hegemon and gives vast aid to Israel- about four hundred dollars per year per Israeli citizen, which is massive, militarily and economically, and amounts to about a sixth of Israel’s military expenditure. Even more important than the aid is America’s guarantee of Israel’s security interests. America’s leverage is vast.
Okay, maybe the ‘US’ can force Israel to stop, but Joe Biden can’t: The political sclerosis and moral insanity of the US political class doesn’t change the calculus of what the US is obliged to do. Moreover, the imperial presidency has plenty of leverage to fuck over Israel in all sorts of ways.
This argument misses something, there must be a punishment for piracy to deter it in the future: If we’re going to start talking about the morality of punishing international actors for wrongdoing, we’d have to include, at a minimum, Israel and the US as well. The US has no moral standing to administer punishment in the present circumstances, since its wrongdoing, and that of its closest ally created this situation. Even if you think the US has the moral standing to punish Yemen, they should surely do so after they stop the ongoing genocide they themselves are contributing to.
On the question of whether the US has the moral standing to punish the Houthis, I assert that *anyone* has the moral standing to punish the Houthis, including the US, Israel, North Korea, Putin, whoever. Acts of piracy render you hostis humani generis, universal outlaws who may be punished by any state.
Even with the hypothetical ABCD-name scenario, isn’t it still a substantially higher priority to stop Denise? If your goal is minimizing the amount of conflict going on, then preventing Denise from attacking random bystanders and involving them in the conflict is a much bigger deal than the Bob-Charlie conflict. I suppose if they were equally tractable, you could solve both by stopping the Bob-Charlie conflict, but if that is substantially less tractable than stopping Denise, then your priority should be on directly stopping Denise to prevent further expansion of the conflict. After all, it’s not like the situation will become *less* of a mess after Ellen, Frank, and George get assaulted by Denise.