What’s the scandal when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, is included in a Signal group chat of Trump administration officials discussing an attack on Yemen? For many observers, the outrageous thing is the breach of government secrecy. Classified information must not be treated so cavalierly, and its exposure could have jeopardized the succession of the bombing run under discussion. American military personnel might even have lost their lives, if the enemy had been forewarned.
“The scandal here isn’t what the government failed to keep secret.”
Yet something else endangers the lives of America’s military personnel in a far more significant way—namely, sending them into another Middle East conflict in the first place. The scandal here isn’t what the government failed to keep secret, it’s the secrecy itself and the dangerously ill-conceived policies it serves.
What the Signal chat revealed is that Donald Trump is making the same mistakes as Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush before him—egged on by his conventionally hawkish national security advisor, Michael Waltz, the figure most likely to have been responsible for Goldberg’s accidental inclusion in the conversation.
The Houthi PC Small Group included Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others—as well as Goldberg, of course. Vance dissented from the plan to bomb Yemen immediately, warning that doing so served European interests more than America’s: “I’m not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his messaging on Europe.” Ratcliffe and Gabbard’s deputy, Joe Kent, said they saw no risk in waiting. But Hegseth wanted to proceed without delay, for two reasons: “1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first—or Gaza cease fire falls apart—and we don’t get to start this on our own terms.”
What’s remarkable here is the concern with looking indecisive rather than with making a bad decision. Which should be the criterion of whether or not America goes to war? Secretary Hegseth ought to discuss that with the American people—and President Trump, too.
Yet the secretary’s second reason for immediate bombing is still more extraordinary: He didn’t want Israel to fight the war instead. His wording implies that if Israel were to “start this,” America would have to participate as a junior partner, which again is something that voters might want to have some say about. The Houthis are a menace in Israel’s neighborhood, and Israel has shown it can deal forcefully indeed with opponents. So why not this one?
But then, Hegseth continued, “this is not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.” Waltz then chimed in to say, “We have a fundamental decision of allowing the sea lanes to remain closed or to reopen them now or later, we are the only ones with the capability unfortunately”—a claim that doesn’t really jibe with the fear that Israel would act first. Presumably the Israelis aren’t going to take action that they don’t believe will be effective.
Lacking in the Houthi PC Small Group discussion was any consideration of how more bombing will tame the Houthis this time when they’ve weathered plenty of attacks before. Anyone who knows the first thing about America’s experience with war in the Middle East over the past 25 years—or for that matter, going back to 1986 and beyond—knows that bombing has never solved a problem like the Houthis, or Saddam Hussein, or (a little further afield) the Taliban or al-Qaeda, although Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and both Bushes have engaged in the ritual as part of their endless wars. Trump received rare praise from the mainstream media when he fired missiles at Syria early in his first term. Those missiles did not, of course, bring down Bashar al-Assad’s regime or curb his barbarity. Will the Houthis, who for years defied a full-scale invasion by US-armed Saudi forces, change their behavior because the Trump administration flattens an apartment building in Sanaa where a Houthi target was visiting his girlfriend?
“The war is not in fact necessary for America’s economic interests.”
Someone inside the administration should raise that question—and, more importantly, answer it. Hegseth did not answer Vance’s objection about the lack of American trade passing through waters plagued by the Houthis. Waltz tried to: “The trade figures we have are 15 of global and 30 of container. It’s difficult to break that down to US” because components going through the Red Sea may be required for goods eventually exported from Europe to the US. It turns out the globalized economy is something for which the Trump administration—otherwise keen to relocate manufacturing here and acquire resources from our own hemisphere—will go to war for.
But as Vance noted, the war is not in fact necessary for America’s economic interests. And with prospects for success as dubious as those in all the other air wars recent presidents have conducted in the Middle East, the anti-Houthi campaign seems less than adequately thought-through. This is a reflexive war: bombing is simply Washington’s habit, regardless of any achievable end.
The habit does serve a strategic purpose, but not the purpose for which Donald Trump was elected. Perpetual low-intensity air war that fails to achieve its stated goal can nonetheless advance an unstated goal. It gets even realists and advocates of foreign-policy restraint accustomed to compromising with and deferring to those whose first instinct is to use force and whose ultimate dream is of what wider wars might accomplish. Concede that war with the Houthis ought to be our war, and when an air war proves insufficient, what follows? America bombed Iraq for more than a decade before invading in 2003. Bill Clinton bombed Afghanistan three years before the 9/11 attacks and George W. Bush’s subsequent invasion of that graveyard of empires, which our forces only left two decades later.
From the first Gulf War in 1991 to the humiliating end of the Afghan War 30 years later, tens of thousands of Americans—civilians and service members alike—lost their lives to terrorism and war, and in all that time Islamism only spread. Now the Trump administration is falling into the same habits that incrementally lead to wars for regime change and nation-building, and Trump can expect the same results as the men whose failures he campaigned against. This, and not the exposure of government secrecy, is what’s scandalous.
The Trump administration owes the American public an explanation of why this war will be different—and a promise that if it’s not, heads will roll as quickly as the bombs dropped.