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The American political<\/span> landscape has been rattled<\/a> by revelations that the Trump administration discussed plans to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen in a chat group<\/a> containing a journalist from The Atlantic. Senior Trump administration officials are facing tough questions about their operational security, use of consumer technology, and even their emoji usage.<\/p>\n So far, however, there has been little focus on the specifics of the attack, much less discussion of the fact that one of the targets of the March 15 strike was a civilian residence.<\/p>\n After revealing on Monday that its top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been invited to the Signal chat group, The Atlantic published on Wednesday the actual messages in which top Trump administration officials laid out minute-by-minute operational details and specific weapons<\/a> to be used in strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.\u00a0The Atlantic opted to publish the chats \u2014 which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Vice President JD Vance\u00a0\u2014 only after the White House tried to deny\u00a0classified details were shared.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before the \u201cHouthi PC small group channel\u201d Signal messages were released, Waltz announced<\/a> that recent attacks had \u201ctaken out key Houthi leadership, including their head missileer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve hit their headquarters,\u201d Waltz told CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation\u201d on Sunday, prior to Goldberg\u2019s revelations. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit communications nodes, weapons factories, and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend\u2019s building and it\u2019s now collapsed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n In the group chat, however, Waltz indicated that in order to kill a Houthi official, the U.S. military destroyed\u00a0a civilian home or apartment building.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first target \u2014 their top missile guy \u2014 we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend\u2019s building and it\u2019s now collapsed,\u201d wrote Waltz on Signal.<\/p>\n \u201cExcellent,\u201d Vance replied.<\/p>\n The attack was another in a long-running war \u2014 by the U.S. and its proxies \u2014 against the Houthis. For years, the United States backed an\u00a0atrocity-filled air campaign<\/a>\u00a0led by Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0against the militant group. Just after entering office, President Joe Biden formally\u00a0delisted\u00a0<\/a>the Houthis as a terrorist group. After the Houthis began attacking ships \u2014 including U.S. warships \u2014 in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden in retaliation for the\u00a0U.S.-backed<\/a>\u00a0Israeli\u00a0war on Gaza<\/a>, Biden reclassified them as terrorists and began<\/a> launching attacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump began his own campaign of strikes <\/a>targeting\u00a0the Houthis earlier this month, after\u00a0the Yemeni militants threatened to attack \u201cIsraeli\u201d ships\u00a0again over Israel\u2019s blockade preventing aid <\/a>entering the Gaza Strip. (The rebels have had an expansive definition of what constitutes an Israeli ship, targeting vessels of various nations.) Trump\u2019s air campaign has already killed more than 50 people<\/a> since March 15.<\/p>\n \u201cToo often the news coverage of the Signal chat leak has lacked any real discussion of the actual act of war itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cToo often the news coverage of the Signal chat leak has lacked any real discussion of the actual act of war itself \u2014 the fact that the U.S. is bombing people in Yemen,\u201d Stephanie Savell, the director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, told The Intercept. \u201cFifty-three people have died in this latest wave of U.S. airstrikes, five of them children. These are just the latest deaths in a long track record of U.S. killing in Yemen, and the research shows that U.S. airstrikes in many countries have a history of killing and traumatizing innocent civilians and wreaking havoc on people\u2019s lives and livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last century, the\u00a0U.S. military<\/a> has\u00a0shown<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0consistent disregard<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0civilian lives<\/a>. It has repeatedly cast or misidentified ordinary people as enemies<\/a>; failed to investigate civilian harm allegations; excused casualties as regrettable but unavoidable; and failed to prevent their recurrence or to hold troops accountable. These long-standing practices sit in stark contrast to the U.S. government\u2019s public campaigns to\u00a0sell its wars as benign<\/a>, its\u00a0air campaigns<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0precise<\/a>, its\u00a0concern for civilians as overriding<\/a>, and the deaths of innocent people as \u201ctragic<\/a>\u201d anomalies.<\/p>\n Last year, The Intercept drew attention to a racist and dehumanizing <\/a>\u201cmorale patch\u201d on the uniform of Lt. Kyle Festa, a pilot involved in the Biden administration\u2019s war on the Houthis. Festa\u2019s patch featured crosshairs over likenesses of the\u00a0Tusken Raiders<\/a>, the fictional \u201csand people\u201d who\u00a0attacked\u00a0<\/a>Luke Skywalker in the 1977 movie \u201cStar Wars.\u201d The patch read \u201cHouthi Hunting Club. Red Sea 2023-2024.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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