Boardman writes: "The US has been openly at war against Yemen for more than
a year, in support of a genocidal Saudi coalition. Once again, the US is in
a war undertaken without Constitutional consultation with Congress, and
without Congress raising a peep of an objection."
At least five people lost their lives and many others were wounded after
fresh Saudi airstrikes bombed a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital.
(photo: MEP)
Saudis Should Kill Civilians More Slowly, Two US Senators Say
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
25 April 16
How broken is American government? Other senators A-OK with current killing
patterns, or prefer increase
It sounds a little like a joke (and in a sense it is): Two US senators
introduce a resolution based on fraudulent representations of reality,
seeking to make the president insist that the Saudis bomb fewer civilians in
Yemen, and this darkly hilarious hoax is still better than anything the
other 98 senators (and the whole House) are doing about the US illegal war
in Yemen. Our would-be heroic duo in the Senate doesnt actually oppose the
US war on Yemen, even though they acknowledge its savage daily violations of
international law (currently suspended during a tenuous ceasefire).
Regardless, these two senators are simultaneously misrepresenting US
participation in those ruthless crimes (which the rest of the Senate simply
ignores and the State Department trivializes).
Following 15 years of special ops there, the US has been openly at war
against Yemen for more than a year, in support of a genocidal Saudi
coalition (mostly the Gulf Cooperation Council that President Obama met with
privately recently). Once again, the US is in a war undertaken without
Constitutional consultation with Congress, and without Congress raising a
peep of an objection. This is a criminal war in which the US is at least
accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US drone wars
toll on civilians arguably makes the US guilty of committing both sets of
crimes.
Most of this is acknowledged in Senate Joint Resolution 32, which the
senators introduced on April 13, after which it was referred to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee for further consideration possibly. Resolution
32 states in part:
Whereas the Panel of Experts established pursuant to United Nations Security
Council Resolution 2140 (2014) reported on January 22, 2016, that the
military coalition led by the Government of Saudi Arabia in Yemen had
conducted air strikes targeting civilians and civilian objects, in violation
of International Humanitarian Law, including camps for internally displaced
persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian
vehicles, residential areas, medical facilities, schools, mosques, markets,
factories and food storage warehouses, and other essential civilian
infrastructure such as the airport in Sanaa, the port in Hudayadah, and
domestic transit routes
. [emphasis added]
The same UN Panel of Experts cited in Resolution 32 also reported attacks on
civilians by the Houthi-Saleh forces (usually referred to as the rebels)
in Aden and Taiz, but the panel did not accuse the Houthi-Saleh forces of a
systematic, countrywide campaign in violation of international humanitarian
law. Yemen has been engulfed by civil war time and again in recent decades,
but the current civil war is overwhelmed in brutality and carnage caused by
the international aggression of the US/Saudi coalition. Theirs is the only
bombing campaign in a largely defenseless country. The US/Saudi allies are
responsible for most of the wars 3000-plus civilian deaths and the
destruction of at least three Doctors Without Borders hospitals among other
atrocities.
Resolution 32 fails to acknowledge that this is a war that could not have
begun without US blessing. The resolution obliquely acknowledges that this
is a war that could not be fought without US weapons, or certainly not
fought as easily and devastatingly. But the resolution does not oppose the
war. The resolution seeks to leverage the Yemen war in favor of a preferred
war elsewhere, in places where civilians might be more easily disregarded as
would-be enemy combatants.
Senate response to criminally murderous war: use fewer bombs, maybe
There is no peace movement in the US Senate. There is no anti-war movement
in the US Senate. There is no anti-criminal-war in Yemen movement in the US
Senate. There is no active anti-war-crimes movement in the US Senate. But
there are two senators who have co-sponsored Resolution 32, the gist of
which is to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to drop fewer bombs on Yemeni
civilians unless they start dropping more bombs on ISIS, the Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq. Resolution 32 is not a proposal designed to save lives,
merely to take different lives in different places, and not necessarily
fewer lives. Fortune Magazine reported the resolution with standard,
unexamined foreign policy clichés and an appropriate emphasis on the weapons
business:
A major U.S. ally is in the crosshairs.
The U.S. defense industry has sold at least $33 billion worth of weapons to
its Persian Gulf allies over the past year as dual bombing campaigns against
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and Houthi rebels in Yemen have depleted
stores of aerial bombs and other munitions. But as civilian casualties mount
in Yemen in particular, a bipartisan duo in the U.S. Senate is working to
tighten the free-flow of weapons and cash between the U.S. and one of its
most important Gulf allies. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) introduced legislation on Wednesday [April 13] that would restrict
the sale of U.S. aerial bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia unless certain
conditions are met.
Fortune has a funny way of seeing things: Saudi Arabia, without significant
military risk, bombing civilians to the point of running out of bombs, is
somehow seen as in the crosshairs. These so-called crosshairs are merely
an empty threat by two senators to sell them fewer bombs. So long as the
Saudis get the president to certify that theyll bomb ISIS more, then
everyone involved can go on about the business, the very lucrative business,
of random killing as usual, even if the Saudis dont bomb ISIS more. There
is no purpose here beyond more killing, with little regard for who gets
killed. Well, thats pretty much a summary of the post-9/11 American
zeitgeist, isnt it?
Is the United States capable of governing honestly about anything?
Senators Murphy and Paul falsely describe the American role in the war on
Yemen this way in Resolution 32:
Whereas the United States Armed Forces provide dedicated personnel and
assets to the armed forces of Saudi Arabia to support their military
operations in Yemen, including over 700 air-to-air refueling sorties, and to
assist with effectiveness and reduction of collateral damage
.
This is true as far as it goes, but it minimizes complicity: how much
bombing would be possible without air-to-air refueling? The answer to that
question would provide a measure of direct US responsibility for bombing at
will in a country with no air defenses.
The senators refer in deceitfully benign language to US personnel who
assist with effectiveness and reduction of collateral damage the US/Saudi
bombing raids. In reality, US personnel work side by side with Saudi
counterparts in Riyadh, planning, authorizing, and assessing the bombing
missions that began over a year ago and have produced a world-class
humanitarian crisis. That result suggests that any effort to reduce
collateral damage has been limited, incompetent, or both.
But the senators also deceive by omission. Resolution 32 omits the moral (if
not legal) war crime that the US commits every time it supplies the Saudi
coalition with a cluster bomb, a devastating anti-personnel weapon, that
leaves explosives littered around each bomb site, where they remain lethally
dangerous, especially to children. Thats why most of the rest of the world
has banned cluster bombs, while the US and other rogue states have not.
Senators Murphy and Paul, like their 98 peers, lack the courage even to
admit theyre on the wrong side of the law of war on this.
And while the senators acknowledge the systematic and widespread blockade
that has substantially deprived Yemen of food, fuel, medicine, humanitarian
aid, and commercial goods, they omit any hint of US participation in that
blockade by land, air, or sea. The US Navy in the Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean reinforces the Saudi-dominated blockade. Yemen, the poorest country in
the region, has long depended on food imports to feed its population of some
25 million. The result of the blockade, not unexpected, is that Yemen has
been brought to the verge of mass starvation by the US/Saudi coalition. And
the blockade further heightens the crisis by preventing Yemenis from leaving
this nation-sized prison purgatory.
An elaborate, meaningless charade is better than nothing, right?
The US has been militarily engaged in Yemen since 2000, when suicide bombers
attacked the US Navy destroyer Cole while refueling at port in Aden. The
attack killed 17 crew members and wounded 39. US counter-terrorism
operations in Yemen since then have included Special Forces, an extended
drone campaign, and the current US/Saudi war. In that time, the al Qaeda
presence in Yemen has increased to control much of the eastern part of the
country, including the port of Mukalla, where Saudi battleships control
access from the sea. As of April 23, Saudi coalition forces, including a
large contingent from the United Arab Emirates, were massing for an attack
on Mukalla, according to UAE official media.
In almost identical press releases from Sen. Murphy and from Sen. Paul, they
define the intent of Resolution 32 as a means
to prevent the United States from continuing to support Saudi-led military
campaigns in places like Yemen where Saudi Arabias year-long campaign has
led to a devastating humanitarian crisis and a security vacuum that has
empowered our terrorist enemies al Qaeda and ISIS. The Murphy-Paul
bipartisan legislation will require the President of the United States to
formally certify that the Government of Saudi Arabia is demonstrating an
ongoing effort to target terrorist groups, minimize harm to civilians, and
facilitate humanitarian assistance before Congress can consider the sale or
transfer of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia.
In other words, Resolution 32 is a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to
give the impression of moral decency while leaving the reality of the
US/Saudi war unlikely to be affected even in the unlikely eventuality that
this proposal becomes law. (A companion resolution has now been introduced
in the House, where it too will be sent to committee to await further
action, if any.)
We pay senators $174,000 a year (plus their perks and staff) and this is the
best any of the hundred of them can suggest to prevent the United States
from continuing to support Saudi-led military campaigns in places like
Yemen? Seriously?
The conventional beltway banalities, the bipartisan deceits, the continuing
failure of business as usual are worthless. We need someone who will stand
up and say, simply: US OUT OF YEMEN NOW
________________________________________
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 Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
At least five people lost their lives and many others were wounded after
fresh Saudi airstrikes bombed a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital.
(photo: MEP)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Saudis Should Kill Civilians More Slowly, Two US Senators Say
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
25 April 16
How broken is American government? Other senators A-OK with current killing
patterns, or prefer increase
t sounds a little like a joke (and in a sense it is): Two US senators
introduce a resolution based on fraudulent representations of reality,
seeking to make the president insist that the Saudis bomb fewer civilians in
Yemen, and this darkly hilarious hoax is still better than anything the
other 98 senators (and the whole House) are doing about the US illegal war
in Yemen. Our would-be heroic duo in the Senate doesnt actually oppose the
US war on Yemen, even though they acknowledge its savage daily violations of
international law (currently suspended during a tenuous ceasefire).
Regardless, these two senators are simultaneously misrepresenting US
participation in those ruthless crimes (which the rest of the Senate simply
ignores and the State Department trivializes).
Following 15 years of special ops there, the US has been openly at war
against Yemen for more than a year, in support of a genocidal Saudi
coalition (mostly the Gulf Cooperation Council that President Obama met with
privately recently). Once again, the US is in a war undertaken without
Constitutional consultation with Congress, and without Congress raising a
peep of an objection. This is a criminal war in which the US is at least
accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US drone wars
toll on civilians arguably makes the US guilty of committing both sets of
crimes.
Most of this is acknowledged in Senate Joint Resolution 32, which the
senators introduced on April 13, after which it was referred to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee for further consideration possibly. Resolution
32 states in part:
Whereas the Panel of Experts established pursuant to United Nations Security
Council Resolution 2140 (2014) reported on January 22, 2016, that the
military coalition led by the Government of Saudi Arabia in Yemen had
conducted air strikes targeting civilians and civilian objects, in violation
of International Humanitarian Law, including camps for internally displaced
persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian
vehicles, residential areas, medical facilities, schools, mosques, markets,
factories and food storage warehouses, and other essential civilian
infrastructure such as the airport in Sanaa, the port in Hudayadah, and
domestic transit routes
. [emphasis added]
The same UN Panel of Experts cited in Resolution 32 also reported attacks on
civilians by the Houthi-Saleh forces (usually referred to as the rebels)
in Aden and Taiz, but the panel did not accuse the Houthi-Saleh forces of a
systematic, countrywide campaign in violation of international humanitarian
law. Yemen has been engulfed by civil war time and again in recent decades,
but the current civil war is overwhelmed in brutality and carnage caused by
the international aggression of the US/Saudi coalition. Theirs is the only
bombing campaign in a largely defenseless country. The US/Saudi allies are
responsible for most of the wars 3000-plus civilian deaths and the
destruction of at least three Doctors Without Borders hospitals among other
atrocities.
Resolution 32 fails to acknowledge that this is a war that could not have
begun without US blessing. The resolution obliquely acknowledges that this
is a war that could not be fought without US weapons, or certainly not
fought as easily and devastatingly. But the resolution does not oppose the
war. The resolution seeks to leverage the Yemen war in favor of a preferred
war elsewhere, in places where civilians might be more easily disregarded as
would-be enemy combatants.
Senate response to criminally murderous war: use fewer bombs, maybe
There is no peace movement in the US Senate. There is no anti-war movement
in the US Senate. There is no anti-criminal-war in Yemen movement in the US
Senate. There is no active anti-war-crimes movement in the US Senate. But
there are two senators who have co-sponsored Resolution 32, the gist of
which is to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to drop fewer bombs on Yemeni
civilians unless they start dropping more bombs on ISIS, the Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq. Resolution 32 is not a proposal designed to save lives,
merely to take different lives in different places, and not necessarily
fewer lives. Fortune Magazine reported the resolution with standard,
unexamined foreign policy clichés and an appropriate emphasis on the weapons
business:
A major U.S. ally is in the crosshairs.
The U.S. defense industry has sold at least $33 billion worth of weapons to
its Persian Gulf allies over the past year as dual bombing campaigns against
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and Houthi rebels in Yemen have depleted
stores of aerial bombs and other munitions. But as civilian casualties mount
in Yemen in particular, a bipartisan duo in the U.S. Senate is working to
tighten the free-flow of weapons and cash between the U.S. and one of its
most important Gulf allies. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) introduced legislation on Wednesday [April 13] that would restrict
the sale of U.S. aerial bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia unless certain
conditions are met.
Fortune has a funny way of seeing things: Saudi Arabia, without significant
military risk, bombing civilians to the point of running out of bombs, is
somehow seen as in the crosshairs. These so-called crosshairs are merely
an empty threat by two senators to sell them fewer bombs. So long as the
Saudis get the president to certify that theyll bomb ISIS more, then
everyone involved can go on about the business, the very lucrative business,
of random killing as usual, even if the Saudis dont bomb ISIS more. There
is no purpose here beyond more killing, with little regard for who gets
killed. Well, thats pretty much a summary of the post-9/11 American
zeitgeist, isnt it?
Is the United States capable of governing honestly about anything?
Senators Murphy and Paul falsely describe the American role in the war on
Yemen this way in Resolution 32:
Whereas the United States Armed Forces provide dedicated personnel and
assets to the armed forces of Saudi Arabia to support their military
operations in Yemen, including over 700 air-to-air refueling sorties, and to
assist with effectiveness and reduction of collateral damage
.
This is true as far as it goes, but it minimizes complicity: how much
bombing would be possible without air-to-air refueling? The answer to that
question would provide a measure of direct US responsibility for bombing at
will in a country with no air defenses.
The senators refer in deceitfully benign language to US personnel who
assist with effectiveness and reduction of collateral damage the US/Saudi
bombing raids. In reality, US personnel work side by side with Saudi
counterparts in Riyadh, planning, authorizing, and assessing the bombing
missions that began over a year ago and have produced a world-class
humanitarian crisis. That result suggests that any effort to reduce
collateral damage has been limited, incompetent, or both.
But the senators also deceive by omission. Resolution 32 omits the moral (if
not legal) war crime that the US commits every time it supplies the Saudi
coalition with a cluster bomb, a devastating anti-personnel weapon, that
leaves explosives littered around each bomb site, where they remain lethally
dangerous, especially to children. Thats why most of the rest of the world
has banned cluster bombs, while the US and other rogue states have not.
Senators Murphy and Paul, like their 98 peers, lack the courage even to
admit theyre on the wrong side of the law of war on this.
And while the senators acknowledge the systematic and widespread blockade
that has substantially deprived Yemen of food, fuel, medicine, humanitarian
aid, and commercial goods, they omit any hint of US participation in that
blockade by land, air, or sea. The US Navy in the Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean reinforces the Saudi-dominated blockade. Yemen, the poorest country in
the region, has long depended on food imports to feed its population of some
25 million. The result of the blockade, not unexpected, is that Yemen has
been brought to the verge of mass starvation by the US/Saudi coalition. And
the blockade further heightens the crisis by preventing Yemenis from leaving
this nation-sized prison purgatory.
An elaborate, meaningless charade is better than nothing, right?
The US has been militarily engaged in Yemen since 2000, when suicide bombers
attacked the US Navy destroyer Cole while refueling at port in Aden. The
attack killed 17 crew members and wounded 39. US counter-terrorism
operations in Yemen since then have included Special Forces, an extended
drone campaign, and the current US/Saudi war. In that time, the al Qaeda
presence in Yemen has increased to control much of the eastern part of the
country, including the port of Mukalla, where Saudi battleships control
access from the sea. As of April 23, Saudi coalition forces, including a
large contingent from the United Arab Emirates, were massing for an attack
on Mukalla, according to UAE official media.
In almost identical press releases from Sen. Murphy and from Sen. Paul, they
define the intent of Resolution 32 as a means
to prevent the United States from continuing to support Saudi-led military
campaigns in places like Yemen where Saudi Arabias year-long campaign has
led to a devastating humanitarian crisis and a security vacuum that has
empowered our terrorist enemies al Qaeda and ISIS. The Murphy-Paul
bipartisan legislation will require the President of the United States to
formally certify that the Government of Saudi Arabia is demonstrating an
ongoing effort to target terrorist groups, minimize harm to civilians, and
facilitate humanitarian assistance before Congress can consider the sale or
transfer of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia.
In other words, Resolution 32 is a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to
give the impression of moral decency while leaving the reality of the
US/Saudi war unlikely to be affected even in the unlikely eventuality that
this proposal becomes law. (A companion resolution has now been introduced
in the House, where it too will be sent to committee to await further
action, if any.)
We pay senators $174,000 a year (plus their perks and staff) and this is the
best any of the hundred of them can suggest to prevent the United States
from continuing to support Saudi-led military campaigns in places like
Yemen? Seriously?
The conventional beltway banalities, the bipartisan deceits, the continuing
failure of business as usual are worthless. We need someone who will stand
up and say, simply: US OUT OF YEMEN NOW
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 Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
