Pirate's Cove

Well, at least they learned something from the Benghazi affair

(Fox News) The State Department announced late Tuesday that the U.S. Embassy in Yemen had been closed and evacuated after much of the country was taken over by Shiite rebels last month.

Hours later, Britain and France followed suit and ordered their citizens to leave Yemen as soon as possible.

The U.S. embassy had already been operating with severely reduced staff for several weeks. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said remaining diplomatic personnel had been relocated “due to the ongoing political instability and the uncertain security situation.”

Yemen has been in crisis for months, with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control and forcing the resignation of the U.S. and Saudi-backed president and his government.

Hey, remember this from September 2014?

“But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

Obama has done a good job in using drone strikes to play whack-a-mole against Islamic jihadis. Ted Cruz noted on January 25, 2015

In Yemen, as in so many places around the globe, however, this approach has left the United States with few good options and with our influence in shambles. We need to face the reality that Yemen is being torn apart by two sworn enemies of America and our first priority should be to secure any remaining U.S. personnel in the country. We must then explore how to defend our strategic interests in the region without benefiting either Iran or al Qaeda.

Back to Fox article

The embassy closure will also complicate the CIA’s operations in Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge. Although CIA officers could continue to work out of U.S. military installations, many intelligence operations are run from embassies, and the CIA lost visibility on Syria when that embassy was evacuated in 2012. The CIA’s main role in Yemen is to gather intelligence about members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and occasionally kill them with drone strikes. Both the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command run separate drone killing programs in Yemen, though the CIA has conducted the majority of the strikes, U.S. officials have said.

In all due fairness to Obama, this could have happened no matter what he did, with hardcore Islamist forces, some backed by Iran, fighting against each other for control of a nation that has a long history of being a hotbed of Islamic terrorism and extremism. Obama could have done everything perfectly, and the country still may have melted down. But, as said when George Bush was president “who’s president now?” Perhaps Obama should have more strongly supported the Arab Spring, particularly in Iran, with their Green Uprising, as well as not played footsy with Iran.

We urge U.S. citizens to defer travel to #Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart. More: http://t.co/G3AYMssu8v

— Department of State (@StateDept) February 11, 2015

Crossed at Right Wing News.