Listen up, truth seekers and myth busters — the fog of war just got a red, white, and blue flare. While Washington waves the flag for human rights abroad, Yemen just got a fiery reminder of what that “freedom” smells like when it comes screaming out of the sky. Spoiler alert: it’s smoke, blood, and burning hope.
At least 68 lives — migrants trapped in a so-called “detention center” — were allegedly erased in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen. And before Uncle Sam can even say “collateral damage,” let me call it for what it is: a massacre dipped in denial and served on the silver platter of imperial impunity.
They weren’t enemy combatants. They weren’t insurgents. They weren’t even armed. These were desperate men, women, and possibly children fleeing from famine, war, and every shade of hell the world has ignored for years. Held in a migrant detention facility — because nothing says “welcome” like four walls, no rights, and nowhere to run — they became unintended targets of what the Pentagon might chalk up as “intelligence failure.”
Well, here’s a little intelligence for the brass: If you’re air-striking facilities staffed with nothing more than hope and hunger, maybe it’s time we reevaluate who’s fighting terror and who’s funding it.
The spin machine, of course, is already warming up faster than a warplane on a tarmac in Djibouti. Officials “express deep regret,” promise “investigations,” and cue the usual diplomatic jazz hands. The U.N. wrings its hands. Some diplomats blink mournfully into cameras. Congress might even tweet about it before lunch.
But here’s the kicker, folks: if this had been Russia, Iran, or any country whose flag isn’t marketed in shopping malls, we’d be breaking into emergency session at the U.N. faster than Taylor Swift drops a surprise album. You’d hear the word “war crime” louder than a campaign rally, and everyone from Brussels to Boise would be demanding justice.
Instead, we get sanitized statements, and an American public too busy scrolling Netflix to notice Yemen’s body count rising like uncounted ballots in a banana republic.
So let me ask the question that’ll tick off the suits but needs to be shouted from the rooftops: When did “exceptionalism” become the blank check for extermination?
Washington’s entire foreign policy is beginning to look like a rigged game of poker: Show humanitarian cards while stacking the deck with drone strikes and double standards. I call it Global Monopoly — U.S. edition. We bomb, we spin, we deny, and then we bill you for democracy.
And for those who’ll call this “anti-American rhetoric,” save your tweets. Patriotism isn’t measured by blind allegiance. It’s measured by moral spine — and right now, ours is looking more like a noodle left out in the sun.
This is bigger than a headline. This is a damn symptom of the disease: a foreign policy that sees human lives through a thermal targeting screen. If American leadership wants to be the world’s conscience, it might want to find its own first.
Tick-tock, tick-tock — the world is watching. And history? Oh, she’s taking notes.
The game’s on, and I play to win.
– Mr. 47
