{"id":71156,"date":"2016-03-28T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71156"},"modified":"2016-03-28T03:29:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T02:29:55","slug":"us-saudi-terror-in-yemen-dwarfs-isis-attacks-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/03\/us-saudi-terror-in-yemen-dwarfs-isis-attacks-in-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"US-Saudi Terror in Yemen Dwarfs ISIS Attacks in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSaudi Arabia has been militarily involved and trying to manipulate political outcomes in Yemen for decades. The last time they did this in 2009, they lost militarily to the Houthis.\u201d
\n<\/em>\u2013 Foreign policy scholar Hillary Mann Leverett on CNN, early 2015<\/a><\/p>\n

25 Mar 2016 – <\/em>Why are two of the richest countries in the World, the United States and Saudi Arabia, engaged in unrelenting, aggressive war against one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen?<\/p>\n

\"Aftermath<\/a>

Aftermath of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Yemen. (photo: Mohammed Huwais\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The US-Saudi-led war on Yemen started on March 26, 2015, with the Saudi coalition\u2019s aerial blitz, using both high-explosive and\u00a0outlawed cluster bombs<\/a>, against a population with\u00a0no air force or other effective air defense<\/a>. US-supported year of carnage has killed more than 6,000 people (no one knows for sure), most of them civilians. The US-Saudi\u00a0criminal intervention in the Yemeni civil war<\/a>\u00a0was supposed to be quick and efficient. From the start, the\u00a0US has helped plan the attacks<\/a>, provided intelligence, re-fueled attacking planes, and participated in the naval blockade (an act of war) that has pushed Yemen\u2019s 26 million people to the brink of mass starvation. The\u00a0American-Saudi genocidal war<\/a>\u00a0has continued without significant protest around the world \u2013\u00a0no \u201cYemeni Lives Matter\u201d movement<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and with almost no attention from any of those\u00a0who will likely inherit this illegal war<\/a>\u00a0as the next commander in chief. None of the candidates, despite their tough talk about ISIS, seem to care that the Saudi military focus has shifted\u00a0from fighting ISIS to killing Yemenis<\/a>\u00a0whose primary offense is to want to run their own country. Nobody in authority seems ready to address the possibility that\u00a0one of the fundamental bad actors in the Middle East<\/a>\u00a0is our longstanding \u201cally\u201d Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

One reason the candidates can so easily ignore American war crimes in collusion with the Saudi coalition is that Yemen is not widely reported, much less analyzed. Yemen is not part of the official beltway agenda. The PBS program \u201cFrontline\u201d devoted an hour to Yemen in April 2015, mostly delivering the Saudi propaganda view that the Houthis are the bad guys, and\u00a0omitting mention of the naval blockade<\/a>. The New York Times apparently felt Yemen was not front page news till March 14, 2016, when it ran a disingenuous, seriously truncated piece that misrepresented the US role in Yemen, starting with the headline: \u201cQuiet Support for Saudis Entangles U.S. in Yemen\u201d (more about this below). Finding relevant, thoughtful commentary about Yemen from any presidential candidate is difficult to impossible. A sampling follows:<\/p>\n

Donald Trump offers wolf-in-the-woods gibberish to fear<\/strong><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u00a0doesn\u2019t appear to have any articulated position<\/a>\u00a0on the Yemen War, but he does\u00a0seem to think that it\u2019s all Iran\u2019s fault<\/a>. At least that\u2019s what he seemed to say on January 19 at an Iowa rally where Sarah Palin endorsed his candidacy. In\u00a0Trump\u2019s rally remarks below<\/a>, \u201cthey\u201d \u2013 as in \u201cthey\u2019re going into Yemen\u201d \u2013 refers to Iran:<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019re going into Yemen, and if you look at Yemen, take a look \u2026 they\u2019re going to get Syria, they\u2019re going to get Yemen, unless \u2026 trust me, a lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let\u2019s just sort of leave it the way it is. They get Syria, they get Yemen. Now they didn\u2019t want Yemen, but you ever see the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia? They want Saudi Arabia. So what are they going to have? They\u2019re gonna have Iraq, they\u2019re gonna have Iran, they\u2019re gonna have Iraq, they\u2019re gonna have Yemen, they\u2019re gonna have Syria, they\u2019re gonna have everything! <\/em><\/p>\n

Even at \u201cThe American Conservative,\u201d no booster of Iran,\u00a0they mock Trump surgically<\/a>: \u201cThis is nonsense,\u2026 a crude, simplified version of official Saudi interventionist propaganda, which has grossly exaggerated the extent of Iran\u2019s influence and involvement in Yemen for most of the last year.\u201d Being American Conservatives, they stop short of denouncing a criminal American war that has received \u201cfar too little coverage,\u201d since it is \u201cone of the worst foreign policy blunders<\/a>\u00a0of [Obama\u2019s] presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have less to say about Yemen than Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n

In January 2015, before the US-Saudi war started, Ted Cruz was arguing that \u201cYemen<\/a>\u00a0demands our attention as the terrorism bred there has global reach.\u201d In support of this demand, Cruz cited varyingly relevant events of 2000, 2009, and 2011, as well as the then-fact that: \u201cSeventy-one of the 122 prisoners remaining at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are from\u00a0Yemen<\/a>.\u201d Beyond more \u201cattention,\u201d\u00a0Cruz made no policy proposal<\/a>. The\u00a0Ted Cruz 2016 website<\/a>\u00a0offers no Yemen policy, nor does it acknowledge the criminal US-Saudi war that kills civilians there almost daily, even though it does not resort to \u201ccarpet bombing\u201d (which Cruz recommended for ISIS in Syria).<\/p>\n

John Kasich is as quiet as anyone<\/a>\u00a0on the American role in bringing Yemen to the brink of mass starvation, but in South Carolina on January 14 Kasich had\u00a0some unusually harsh, semi-coherent words<\/a>\u00a0for Saudi Arabia\u2019s educational initiatives, if not its war crimes:<\/p>\n

In\u00a0terms of Saudi Arabia, look, my biggest problem with them is funding radical clerics through their madrassas, that is a bad deal. Whether I’m president or not, make it clear to the Saudis, we’re going to support you, we’re in relation with you just like the first gulf war, but you got to knock off the funding and teaching of radical clerics who are the very people who try to destroy us and will turn around and destroy them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kasich\u2019s speech to AIPAC<\/a>\u00a0(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on March 21 was titled \u201cA Comprehensive Outline for American Security in a Chaotic World.\u201d Kasich offered ritualistic, dishonest Iran demonizing (\u201cIran\u2019s regional aggression<\/a>\u201c) and lied about the USA not being part of Gulf State cooperation, the same Saudi-led alliance waging war on Yemen. But neither his speech nor the Kasich presidential website was comprehensive enough to mention the illegal US-Saudi war in Yemen, in which Israel has participated.<\/p>\n

The same day Kasich spoke to AIPAC, Israel managed to\u00a0evacuate 19 Yemeni Jews<\/a>\u00a0from one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, in Yemen. During 1947-1949, after the partition of Palestine, Yemeni attacks on Jews in Yemen led most of them (about 50,000) to flee to Israel. Now, most of the remaining Yemeni Jews (about 50) live in a compound in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa under the protection of \u201cauthorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton silent on war she helped make possible<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton\u2019s present\u00a0silence on the US-Saudi terror-bombing campaign<\/a>\u00a0that has killed some 3,000 Yemeni civilians since March 2015 distinguishes her from none of the other 2016 candidates. But Clinton does have the distinction of being the only candidate who contributed materially to the\u00a0ability of Saudi Arabia to bomb indiscriminately<\/a>, using American weapons and munitions, against which Yemen is virtually defenseless. As\u00a0a hawkish Secretary of State<\/a>, Clinton\u00a0made arming Saudi Arabia a \u201ctop priority,\u201d<\/a>supporting more than $100 billion of dollars of arms sales (2010-2015), including F-15s and the bombs the Saudis have used to pummel Yemen for a year. Unlike the US or Canada, European countries have begun to question or block arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the horrendous and unrelenting\u00a0Saudi record of human rights abuses<\/a>. Code Pink and other human rights organizations say the Saudi-led attacks on Yemen \u201cmay amount to war crimes,\u201d stopping short of naming possible war criminals. The Clinton Foundation has\u00a0accepted more than $10 million<\/a>\u00a0from two of Yemen\u2019s aggressors, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders has no public opinion on Yemeni ethnic cleansing<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 2015, Bernie Sanders expressed\u00a0a vague Middle East policy<\/a>\u00a0that called for Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to take the lead in fighting terrorism, with the US in more of a support role. What the Saudi-coalition is doing to Yemen fits this framework, except for the terrorism part. The US-Saudi war on Yemen has actually made Yemen safer and more secure for both ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In November 2015, almost eight months after Yemen was attacked, Sanders offered this\u00a0oblique but accurate assessment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, turns out, has the third-largest defense budget in the world,\u2026 Yet instead of fighting ISIS they have focused more on a campaign to oust Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.<\/em><\/p>\n

By omission, this amounts to a kind of blessing of that genocidal war. It also reveals an uncritical acceptance of the false Saudi version of reality (\u201cIran-backed Houthis\u201d). With no relevant comment on\u00a0the official Sanders website<\/a>, the Yemen war remains\u00a0an issue-cluster he has yet to address directly<\/a>, never mind thoroughly and accurately, any more than anyone else.<\/p>\n

After a year of US-guided terror bombing in Yemen, in a Saudi-led campaign primarily against the Houthis\u2019 tribal homeland \u2013 an assault that is effectively a multinational campaign of ethnic cleansing \u2013 it is a sad measure of the seriousness of the candidates for president that they have nothing critical to say of\u00a0an effort that has more than 24 million victims<\/a>, most of them innocent,\u00a0all held hostage in a food-deprived country<\/a>\u00a0sealed off by a naval, air, and land\u00a0blockade imposed primarily by the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia<\/a>. That\u2019s why you don\u2019t see a flood of Yemeni refugees comparable to those escaping from a smaller (23 million) Syria: because the US is helping to keep them there till they kill each other, get bombed to bits, or starve.<\/p>\n

What you don\u2019t know about is less likely to disturb the status quo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mainstream media coverage of Yemen continues to be spotty, limited, incomplete, and mostly incoherent. The\u00a0New York Times article<\/a>\u00a0mentioned above is perhaps a sign of increased official attention, but it is no harbinger of completeness or coherence.\u00a0\u00a0The premise of the story is fundamentally dishonest, as expressed in the inside headline: \u201cQuiet Support for Saudi Allies Entangles U.S. in a Bloody Conflict in Yemen.\u201d What the story makes clear is that, in March 2015, the Saudi ambassador pitched the White House on starting a new war in Yemen. The ambassador promised a quick campaign to re-install the Yemeni government that had fled to Saudi Arabia. The ambassador hyped his pitch with the standard exaggeration of Iranian involvement (which has actually been all but nil). Despite concern by \u201cmany\u201d advisors that \u201cthe Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody, and indecisive,\u201d President Obama bought the pitch and authorized the Pentagon to support the Saudi-coalition\u2019s attacks on Yemen. Somewhat contradictorily, the Times story also reports:<\/p>\n

American intelligence officials had long thought that the Saudis overstated the extent of Iranian support for the Houthis, and that Iran had never seen its ties to the rebel group as more than a useful annoyance to the Saudis. But Mr. Obama\u2019s aides believed that the Saudis saw a military campaign in Yemen as a tough message to Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n

How do you vote for accountability when no candidate\u2019s for it?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taken altogether, that leaves the reader wondering why the president listened to one set of advisors more than another, and especially why he listened to the ones\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0supported by either intelligence officials or evidence on the ground.\u00a0\u00a0According to the Times, two of those most in favor of war on Yemen were Secretary of State John Kerry (as way to ameliorate Saudi annoyance with US-Iran talks, sacrifice some Yemenis) and UN Ambassador Samantha Power (arguing preposterously that US involvement might mean fewer civilian casualties). Even now, the White House official in charge of Middle East policy (Robert Malley) claims, \u201cThis is not our war.\u201d He doesn\u2019t explain how this war could have happened without the US.<\/p>\n

In other words, there was no conscientious analysis leading to a measured decision by the White House as to what would be the best course in Yemen. Doing nothing was apparently not an option, since doing nothing would likely have meant no war there at all (except civil war). The White was already morally compromised by the US drone program that had significantly added to instability (and anger at the US) in Yemen, so how much worse could unleashing an illegal war of aggression be? A year later, we\u2019re finding out.<\/p>\n

So the White House needs a cover story, the White House needs plausible deniability of its willingness to commit war crimes. Enter the Times with something of a cover story: the\u00a0official version of events is that US participation in and \u201cquiet support\u201d for an aggressive war, in violation of international law, isn\u2019t a big deal as long as the US doesn\u2019t get \u201centangled.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a particularly persuasive argument. But President Obama\u2019s\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0pardon of Bush White House operatives for all their Iraq-related war crimes and crimes against humanity pretty much set the stage for the current\u00a0absence of any serious call for accountability<\/a>\u00a0for any abuse of authority. Little wonder that none of the president\u2019s would-be replacements are challenging the ability to exercise power without personal risk.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from <\/em>Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 readersupportednews.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 Mar 2016 – Why are two of the richest countries in the World, the United States and Saudi Arabia, engaged in unrelenting, aggressive war against one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}