Assange's legacy lives through Trump's ignorance of Yemen
7 Min Read
Julian Assange was dragged through the mud for exposing the killing of civilians at the hands of the US government. Today, Trump is celebrating that very depraved act.
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Is Trump attempting to fill Assange's shoes when it comes to Yemen? (Illustrated by Ali al-Hadi Shmeiss for Al Mayadeen English)
Somehow, so much of the West's actions go back to renowned journalist Julian Assange, be it war crimes, corruption, or foreign intervention. Today, in particular, as was noticeable by almost everyone familiar with the incident, the world recalls Collateral Murder, the video that took the world by storm and made Assange and WikiLeaks public enemy number one in the United States.
There was a simpler time, a time when perpetrators would try and conceal their war crimes, or at least not brag about them. Today, the Westerner brags and boasts about his slaughter of civilians without remorse, taking the mentality of attempting to frame civilians as fighters to a whole other level; rather than, maybe, assassinating an official and claiming the civilian victims were just collateral damage, the civilians in this case are themselves the target and they are being labeled as "Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack."
These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2025
They will never sink our ships again! pic.twitter.com/lEzfyDgWP5
What's a culture?
The video posted by Trump more than most other crimes clearly shows US criminality and even the lack of basic understanding of the cultures they so vehemently oppose. While Trump iconically confirmed that Ansar Allah had indeed sunk US vessels, that is besides the point. More importantly, he also confirmed that the United States goes into war without even the slightest knowledge of the culture of the people they are bombing.
Even the smallest child in Yemen knows that the gathering was a tribal meeting rather than a "high-ranking Houthi meeting". Granted, Yemen is a poor nation, but any half-wit would know that a nation challenging the biggest superpower on the planet with the latter failing to adequately deter it would not have some top-level leaders meeting above ground in the middle of the desert to receive "instructions on an attack."
What can be seen is a traditional assembly where tribesmen form a large circle or oval, standing far apart to show solemnity, respect, and unity. It serves various purposes, including declaring a collective stance, especially in times of war, peace negotiations, tribal feuds, or major political events, as well as to make tribal pledges, such as supporting a cause, defending the homeland, or seeking justice for a wrong done.
Trump came out boasting his strength and his country's superior technology all against some defenseless people — as is the case with the US, the overwhelming majority of the time. From bombing civilians in Vietnam with Agent Orange and Napalm, bombarding Yugoslavia, and Operation Shock and Awe in Iraq, to drone striking civilians and children in Somalia and Syria, successive US administrations have shown that Washington has quite the affinity for slaughtering defenseless civilians.
Collateral—but intentional—Murder
Starkly, the video draws parallels to the notorious Collateral Murder video. In 2010, WikiLeaks released the now-infamous video, which included leaked footage from a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad. In it, American soldiers scan the streets through grainy black-and-white screens, narrating their casual hunt for "targets." The targets, as it turned out, were two Reuters journalists and a group of civilians.
The American soldiers mimicked their leadership when it came to the manner in which they were slaughtering civilians. Perhaps it is due to seeing their victims through a screen that makes them treat them inhumanely, and as such the severity of their crime is not as apparent to them, but the Westerners' alienation from their fellow humans is an appalling reality that can be seen throughout every single war crime that they have committed.
The dialogue was almost cinematic in its cruelty; soldiers were laughing, joking, and eagerly requesting permission to fire. When a van arrived to rescue the wounded, it too was bombed. Perhaps the rules of imperial warfare say that aiding the dying is a capital offense. Two children were among the survivors pulled from the wreckage, all because the men in the cockpit thought a camera was an RPG launcher.
Are guilt and accountability subjective?
Instead of prompting condemnation of the war criminals and causing them to be held accountable, the footage sparked a witch-hunt for the whistleblowers, with the US government moving heaven and earth in pursuit those who dared expose the crime: Brad Manning, who leaked the footage, was imprisoned for years; Julian Assange, the man who published it, became a hunted man, vilified and smeared, being forced to live his life in isolation before his arrest that saw him taken to a maximum-security prison.
Somehow, the harrowing crime was not the massacre of innocent civilians and journalists but rather that act being made public. What Assange was hunted and imprisoned for, Trump is using for bragging rights. Maybe it's to prove that he is actually capable and would not stand idle as Yemen attempts to put an end to a genocide; maybe it's to show that he's better than the Biden administration at killing innocents, or maybe it's just ignorance.
The real motive may not be known, but one thing will overshadow any speculation over it, which is the cruelty and even underlying racism behind the crime.
As a matter of fact, it might be that the West has reached such a level of depravity that killing civilians is no longer seen as something to hide and be ashamed of and attempt to rectify, but rather campaign material and a means of gaining political points or even manufacturing a perception of power.
A page out of 'Israel's' books?
The Israeli occupation recently started a trend of sharing its airstrikes through the media, and as normal people follow trends, perhaps the upper echelons of political power do so, too. For years, "Israel" has been sharing the destruction it has been sowing, be it in Lebanon, Palestine, or Syria, putting its cruelty and the devastation it has been inflicting on civilians on full display for the whole world to see, all done using mostly weapons from the United States. Trump, being who he is, wanted some of the clout for himself and aired out his government's dirty laundry, showing how the Pentagon does not necessarily verify its targets, never learning from its mistakes.
While it is known that the United States aids the Israeli occupation, provides it with training, finance, equipment, and, above all, impunity, it is now the one learning from "Israel". Who else could be more effective at massacring civilians? The 50,000+ murdered in Gaza are the greatest testament to how cruel the entity propped up by imperialist strings could be.
Once upon a time, massacres were downplayed and swept under the rug in an attempt for war criminals to exonerate themselves and not tarnish their image. But with a person as egotistical and depraved as Trump in power, maybe the rules of the game are changing, and the mass murder of civilians is to be celebrated just for the sake of a facade of strength. Maybe this does not only speak to Trump's depravity and ignorance but to that of Western values as a whole.
