Boardman writes: "Turns out the United States and the Islamic State, ISIS,
are de facto allies of Saudi Arabia and its alliance of dictator states, all
bent on exterminating Yemeni Houthis and pretty much any other Yemeni in the
neighborhood. This Yemenicide started in earnest in March 2015."
Yemeni men visit the new cemetery in Al Joob, dug specifically to
accommodate the 30 men, women and children who were killed between two
strikes on a public market and along a roadside. (photo: Alex Potter/The
Intercept)
Yemeni Genocide Proceeds Apace, Enjoying World's Silence
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
10 July 15
[NOTE: Shortly after this story was filed, the UN announced a "humanitarian
pause in the country's ongoing conflict" starting July 10 and expected to
last a week. As framed by the UN, the "pause" was agreed to by "Yemen's
President Hadi" as well as the Houthis and "other parties" in Yemen, as if
there were no other significant combatants. This deceitful framing omits the
most aggressive, undeclared war-making carried out against Yemen by the US,
Saudi Arabia, and sundry other UN members. The UN missive makes no mention
of the months of Saudi-American bombing, even though the bombers must have
agreed to a "pause" to make it happen. In the author's view, the pause is a
good thing from a humanitarian perspective, although the previous 5-day
pause in May was relatively ineffective. From the perspective of policy and
politics, the "pause" is a sham and a delusion that will have the effect of
keeping some Yemenis from starving long enough so they can be bombed. In
other words, the UN continues to collude in a complex of continuing war
crimes and crimes against humanity, as the article that follows argues.]
US and ISIS join efforts to kill Yemenis
Turns out the United States and the Islamic State, ISIS, are de facto allies
of Saudi Arabia and its alliance of dictator states, all bent on
exterminating Yemeni Houthis and pretty much any other Yemeni in the
neighborhood. This Yemenicide started in earnest in March 2015. After years
of US drone strikes proved too slow and ineffective at wiping out people in
the poorest country in the Arab world, it was time to expand the arsenal of
war crimes. Rarely, in discussions of Yemen, does one hear much about the
violations of international law that have reduced the country to its present
war-torn and devastated condition.
Failing to acknowledge a foreign policy disaster in Yemen, the Obama
administration has chosen instead to trash international law by supporting
the criminal, aggressive war that Saudi Arabia's coalition of police states
launched on Yemen on March 26. Now, despite more than three months of
Saudi-American terror bombing, the Houthis remain in control of northwest
Yemen, their tribal homeland, as well as much of the southeast of Yemen,
having overthrown the internationally-installed puppet government, later
"elected" without any opponents, of President Abd Rhabbuh Mansur Hadi.
President Obama praised Hadi as his "successful" partner in attacking
terrorists, by which Obama meant he was grateful to Hadi for not objecting
to the US drone attacks against his own people. Hadi's legitimacy always
depended on foreign puppeteers, and it still does. Having resigned as
president, fled the capital, and rescinded his resignation, Hadi fled again,
to Saudi Arabia the day before the Saudi blitz began. The official story is
that Hadi requested the undeclared Saudi attack on his own country. Hadi
remains in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, free to go nowhere while he pretends
to head a government-in-exile that is the presently desired fiction of his
captor-protectors.
On July 8, from Riyadh, Hadi reportedly proposed a ceasefire in Yemen to
start before the month of Ramadan ends July 17. On July 1, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had called for a "humanitarian halt" in combat
"until the end of the holy month of Ramadan." So far, Hadi's Saudi
controllers have used the muslim holy month to rain increased terror on
populated areas of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians and Houthi fighters,
with no accurate count available. July 7 saw the highest death toll in Yemen
since the Saudi bombing campaign began. This bland-seeming coverage of the
carnage by Reuters is riddled by propaganda deceits:
The United Nations has been pushing for a halt to air raids and intensified
fighting that began on March 26. More than 3,000 people have been killed
since then as the Arab coalition tries stop the Houthis spreading across the
country from the north.
The Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthis say they are rebelling against a corrupt
government, while local fighters say they are defending their homes from
Houthi incursions. Sunni Saudi Arabia says it is bombing the Houthis to
protect the Yemeni state.
The Reuters perspective represents the mainstream consensus, which also
typically includes some of the same threads of deceit as these:
. "The UN has been pushing ." No it hasn't. The UN as a body has done
little to protect the Yemenis, but the Security Council has done less for a
country in which civil war has spanned generations. Security Council
resolutions are determinedly "evenhanded" in their equal treatment of
aggressors and victims. In June 2015, after two months of Saudi bombing, the
Security Council expressed its "full support" for an impossibility: "a
peaceful, inclusive, orderly and Yemeni-led political transition process
that meets the legitimate demands and aspirations of the Yemeni people."
. "pushing for a halt to air raids ." No it hasn't. The air raids are
being carried out by the nine UN member states in the Saudi Coalition,
including Security Council member Jordan. The US, a permanent Security
Council member, has supported the aerial war crime campaign with logistics,
in-flight refueling of bombers, intelligence, air-sea rescue, and naval
support for the blockade (which is also an act of war).
. "intensified fighting that began on March 26 ."Intensified fighting
began long before March 26. Yemen's civil war has waxed and waned over
several decades. What began March 26 was the war crime nexus of bombing
civilian targets by the nine-member Saudi Coalition that includes Egypt,
Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The Houthi
rebellion is more than a decade old and gained intensity in the fall of
2014. The Houthis drove out the Yemeni government and now control the
western half of the country, where most of the population lived and most of
the bombing takes place.
. "the Arab coalition tries to stop the Houthis spreading across the
country from the north ." Reuters is just wrong on this. The Houthi spread
was a fact, and the "Arab coalition" failed in an ill-conceived campaign.
Faced with an army advancing on the ground, the "Arab coalition" has not
deployed ground troops. Without serious objection from the international
community, the "Arab coalition" attacks military forces in another country
with which they are not at war, as well as terror-bombing that country's
civilians with US-made cluster bombs.
. As for spreading "from the north," that is at best wrong, if not
duplicitous. Saudi Arabia has declared the northernmost province of Yemen,
Saada, a military zone in which every civilian is a presumed combatant. This
is the same bloodthirsty policy that leads the US to count every drone
victim as a combatant until proven otherwise. This is the same moral
numbness that led the US to establish free fire zones in Viet-Nam, where
every living thing was deemed an enemy. This is total war as waged by the
powerful, at a distance, against the weak and almost defenseless. This is as
bad as any Nazi onslaught of World War II.
. The absurdity of the Reuters characterization is illustrated by
another UN Security Council position in support of a "political solution to
Yemen's crisis in accordance with the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative."
The Gulf Cooperation Council is an oxymoron, in that it includes six of the
seven Arab states (not Iraq) on the Persian Gulf who allied determinedly NOT
to cooperate with the other Persian Gulf state, Iran. Further, the Security
Council absurdly supports the "Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative" when
five of the six Gulf Council members (not Oman) are busily bombing Yemen in
violation of international law.
. "The Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthis ." There is no evidence of an
alliance between Iran and the Houthis, certainly not in any sense equivalent
to the overt alliances waging undeclared war on Yemen. The Houthis are
Shi'ite muslims, and Iran has almost surely supported them to some extent,
but most claims of Iranian involvement in the current fighting are patently
over-stated and lack supporting evidence. Reuters here is parroting Arab,
American, and Israeli propaganda about the "threat" from Iran.
. "say they are rebelling against a corrupt government ." Who says?
Reuters doesn't say. This is specious journalism. Yemen has a long history
of corrupt government, but perhaps the Hadi government allowing US troops to
wage war on Yemeni territory, killing Yemenis at will, raised the corruption
bar to a new level.
. "local fighters say they are defending their homes ." is worse than
specious journalism, it's pretty much a lie since the main opposition to the
Houthis comprises forces loyal to Hadi, as well as cohorts of both Al Qaeda
and ISIS.
. "Sunni Saudi Arabia says it is bombing the Houthis to protect the
Yemeni state"would be a laugh line were it not such a dark lie. Saudi
bombing is destroying the Yemeni state in order to "save" it. The Saudis may
be "protecting" the Hadi government, but only in the sense that the Mafia
provides protection in a protection racket. The Saudis have longstanding
territorial conflicts with the Houthis along the northwest Saudi-Yemeni
border. And the Saudis are acting as if they believe their own demonizing
propaganda about Iran. Saudi Arabia is more likely bombing the Houthis
because they are defenseless and Saudi Arabia doesn't dare bomb Iran.
Nobody seems to care about Yemen, not even The New Yorker
The widespread, bland disinterest in the unending victimization of Yemenis
facing unrelenting, daily crimes against humanity is hardly unique to obtuse
observers like Reuters. The New Yorker, which eventually distinguished
itself in opposition to the horrors of Viet-Nam, last published a piece on
Yemen on May 1 (according to a site search). That piece conveys the American
denial of its own terrorism with a tone of mild distaste suitable to Eustace
Tilley, whose monocled default opinion is to blame the victim, as Robin
Wright wrote little more than a month after the Saudi-American bombardment
began:
The current Houthi rebellion - the seventh - is only the latest. The Houthi
clan are Zaydi Muslims, who make up about a third of Yemen's twenty-six
million people. A once powerful people from the rugged northern highlands,
they ruled an imamate for a millennium and deeply resented their reduced
influence under [former President] Saleh [now a Houthi ally]. Between 2004
and 2010, they fought six other wars against his government..
The quarter-century experiment in uniting Yemen has definitively failed.
There is no military solution, and there are unlikely to be any winners out
of such a multilayered conflict, whatever the territorial gains..
Last week, the United States dispatched the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Teddy
Roosevelt to supplement seven American warships off the Yemen coast.
Washington strongly supports a political solution to the conflict in Yemen,
but without interested players the risks of unintended consequences
increase.
Rhetorically the US may support a "political solution" (to its own liking)
and gullible reporters may accept that as some sort of reality. The reality
on the ground (and on the water) is that the US supports and participates in
endless terror bombing and a naval blockade. That is to say, the US supports
and participates in the war crimes that are leading toward mass starvation
and human devastation, what the discreet Ban Ki-moon refers to as a
"humanitarian crisis" or a "catastrophe," as if there were no agency causing
it.
An editorial July 7 in The New York Times takes the same
concerned-but-oblivious-to-the-genocidal-actors tone that reinforces the
general pretense that no one is responsible:
Yemen has now been added to the United Nations' list of most severe
humanitarian emergencies, along with South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. It is a
tragic distinction, highlighting the peril to 80 percent of the country's 25
million citizens. The international community, including the United States,
is not doing enough to push for an immediate cease-fire in the war that is
ravaging the country to make it possible to deliver aid.
Yemen, a poor country, was deeply unstable even before a coalition, led by
Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States, started bombing the Houthi
rebel movement in late March. Last week, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations
secretary general, declared the situation a "catastrophe."
Is it possible to commit a long string of war crimes in self-defense?
Having tiptoed up to the edge of US war crimes, the Times retreated. The
rest of the editorial comprises little more than helpless handwringing,
without even hinting at the most effective way to save Yemeni lives: stop
the bombing. That means you, "Saudi Arabia . backed by the United States."
Like most of the rest of the world, the Times settled for asking for a
reasonable-sounding impossibility, which it then undercut with another wisp
of Saudi reality:
What is needed is a permanent political solution that will ensure the
Houthis, who have some legitimate grievances and are unlikely to give up,
get a significant role in any new government. Negotiations should be started
without preconditions. But Saudi Arabia and its allies have appeared intent
on forcing the Houthis to surrender, no matter what the cost to civilians
and Yemen's cities and villages.
Well, "Saudi Arabia and its allies" includes the US and others. The Times
needs to look in the mirror without flinching. Saudi Arabia and its allies
need to stop their bombing.
Ironically, they are not bombing Al Qaeda or ISIS forces in Yemen with
anything like the same intensity they're bombing Yemenis. In fact, Al Qaeda
and ISIS are supplementing Saudi-American bombing with their own
terror-bombing of Yemenis. For whatever reason, if there is one, the
Saudi-American aerial genocide against Yeminis is making most of Yemen a
much safer haven for terrorists. Yet this lunatic policy continues without
serious opposition apparent anywhere. Who decided that Yemen should be
treated as if it were the Haiti of the Arab world?
If any of the umpteen candidates for president of the United States has said
anything humane, useful, or even dimly relevant about Yemen, it is hard to
find (and I have found nothing). And nowhere have I found any call to
establish the appropriate International War Crimes Tribunal to judge the
illegality of the multiple, heinous predations of the United States, Saudi
Arabia, and their sundry allies, all members in good standing of the world
peacekeeping authority.
________________________________________
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.
Yemeni men visit the new cemetery in Al Joob, dug specifically to
accommodate the 30 men, women and children who were killed between two
strikes on a public market and along a roadside. (photo: Alex Potter/The
Intercept)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Yemeni Genocide Proceeds Apace, Enjoying World's Silence
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
10 July 15
[NOTE: Shortly after this story was filed, the UN announced a "humanitarian
pause in the country's ongoing conflict" starting July 10 and expected to
last a week. As framed by the UN, the "pause" was agreed to by "Yemen's
President Hadi" as well as the Houthis and "other parties" in Yemen, as if
there were no other significant combatants. This deceitful framing omits the
most aggressive, undeclared war-making carried out against Yemen by the US,
Saudi Arabia, and sundry other UN members. The UN missive makes no mention
of the months of Saudi-American bombing, even though the bombers must have
agreed to a "pause" to make it happen. In the author's view, the pause is a
good thing from a humanitarian perspective, although the previous 5-day
pause in May was relatively ineffective. From the perspective of policy and
politics, the "pause" is a sham and a delusion that will have the effect of
keeping some Yemenis from starving long enough so they can be bombed. In
other words, the UN continues to collude in a complex of continuing war
crimes and crimes against humanity, as the article that follows argues.]
US and ISIS join efforts to kill Yemenis
urns out the United States and the Islamic State, ISIS, are de facto allies
of Saudi Arabia and its alliance of dictator states, all bent on
exterminating Yemeni Houthis and pretty much any other Yemeni in the
neighborhood. This Yemenicide started in earnest in March 2015. After years
of US drone strikes proved too slow and ineffective at wiping out people in
the poorest country in the Arab world, it was time to expand the arsenal of
war crimes. Rarely, in discussions of Yemen, does one hear much about the
violations of international law that have reduced the country to its present
war-torn and devastated condition.
Failing to acknowledge a foreign policy disaster in Yemen, the Obama
administration has chosen instead to trash international law by supporting
the criminal, aggressive war that Saudi Arabia's coalition of police states
launched on Yemen on March 26. Now, despite more than three months of
Saudi-American terror bombing, the Houthis remain in control of northwest
Yemen, their tribal homeland, as well as much of the southeast of Yemen,
having overthrown the internationally-installed puppet government, later
"elected" without any opponents, of President Abd Rhabbuh Mansur Hadi.
President Obama praised Hadi as his "successful" partner in attacking
terrorists, by which Obama meant he was grateful to Hadi for not objecting
to the US drone attacks against his own people. Hadi's legitimacy always
depended on foreign puppeteers, and it still does. Having resigned as
president, fled the capital, and rescinded his resignation, Hadi fled again,
to Saudi Arabia the day before the Saudi blitz began. The official story is
that Hadi requested the undeclared Saudi attack on his own country. Hadi
remains in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, free to go nowhere while he pretends
to head a government-in-exile that is the presently desired fiction of his
captor-protectors.
On July 8, from Riyadh, Hadi reportedly proposed a ceasefire in Yemen to
start before the month of Ramadan ends July 17. On July 1, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had called for a "humanitarian halt" in combat
"until the end of the holy month of Ramadan." So far, Hadi's Saudi
controllers have used the muslim holy month to rain increased terror on
populated areas of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians and Houthi fighters,
with no accurate count available. July 7 saw the highest death toll in Yemen
since the Saudi bombing campaign began. This bland-seeming coverage of the
carnage by Reuters is riddled by propaganda deceits:
The United Nations has been pushing for a halt to air raids and intensified
fighting that began on March 26. More than 3,000 people have been killed
since then as the Arab coalition tries stop the Houthis spreading across the
country from the north.
The Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthis say they are rebelling against a corrupt
government, while local fighters say they are defending their homes from
Houthi incursions. Sunni Saudi Arabia says it is bombing the Houthis to
protect the Yemeni state.
The Reuters perspective represents the mainstream consensus, which also
typically includes some of the same threads of deceit as these:
. "The UN has been pushing ." No it hasn't. The UN as a body has done
little to protect the Yemenis, but the Security Council has done less for a
country in which civil war has spanned generations. Security Council
resolutions are determinedly "evenhanded" in their equal treatment of
aggressors and victims. In June 2015, after two months of Saudi bombing, the
Security Council expressed its "full support" for an impossibility: "a
peaceful, inclusive, orderly and Yemeni-led political transition process
that meets the legitimate demands and aspirations of the Yemeni people."
. "pushing for a halt to air raids ." No it hasn't. The air raids are
being carried out by the nine UN member states in the Saudi Coalition,
including Security Council member Jordan. The US, a permanent Security
Council member, has supported the aerial war crime campaign with logistics,
in-flight refueling of bombers, intelligence, air-sea rescue, and naval
support for the blockade (which is also an act of war).
. "intensified fighting that began on March 26 ."Intensified fighting
began long before March 26. Yemen's civil war has waxed and waned over
several decades. What began March 26 was the war crime nexus of bombing
civilian targets by the nine-member Saudi Coalition that includes Egypt,
Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The Houthi
rebellion is more than a decade old and gained intensity in the fall of
2014. The Houthis drove out the Yemeni government and now control the
western half of the country, where most of the population lived and most of
the bombing takes place.
. "the Arab coalition tries to stop the Houthis spreading across the
country from the north ." Reuters is just wrong on this. The Houthi spread
was a fact, and the "Arab coalition" failed in an ill-conceived campaign.
Faced with an army advancing on the ground, the "Arab coalition" has not
deployed ground troops. Without serious objection from the international
community, the "Arab coalition" attacks military forces in another country
with which they are not at war, as well as terror-bombing that country's
civilians with US-made cluster bombs.
. As for spreading "from the north," that is at best wrong, if not
duplicitous. Saudi Arabia has declared the northernmost province of Yemen,
Saada, a military zone in which every civilian is a presumed combatant. This
is the same bloodthirsty policy that leads the US to count every drone
victim as a combatant until proven otherwise. This is the same moral
numbness that led the US to establish free fire zones in Viet-Nam, where
every living thing was deemed an enemy. This is total war as waged by the
powerful, at a distance, against the weak and almost defenseless. This is as
bad as any Nazi onslaught of World War II.
. The absurdity of the Reuters characterization is illustrated by
another UN Security Council position in support of a "political solution to
Yemen's crisis in accordance with the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative."
The Gulf Cooperation Council is an oxymoron, in that it includes six of the
seven Arab states (not Iraq) on the Persian Gulf who allied determinedly NOT
to cooperate with the other Persian Gulf state, Iran. Further, the Security
Council absurdly supports the "Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative" when
five of the six Gulf Council members (not Oman) are busily bombing Yemen in
violation of international law.
. "The Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthis ." There is no evidence of an
alliance between Iran and the Houthis, certainly not in any sense equivalent
to the overt alliances waging undeclared war on Yemen. The Houthis are
Shi'ite muslims, and Iran has almost surely supported them to some extent,
but most claims of Iranian involvement in the current fighting are patently
over-stated and lack supporting evidence. Reuters here is parroting Arab,
American, and Israeli propaganda about the "threat" from Iran.
. "say they are rebelling against a corrupt government ." Who says?
Reuters doesn't say. This is specious journalism. Yemen has a long history
of corrupt government, but perhaps the Hadi government allowing US troops to
wage war on Yemeni territory, killing Yemenis at will, raised the corruption
bar to a new level.
. "local fighters say they are defending their homes ." is worse than
specious journalism, it's pretty much a lie since the main opposition to the
Houthis comprises forces loyal to Hadi, as well as cohorts of both Al Qaeda
and ISIS.
. "Sunni Saudi Arabia says it is bombing the Houthis to protect the
Yemeni state"would be a laugh line were it not such a dark lie. Saudi
bombing is destroying the Yemeni state in order to "save" it. The Saudis may
be "protecting" the Hadi government, but only in the sense that the Mafia
provides protection in a protection racket. The Saudis have longstanding
territorial conflicts with the Houthis along the northwest Saudi-Yemeni
border. And the Saudis are acting as if they believe their own demonizing
propaganda about Iran. Saudi Arabia is more likely bombing the Houthis
because they are defenseless and Saudi Arabia doesn't dare bomb Iran.
Nobody seems to care about Yemen, not even The New Yorker
The widespread, bland disinterest in the unending victimization of Yemenis
facing unrelenting, daily crimes against humanity is hardly unique to obtuse
observers like Reuters. The New Yorker, which eventually distinguished
itself in opposition to the horrors of Viet-Nam, last published a piece on
Yemen on May 1 (according to a site search). That piece conveys the American
denial of its own terrorism with a tone of mild distaste suitable to Eustace
Tilley, whose monocled default opinion is to blame the victim, as Robin
Wright wrote little more than a month after the Saudi-American bombardment
began:
The current Houthi rebellion - the seventh - is only the latest. The Houthi
clan are Zaydi Muslims, who make up about a third of Yemen's twenty-six
million people. A once powerful people from the rugged northern highlands,
they ruled an imamate for a millennium and deeply resented their reduced
influence under [former President] Saleh [now a Houthi ally]. Between 2004
and 2010, they fought six other wars against his government..
The quarter-century experiment in uniting Yemen has definitively failed.
There is no military solution, and there are unlikely to be any winners out
of such a multilayered conflict, whatever the territorial gains..
Last week, the United States dispatched the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Teddy
Roosevelt to supplement seven American warships off the Yemen coast.
Washington strongly supports a political solution to the conflict in Yemen,
but without interested players the risks of unintended consequences
increase.
Rhetorically the US may support a "political solution" (to its own liking)
and gullible reporters may accept that as some sort of reality. The reality
on the ground (and on the water) is that the US supports and participates in
endless terror bombing and a naval blockade. That is to say, the US supports
and participates in the war crimes that are leading toward mass starvation
and human devastation, what the discreet Ban Ki-moon refers to as a
"humanitarian crisis" or a "catastrophe," as if there were no agency causing
it.
An editorial July 7 in The New York Times takes the same
concerned-but-oblivious-to-the-genocidal-actors tone that reinforces the
general pretense that no one is responsible:
Yemen has now been added to the United Nations' list of most severe
humanitarian emergencies, along with South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. It is a
tragic distinction, highlighting the peril to 80 percent of the country's 25
million citizens. The international community, including the United States,
is not doing enough to push for an immediate cease-fire in the war that is
ravaging the country to make it possible to deliver aid.
Yemen, a poor country, was deeply unstable even before a coalition, led by
Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States, started bombing the Houthi
rebel movement in late March. Last week, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations
secretary general, declared the situation a "catastrophe."
Is it possible to commit a long string of war crimes in self-defense?
Having tiptoed up to the edge of US war crimes, the Times retreated. The
rest of the editorial comprises little more than helpless handwringing,
without even hinting at the most effective way to save Yemeni lives: stop
the bombing. That means you, "Saudi Arabia . backed by the United States."
Like most of the rest of the world, the Times settled for asking for a
reasonable-sounding impossibility, which it then undercut with another wisp
of Saudi reality:
What is needed is a permanent political solution that will ensure the
Houthis, who have some legitimate grievances and are unlikely to give up,
get a significant role in any new government. Negotiations should be started
without preconditions. But Saudi Arabia and its allies have appeared intent
on forcing the Houthis to surrender, no matter what the cost to civilians
and Yemen's cities and villages.
Well, "Saudi Arabia and its allies" includes the US and others. The Times
needs to look in the mirror without flinching. Saudi Arabia and its allies
need to stop their bombing.
Ironically, they are not bombing Al Qaeda or ISIS forces in Yemen with
anything like the same intensity they're bombing Yemenis. In fact, Al Qaeda
and ISIS are supplementing Saudi-American bombing with their own
terror-bombing of Yemenis. For whatever reason, if there is one, the
Saudi-American aerial genocide against Yeminis is making most of Yemen a
much safer haven for terrorists. Yet this lunatic policy continues without
serious opposition apparent anywhere. Who decided that Yemen should be
treated as if it were the Haiti of the Arab world?
If any of the umpteen candidates for president of the United States has said
anything humane, useful, or even dimly relevant about Yemen, it is hard to
find (and I have found nothing). And nowhere have I found any call to
establish the appropriate International War Crimes Tribunal to judge the
illegality of the multiple, heinous predations of the United States, Saudi
Arabia, and their sundry allies, all members in good standing of the world
peacekeeping authority.
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
