Boardman writes: "The US-Saudi-led war on Yemen started on March 26, 2015,
with the Saudi coalition's aerial blitz, using both high-explosive and
outlawed cluster bombs, against a population with no air force or other
effective air defense. US-supported year of carnage has killed more than
6,000 people (no one knows for sure), most of them civilians."
Aftermath of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Yemen. (photo: Mohammed
Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
US-Saudi Terror in Yemen Dwarfs ISIS Attacks in Europe
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
25 March 16
"Saudi 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." - foreign policy scholar Hillary
Mann Leverett on CNN, early 2015
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?
The US-Saudi-led war on Yemen started on March 26, 2015, with the Saudi
coalition's aerial blitz, using both high-explosive and outlawed cluster
bombs, against a population with no air force or other effective air
defense. US-supported year of carnage has killed more than 6,000 people (no
one knows for sure), most of them civilians. The US-Saudi criminal
intervention in the Yemeni civil war was supposed to be quick and efficient.
From the start, the US has helped plan the attacks, provided intelligence,
re-fueled attacking planes, and participated in the naval blockade (an act
of war) that has pushed Yemen's 26 million people to the brink of mass
starvation. The American-Saudi genocidal war has continued without
significant protest around the world - no "Yemeni Lives Matter" movement -
and with almost no attention from any of those who will likely inherit this
illegal war as 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 from fighting ISIS to killing Yemenis whose primary offense is to
want to run their own country. Nobody in authority seems ready to address
the possibility that one of the fundamental bad actors in the Middle East is
our longstanding "ally" Saudi Arabia.
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 "Frontline" devoted an hour to Yemen in April 2015, mostly
delivering the Saudi propaganda view that the Houthis are the bad guys, and
omitting mention of the naval blockade. 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: "Quiet Support for Saudis Entangles U.S.
in Yemen" (more about this below). Finding relevant, thoughtful commentary
about Yemen from any presidential candidate is difficult to impossible. A
sampling follows:
Donald Trump offers wolf-in-the-woods gibberish to fear
Donald Trump doesn't appear to have any articulated position on the Yemen
War, but he does seem to think that it's all Iran's fault. At least that's
what he seemed to say on January 19 at an Iowa rally where Sarah Palin
endorsed his candidacy. In Trump's rally remarks below, "they" - as in
"they're going into Yemen" - refers to Iran:
Now they're going into Yemen, and if you look at Yemen, take a look .
they're going to get Syria, they're going to get Yemen, unless . trust me, a
lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let's just sort of
leave it the way it is. They get Syria, they get Yemen. Now they didn't 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're gonna have Iraq,
they're gonna have Iran, they're gonna have Iraq, they're gonna have Yemen,
they're gonna have Syria, they're gonna have everything!
Even at "The American Conservative," no booster of Iran, they mock Trump
surgically: "This is nonsense,. a crude, simplified version of official
Saudi interventionist propaganda, which has grossly exaggerated the extent
of Iran's influence and involvement in Yemen for most of the last year."
Being American Conservatives, they stop short of denouncing a criminal
American war that has received "far too little coverage," since it is "one
of the worst foreign policy blunders of [Obama's] presidency."
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have less to say about Yemen than Trump
In January 2015, before the US-Saudi war started, Ted Cruz was arguing that
"Yemen demands our attention as the terrorism bred there has global reach."
In support of this demand, Cruz cited varyingly relevant events of 2000,
2009, and 2011, as well as the then-fact that: "Seventy-one of the 122
prisoners remaining at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are from
Yemen." Beyond more "attention," Cruz made no policy proposal. The Ted Cruz
2016 website offers 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 "carpet bombing" (which Cruz recommended for ISIS in Syria).
John Kasich is as quiet as anyone on the American role in bringing Yemen to
the brink of mass starvation, but in South Carolina on January 14 Kasich had
some unusually harsh, semi-coherent words for Saudi Arabia's educational
initiatives, if not its war crimes:
In terms 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.
Kasich's speech to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on March
21 was titled "A Comprehensive Outline for American Security in a Chaotic
World." Kasich offered ritualistic, dishonest Iran demonizing ("Iran's
regional aggression") 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.
The same day Kasich spoke to AIPAC, Israel managed to evacuate 19 Yemeni
Jews from 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 "authorities."
Hillary Clinton silent on war she helped make possible
Hillary Clinton's present silence on the US-Saudi terror-bombing campaign
that 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
ability of Saudi Arabia to bomb indiscriminately, using American weapons and
munitions, against which Yemen is virtually defenseless. As a hawkish
Secretary of State, Clinton made arming Saudi Arabia a "top
priority,"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 Saudi record of human rights abuses. Code Pink and other
human rights organizations say the Saudi-led attacks on Yemen "may amount to
war crimes," stopping short of naming possible war criminals. The Clinton
Foundation has accepted more than $10 million from two of Yemen's
aggressors, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
Bernie Sanders has no public opinion on Yemeni ethnic cleansing
In early 2015, Bernie Sanders expressed a vague Middle East policy that
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 oblique but
accurate assessment:
Saudi Arabia, turns out, has the third-largest defense budget in the world,.
Yet instead of fighting ISIS they have focused more on a campaign to oust
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
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
("Iran-backed Houthis"). With no relevant comment on the official Sanders
website, the Yemen war remains an issue-cluster he has yet to address
directly, never mind thoroughly and accurately, any more than anyone else.
After a year of US-guided terror bombing in Yemen, in a Saudi-led campaign
primarily against the Houthis' tribal homeland - an assault that is
effectively a multinational campaign of ethnic cleansing - it is a sad
measure of the seriousness of the candidates for president that they have
nothing critical to say of an effort that has more than 24 million victims,
most of them innocent, all held hostage in a food-deprived country sealed
off by a naval, air, and land blockade imposed primarily by the US, UK, and
Saudi Arabia. That's why you don't 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.
What you don't know about is less likely to disturb the status quo
Mainstream media coverage of Yemen continues to be spotty, limited,
incomplete, and mostly incoherent. The New York Times article mentioned
above is perhaps a sign of increased official attention, but it is no
harbinger of completeness or coherence. The premise of the story is
fundamentally dishonest, as expressed in the inside headline: "Quiet Support
for Saudi Allies Entangles U.S. in a Bloody Conflict in Yemen." 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 "many"
advisors that "the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody, and
indecisive," President Obama bought the pitch and authorized the Pentagon to
support the Saudi-coalition's attacks on Yemen. Somewhat contradictorily,
the Times story also reports:
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's aides believed that the Saudis saw a military campaign in
Yemen as a tough message to Iran.
How do you vote for accountability when no candidate's for it?
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 not supported by either intelligence officials or
evidence on the ground. According 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, "This is not our war."
He doesn't explain how this war could have happened without the US.
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're finding out.
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 official version of events is that US
participation in and "quiet support" for an aggressive war, in violation of
international law, isn't a big deal as long as the US doesn't get
"entangled."
That's not a particularly persuasive argument. But President Obama's de
facto pardon of Bush White House operatives for all their Iraq-related war
crimes and crimes against humanity pretty much set the stage for the current
absence of any serious call for accountability for any abuse of authority.
Little wonder that none of the president's would-be replacements are
challenging the ability to exercise power without personal risk.
________________________________________
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.
Aftermath of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Yemen. (photo: Mohammed
Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
US-Saudi Terror in Yemen Dwarfs ISIS Attacks in Europe
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
25 March 16
"Saudi 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." - foreign policy scholar Hillary
Mann Leverett on CNN, early 2015
hy 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?
The US-Saudi-led war on Yemen started on March 26, 2015, with the Saudi
coalition's aerial blitz, using both high-explosive and outlawed cluster
bombs, against a population with no air force or other effective air
defense. US-supported year of carnage has killed more than 6,000 people (no
one knows for sure), most of them civilians. The US-Saudi criminal
intervention in the Yemeni civil war was supposed to be quick and efficient.
From the start, the US has helped plan the attacks, provided intelligence,
re-fueled attacking planes, and participated in the naval blockade (an act
of war) that has pushed Yemen's 26 million people to the brink of mass
starvation. The American-Saudi genocidal war has continued without
significant protest around the world - no "Yemeni Lives Matter" movement -
and with almost no attention from any of those who will likely inherit this
illegal war as 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 from fighting ISIS to killing Yemenis whose primary offense is to
want to run their own country. Nobody in authority seems ready to address
the possibility that one of the fundamental bad actors in the Middle East is
our longstanding "ally" Saudi Arabia.
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 "Frontline" devoted an hour to Yemen in April 2015, mostly
delivering the Saudi propaganda view that the Houthis are the bad guys, and
omitting mention of the naval blockade. 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: "Quiet Support for Saudis Entangles U.S.
in Yemen" (more about this below). Finding relevant, thoughtful commentary
about Yemen from any presidential candidate is difficult to impossible. A
sampling follows:
Donald Trump offers wolf-in-the-woods gibberish to fear
Donald Trump doesn't appear to have any articulated position on the Yemen
War, but he does seem to think that it's all Iran's fault. At least that's
what he seemed to say on January 19 at an Iowa rally where Sarah Palin
endorsed his candidacy. In Trump's rally remarks below, "they" - as in
"they're going into Yemen" - refers to Iran:
Now they're going into Yemen, and if you look at Yemen, take a look .
they're going to get Syria, they're going to get Yemen, unless . trust me, a
lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let's just sort of
leave it the way it is. They get Syria, they get Yemen. Now they didn't 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're gonna have Iraq,
they're gonna have Iran, they're gonna have Iraq, they're gonna have Yemen,
they're gonna have Syria, they're gonna have everything!
Even at "The American Conservative," no booster of Iran, they mock Trump
surgically: "This is nonsense,. a crude, simplified version of official
Saudi interventionist propaganda, which has grossly exaggerated the extent
of Iran's influence and involvement in Yemen for most of the last year."
Being American Conservatives, they stop short of denouncing a criminal
American war that has received "far too little coverage," since it is "one
of the worst foreign policy blunders of [Obama's] presidency."
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have less to say about Yemen than Trump
In January 2015, before the US-Saudi war started, Ted Cruz was arguing that
"Yemen demands our attention as the terrorism bred there has global reach."
In support of this demand, Cruz cited varyingly relevant events of 2000,
2009, and 2011, as well as the then-fact that: "Seventy-one of the 122
prisoners remaining at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are from
Yemen." Beyond more "attention," Cruz made no policy proposal. The Ted Cruz
2016 website offers 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 "carpet bombing" (which Cruz recommended for ISIS in Syria).
John Kasich is as quiet as anyone on the American role in bringing Yemen to
the brink of mass starvation, but in South Carolina on January 14 Kasich had
some unusually harsh, semi-coherent words for Saudi Arabia's educational
initiatives, if not its war crimes:
In terms 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.
Kasich's speech to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on March
21 was titled "A Comprehensive Outline for American Security in a Chaotic
World." Kasich offered ritualistic, dishonest Iran demonizing ("Iran's
regional aggression") 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.
The same day Kasich spoke to AIPAC, Israel managed to evacuate 19 Yemeni
Jews from 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 "authorities."
Hillary Clinton silent on war she helped make possible
Hillary Clinton's present silence on the US-Saudi terror-bombing campaign
that 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
ability of Saudi Arabia to bomb indiscriminately, using American weapons and
munitions, against which Yemen is virtually defenseless. As a hawkish
Secretary of State, Clinton made arming Saudi Arabia a "top
priority,"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 Saudi record of human rights abuses. Code Pink and other
human rights organizations say the Saudi-led attacks on Yemen "may amount to
war crimes," stopping short of naming possible war criminals. The Clinton
Foundation has accepted more than $10 million from two of Yemen's
aggressors, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
Bernie Sanders has no public opinion on Yemeni ethnic cleansing
In early 2015, Bernie Sanders expressed a vague Middle East policy that
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 oblique but
accurate assessment:
Saudi Arabia, turns out, has the third-largest defense budget in the world,.
Yet instead of fighting ISIS they have focused more on a campaign to oust
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
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
("Iran-backed Houthis"). With no relevant comment on the official Sanders
website, the Yemen war remains an issue-cluster he has yet to address
directly, never mind thoroughly and accurately, any more than anyone else.
After a year of US-guided terror bombing in Yemen, in a Saudi-led campaign
primarily against the Houthis' tribal homeland - an assault that is
effectively a multinational campaign of ethnic cleansing - it is a sad
measure of the seriousness of the candidates for president that they have
nothing critical to say of an effort that has more than 24 million victims,
most of them innocent, all held hostage in a food-deprived country sealed
off by a naval, air, and land blockade imposed primarily by the US, UK, and
Saudi Arabia. That's why you don't 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.
What you don't know about is less likely to disturb the status quo
Mainstream media coverage of Yemen continues to be spotty, limited,
incomplete, and mostly incoherent. The New York Times article mentioned
above is perhaps a sign of increased official attention, but it is no
harbinger of completeness or coherence. The premise of the story is
fundamentally dishonest, as expressed in the inside headline: "Quiet Support
for Saudi Allies Entangles U.S. in a Bloody Conflict in Yemen." 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 "many"
advisors that "the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody, and
indecisive," President Obama bought the pitch and authorized the Pentagon to
support the Saudi-coalition's attacks on Yemen. Somewhat contradictorily,
the Times story also reports:
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's aides believed that the Saudis saw a military campaign in
Yemen as a tough message to Iran.
How do you vote for accountability when no candidate's for it?
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 not supported by either intelligence officials or
evidence on the ground. According 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, "This is not our war."
He doesn't explain how this war could have happened without the US.
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're finding out.
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 official version of events is that US
participation in and "quiet support" for an aggressive war, in violation of
international law, isn't a big deal as long as the US doesn't get
"entangled."
That's not a particularly persuasive argument. But President Obama's de
facto pardon of Bush White House operatives for all their Iraq-related war
crimes and crimes against humanity pretty much set the stage for the current
absence of any serious call for accountability for any abuse of authority.
Little wonder that none of the president's would-be replacements are
challenging the ability to exercise power without personal risk.
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
