Earnest: Stability Doesn’t Determine Whether Yemen Strat a Success

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest “us policy should not be graded against the success or the stability of the Yemeni government” on Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.

“The measure of the US policy should not be graded against the success or the stability of the Yemeni government. that’s a separate enterprise. And the goal of US policy toward Yemen has never been to try to build a Jeffersonian democracy there. The goal of US policy in Yemen is to make sure that Yemen cannot be a safe haven that extremists can use to attack the West and to attack the united states, and that involves trying to build up the capacity of the government to help us in that fight. And there is no doubt that we would prefer a situation where there is a stable government, where there is a place where US personnel could operate inside of Yemen, could coordinate directly with Yemeni security forces to take the fight to these extremists. But the fact is that even though US personnel is no longer in Yemen, the united states continues to have the capacity and resources, and reach to be able to take strikes when necessary against extremists” he stated.

Earnest later said that “security cooperation is not as robust and as successful as it would otherwise be if the Yemeni government were stable.”

(h/t National Review)

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