I would not trust myself alone in a room with any of this Empire's
leaders, civilian or military. And I will not shake their bloody
hands. The extinction of the Yemen nation is merely one in a long
list of wars the American Empire has backed or been directly involved
in. How's that old saying go?...What's good for the
Military/Industrial Complex is good for the Empire...or something like
that.
But just for the record, these people are not my people.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/27/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Apocalyptic Numbers: The Saudi-Trump War on Yemen
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
26 March 18
Three years ago this month, the then 29-year-old Minister of Defense of
Saudi Arabia (now its crown prince) launched a ruinous war on Yemen.
Yemen had been in Saudi Arabia's back pocket in the 1990s and 2000s, and
was
a major recipient of Saudi aid, which went into the pockets of dictator Ali
Abdullah Saleh. Yemen's people remained desperately poor, and the Saudis
then tried to spread their intolerant form of Wahhabism even among Zaydi
Shiites, producing a backlash in the form of the Houthis.
In 2011-2012 Saleh was overthrown and Yemen began working on a new
constitution and new parliamentary elections.
That process was interrupted by a 2014-2015 Houthi coup in covert alliance
with the deposed Saleh. In turn that coup provoked the then 29 year old
defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, to launch an air war on the Houthi
guerrilla movement, a war he was most unlikely to win.
I've been to Yemen several times. The terrain is mountainous and rough. You
can't bomb it into submission.
Bin Salman charges the Houthis with being Iranian agents. They aren't,
however, the right kind of Shiites for that. Iran has likely given them a
little bit of aid, but it is minor compared to the billions of dollars
worth
of bombs from the US and the UK that Bin Salman has dropped on civilian
apartment buildings in downtown Sana'a. It is rich that the Saudis wax
hysterical about some small rockets aimed at Riyadh while they are daily
flying bombing raids on Yemeni cities with F-16s and F-18s.
The propaganda about Iran being behind Yemen unrest rather than Saleh's
corruption that the Saudis enabled has roped in gullible generals in
Washington, DC, who have actively been aiding the Saudi war effort. This is
an old tradition. Eisenhower invaded Lebanon in 1958 because Chamoun told
him that Druze villagers were part of the internatiional Communist
conspiracy.
Saudi Arabia and its allies bombed indiscriminately. A third of their
targets have been civilian buildings like schools or hospitals or key
civilian infrastructure like bridges. Perhaps half the people they've
killed
have been civilian non-combatants, including children.
Also deadly have been the public health effects of the war.
The numbers on the Saudi-led Yemen War are apocalyptic, worse even than
Syria.
The total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen is
22.2 million - or 76% of the population - including 11.3 million children.
The Saudis and allies have hit Yemen with 15,000 airstrikes.
5,000 children have been killed.
8,700 civilians have been killed
50,000 civilians have been wounded
1.9 million children are not in school, and both sides have recruited
children, some as young as ten, as fighters
11.3 million children need humanitarian assistance, with many on the verge
of going hungry.
All in all, 22.2 million Yemenis of all ages need humanitarian assistance,
3/4s of the population.
There have been a million cholera cases and there is the threat of another
outbreak.
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