Originally Posted by Slims

I don't understand the opposition to this.

This plan involves providing aid which the Yemeni government has requested. We are helping to train government forces to better secure their own country.

Has the US later become involved directly in conflicts after our efforts have proven ineffective? Yes. But those are the minority. US Special Forces and other entities have been working for years in dozens of countries and we have not been drawn into war in the vast majority of them. In fact, most of our efforts are at least marginally successful.


When we have a situation where a country is decaying into lawlessness and it is in our own best interest to prevent that decay, it makes sense to at least attempt to stabilize that government. This applies even in those countries where we have engaged in direct conflict....we tried to prevent it and when it failed the military got involved in a more direct fashion. It is a correlation, but isn't causal in most circumstances.