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.

Stirring Up Mass Panic Is Donald Trump's Only Hope for Winning the White House

By Frank Rich, New York Magazine

25 March 16

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: the terror attacks in Brussels, the GOP quest to unite around an anti-Trump, and a farewell to Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times public editor.

n the wake of the terror attack in Brussels this week, NBC's Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie caught some criticism for practically suggesting to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that torture might be necessary. How much do such responses of high-profile journalists contribute to creating fear and panic in the U.S.?

Fear has brought out the worst in America throughout its modern history. We tirelessly recall that FDR told America it had nothing to fear but fear itself at his first inaugural address in 1933, but often omit the part that he signed an order to incarcerate Japanese-Americans in internment camps later in his presidency. So many calamities in modern American history have been prompted by fear, it’s impossible to list them all, from the Red Scare of the McCarthy era to the failure of the Reagan administration to address the AIDS crisis to the misbegotten, 9/11-generated Iraq War, which helped create the Islamic State that has rained down blood on Paris, San Bernardino, and Brussels in less than five months.

The missteps of morning talk-show hosts are, truly, the least of our problems right now — and in general I think we should worry less about the ginning up of panic by television news (or other journalistic platforms) and keep our focus on the fearmongering politicians who are running for president in an election year. Trump does not need prompting from Lauer and Guthrie to talk about torture as a panacea for terrorism. His fear-driven solutions for dealing with ISIS — more torture, sealing our borders, reducing support of NATO — are as ineffectual as they are incoherent. Cruz’s plan to have wholesale policing of American Muslim communities is nothing if not a propaganda gift to the Islamic State, inviting more terrorism. And John Kasich’s proposal in the aftermath of Brussels: President Obama should cut short his trip to Cuba. That’ll show 'em!

You will notice that none of the Republican candidates — nor Clinton, who called for steady leadership and one of her typical bullet-point lists of more or less existing American policies — proposes ground troops in the Middle East. You’ll notice that Thomas Friedman and Roger Cohen, both of whom offered thoughtful critiques of Obama policy in this morning’s Times, had no real solutions of their own, unless Friedman’s pitch for American support to the developing democracies of Tunisia and Kurdistan counts as one. (As goes Tunisia, so might Syria? This seems like magical thinking.) I certainly don’t have a solution either, but I do get why Obama is doing everything he can to tamp down fear, even at the price of being criticized for passivity, weakness, etc. Policy based on fear prompts even rational politicians like Clinton to sign on to debacles like Iraq, and politics based on fear can only increase the odds of a self-professed strongman like Trump gaining power.

Ted Cruz's big win in Utah last night, as well as Jeb Bush's endorsement of him, suggest that the GOP nomination still isn't quite Trump's for the taking. Did yesterday provide any additional hope for voters hoping to avoid a Trump nomination?

Mormons really do not like Trump, and if America (Mormon population about 1.7 percent) were Utah (Mormon population 58 percent), he’d be done. Meanwhile, back in the real world, nothing has happened to slow Trump’s path to the nomination. The GOP is still in the same place, and it’s not going to change: Either Trump is going to have a majority of delegates by the time the party convenes in Cleveland, or he’s going to have a plurality, in which case all hell is going to break loose as the anti-Trump forces attempt to secure the nomination for a candidate with fewer delegates than Trump or possibly a “compromise choice” (e.g., Paul Ryan) who arrives at the convention with no delegates at all. Any American planning to take a vacation the week of July 18 may want to reconsider: This is going to be binge-watchable must-see TV, and you will never get to the beach.

As for Jeb Bush’s endorsement: Surely if we’ve learned anything from this political cycle it’s that endorsements from the GOP “Establishment” mean nothing. If they did, Jeb would still be in the race, for no one in the Republican field had collected more of them. And once again, we have an illustration of the timidity that helped crater the Bush candidacy. Bush is finally — finally — putting distance between himself and his brother George, who said “I just don’t like the guy” when speaking of Cruz to a room of donors back in October. We can look forward to more bold stands from Jeb now that he’s back in private life, but it’s past time when any of them would merit an exclamation point.

Margaret Sullivan, the Times' public editor, leaves her post next month, on the heels of what is probably her biggest success: a rewriting of the Times' anonymous-sourcing policy. What should the newspaper's next public editor learn from Sullivan's tenure?

The job of public editor really gained traction after the paper’s own fear-induced calamity in the wake of 9/11. The Times’ inability to apply serious journalistic scrutiny to the Bush administration’s case for the war in Iraq — an institutional failure that did not just involve credulous and ideological reporters like Judith Miller but editors in the chain of command to the top of the masthead — required serious self-examination and reform if the paper was going to regain the trust of its readers and even many in its own newsroom. The first public editor, Daniel Okrent, played a significant role in pushing for such reform and asking the hard questions that the paper had failed to ask itself in the run-up to the war.

Since then, public editors have come and gone with far less impact. But that was not the case with Sullivan. She has been fearless and provocative, and, as her tenure nears its end, she has scored a major achievement in getting the Times to reform its use of anonymous sources. Earlier on she got the paper to drop its odious willingness (shared by other journalism outlets) to give some of those quoted in its news columns the right to “approve” their quotes after the fact. She got Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and the CIA, to say on the record that the Times story on warrantless government surveillance, held back by the paper for 13 months at the urging of the Bush administration, in fact did not endanger American national security. Sullivan also took on the Times’ failings in dealing with poverty, sexism, and even its lack of racial diversity in its staff of culture critics, often prompting change.

One hopes the next public editor will learn from Sullivan’s tenure that nothing should be off-limits; a strong critic, advocating for both the readers and the highest standards, makes the paper better and its often-opaque practices more transparent. She is going to be a tough act to follow. Meanwhile, the Times’ loss is going to be another gain for Martin Baron’s ever-more-competitive Washington Post. Sullivan is launching a free-ranging media column there that is likely to be a must-read throughout this election year and beyond.