Biden's Bolt From Yemen: Not So Fast
February 11, 2021
Improved language - however admirable - often masks much more stable, status
quo, indecency, warns Danny Sjursen.
President Joe Biden during presidential inauguration motorcade, Jan. 20.
(White House, Ana Isabel Martinez Chamorro)
By Danny Sjursen
AntiWar.com
The Intercept labeled it a "dramatic policy shift." And here's hoping it's
that. Still, President Joe Biden's announcement - during his first major
foreign policy address - that he would end American support for Saudi and
United Arab Emirates-led "offensive operations" in Yemen, needs more nuance.
In the second month of 2021, it seems all but fated that the specter of
Donald Trump - and tribal, loyalty oath-like partisan divides over his
contested legacy - shall haunt and poison all discussions of each and every
Biden foreign policy move for at least 47 months more. Lost in this
reflexive race to familiar factional battle stations will be nearly any
coherent analysis of the systemic structures designed to ensure America's
war-show must go on.
Thus, while the president's rhetorical corrective - and vague promised
policy shift - on America's role in the Yemen catastrophe deserves a
cautious (and perhaps equally vague) at-a-boy, Biden shouldn't be the sole
story here.
A sober accounting of the U.S. role in this sordid affair demands systemic-,
rather than personality-driven, debate and critique. Viewing
multi-administration - Obama-Trump-Biden - policy analyses through electoral
season lenses is precisely what keeps the war industry cash a' flowing, and
the Yemeni babes a' dying.
The real story of America's unforgivable fiasco is how and why such small
(for us) dirty (for Yemenis) wars-by-proxy persist through supposedly
transformative presidential transitions. For these post-9/11 forever wars,
their formula is the disease, and must be fought according.
Wastelands of Distraction
Unfortunately, that means wading through wastelands of rhetorical
distraction. Greasing the grotesque wheels of otherwise unexplainably
obdurate U.S. support for the Saudi terror war - which, according to recent
UN numbers, has left 233,000 Yemenis dead and left some 80 percent of the
population reliant on humanitarian aid - is a Washingtonese dialect of
linguistic-gymnastics that's long confused We The People about what's
actually done our name.
It begins with how one defines the terms - and here, let's say Joe's words
may conceal as much as they reveal. Biden's bunch of "bestests and
brightests" are offered an obscuring assist by an acronym- and
euphemism-prone Pentagon populated with countless career "company men."
Plus, lurking over the whole strategic needle-thread is the trumped-up
threat of Iran. Only, outside of occasional heart-rending photos of
distended young bellies, and too large to comprehend - yet likely
underreported - death, disease, and displacement statistics, actual Yemenis
rarely factor in Washington's cruel calculus. That's the trick - America's
professional policy-makers and -watchers speak in swirling intellectual
circles until their complicit war crimes congeal as abstraction.
Oct. 9, 2015: Months after an airstrike, a neighborhood in Yemen's capital
city, Sanaa, remained in rubble and survivors continued to search for any
valuables. (Almigdad Mojalli/VOA, Wikimedia Commons)
A cursory glance at the more common terms tossed about in Yemen war
discussions demonstrates just how many unknowns and - as yet - unanswered
questions linger in Biden's declaratory wake.
Let's start with what the president is presumably halting: U.S. support for
"offensive operations." Well, what are those - and who gets to define what
constitutes offense? Even according to that glowingly-titled Intercept
piece, "The Biden administration has not yet announced operational details
of the move or clarified what they meant by" the term. Make no mistake:
plenty that's putrid plays out behind such cosmetic vagary.
Breakdown of Macabre Components
See, specifics matter - demanding a breakdown of the macabre components and
processes - a sort of how an "operation" becomes a dead Yemeni mother 101.
First, the hardware - the Saudi arsenal of atrocities. Biden promised to end
"relevant arms sales," but what exactly constitutes relevance? Well, his
administration already placed a "temporary freeze" on billions of
Trump-bonanza-brokered weapons deals - meaning a "review" (see what I mean
about the fuzzy buzzwordian language thing?) of transfers of advanced
military hardware, like air-ground munitions. Okay, but how long is
temporary, and how thick is its frozen veneer? In my limited experience,
bureaucratic reviews are made of far less-stern stuff than permafrost.
December 2017: Code Pink anti-war activists protest U.S. senators supporting
Saudi-U.S. arms deals. (Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
And what about all those F-35 fighter jet and Reaper drone-sweetened bribes
to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - ensuring their Palestinian-sellout of
diplomatic "normalization" with Trump's chum King Bibi Netanyahu of Israel?
Naturally, the junior Emirati partners in the great Gulf criminal conspiracy
of 2015 will spy a loophole, since they technically drew down most of their
forces in Yemen back in 2019 - despite remaining involved through local
partners and proxies.
Of course, the U.S. has always peddled as many "beans" as "bullets" to their
criminal compatriot death-dealers in the Kingdom. For example, even if
America's sexier support - like in-flight refueling (which Trump shut off in
2018), intelligence assistance, and gun-running - stopped immediately,
there's still plenty of seemingly more mundane institutional abettance
propping up the Saudi's monstrous machine.
June 2016: Saudi soldier from the First Airborne Brigade conversing with an
Emirati soldier in Yemen. (Saudi88hawk, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
This consists of both long-term structural and nuts and bolts maintenance
support that keeps the theocratic gears turning in America's favorite
absolute monarchy. Think on it: can U.S. sustenance really be said to cease
if Pentagon - and their private-sector subcontractor - personnel still
initially train and continually advise (outside of the Yemeni campaign) the
Saudi officers commanding missions, the Saudi specialists selecting targets,
the Saudi pilots dropping ample American ordinance on Yemeni kids, and the
Saudi geek squad of tech-experts greasing the grotesque wheels of war?
American Mercenaries
Speaking of those plum private security contractors - we need to talk about
American mercenaries. See, it's rarely reported - conveniently - that the
U.S. sends espionage and militant mercenaries to assist the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) countries. Other security and logistical hired guns - like the
boys at Booz-Allen Hamilton - aid the Royal Saudi Navy's starvation-inducing
blockade of the Yemeni coastline.
And that's the real rub: the almost invisible Saudi blockade has always
caused more Yemeni suffering and fatalities than the brutal bombing. Only it
turns out that slow-deaths are less attention-grabbing - if more grueling.
Ultimately, the blockade's the thing - as a Saudi Shakespeare should surmise
- and until Biden's squad articulates its applicability in their new way,
it's impossible to determine the decisiveness of this purported policy
pivot.
February 2015: No ships in Hudaidah, Yemen's principal port on the Red Sea.
(Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Furthermore, in his speech, Biden suggested a susceptibility to standard
Saudi arguments - peddled by those oh-so-practiced players in Washington's
language-stretching game. For seasons after season, they've been scoring
Riyadh immense benefits in dollars, operational assistance and diplomatic
top-cover. No matter, in one hell of hedge, Joe still pledged to "help Saudi
Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity." By that he
mainly means Houthi-rebel missile attacks on Riyadh's oil refineries -
opening the door to loopholes tailor-made for the Saudi line.
The Kingdom's classic pitch goes something like this:
Forget that we started the war back in 2015, and that we've actually
aggressively intervened in Yemen for decades - if not centuries - to render
the Arab world's poorest state a neocolonial satellite. Focus on the
blowback of resultant Houthi-responsive attacks on Saudi turf - and
exaggerate the late and limited Iranian support role in them (to really up
the alarmist ante) - then use extortive fear-mongering to warn of an
existential threat to our allies' global oil supply. Presto, I-told-you-so!
You see: the war was waged in self-defense all along (Psst! Ignore that
minor matter of us creating all the conditions, and essentially asking for,
those very same Houthi attacks.)
And remember: sometimes the Saudis gain when the U.S. simply does nothing -
even amidst rare periods of public rhetorical rebukes. This can often
constitute a wink-nod handshake that kicks off a cynically choreographed
dance so deft it's difficult to know which partner's actually been leading.
Look, none of this is to say that Biden's speech and - even if imprecise -
policy pronouncements aren't preferable to Trump's coarse gleeful-enabler,
and boastful blank check arms-sale-bonanza bit.
But improved language - however admirable - often masks much more stable,
status quo, indecency. In other words, the sort that doesn't much make the
headlines - or transpires between the rare times Yemen does appear in print.
Unlike Donald the veto-happy, Joe certainly has an opportunity to flex his
highly-hyped collegial senator muscles and capitalize on an issue that's had
a brief bout of bipartisanship - with many libertarian-minded Republicans
joining progressive Democrats in opposition to the Saudi [war] crime against
the Yemeni people.
Of course, given Biden's own squishy foreign policy record - along with
inevitable war industry lobbyist, Israel/Gulf State, and Iranophobe
counter-pressure - that's a big if. But if Joe genuinely wanted to makes
some moves in his adopted town, here's a radical thought for a crisis
demanding radical action: try some responsibility and reflection. Dream with
me, and imagine the precise language Biden could bring to bear:
"First off, let me offer what must - to the countless victims and grieving
loved ones - seem a paltry apology indeed. But I offer it sincerely - for my
own previous, and my embarrassed country's, complicity in what may prove the
most lasting stain on America's moral and global reputation amidst our two
decades-worth of post-9/11 madness.
Furthermore, I wish to address the leadership of the Saudi Kingdom: As of
this moment, you are cut off completely - and on your own - until you quit
bombing babies and beheading women for witchcraft. Oh, and if you think you
can get a better deal from Putin or Xi? Be my guest.
P.S.: we're also pursuing full normalization with your Iranian nemeses -
deal with it.
Amtrak Joe - out!" [Actual mic-drop]
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer and contributing editor at
antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post,
The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served
combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later
taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir
and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers,
Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His latest book is Patriotic Dissent:
America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.
