Author: Daniel Larison

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

The Wall Street Journal has distinguished itself for promoting pro-Saudi and pro-Emirati propaganda about the war on Yemen, gushing over Mohammed bin Salman, and for credulous reporting on the war and the humanitarian crisis it has created. Now their editors rail against S.J.Res. 54 because it threatens to put an end to the war they have supported for three years:

Saudi Arabia finally has a young leader pushing social and economic reform, fighting Iran’s attempt to dominate the Middle East, and even cooperating quietly with Israel. Wouldn’t you know now would be the time that a left-right coalition in Congress wants to snub this ally by pretending to be commanders in chief.

The WSJ editorial does its best to duck the real issues at stake while casting baseless aspersions at opponents of an indefensible war. U.S. involvement in the war is unauthorized by Congress, and it does constitute engaging in hostilities. US refueling of coalition planes makes our government a party to the conflict, and it means that our military is engaged in hostilities against the coalition’s enemies even if they are not directly involved in the fighting. The language of the War Powers Resolution is clear on this point. Our military is participating in the movement of coalition forces while they are carrying out attacks in Yemen, and as such they have been introduced into hostilities without Congress’ authorization.

The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for most of the war’s civilian casualties. The claim that their “targeting has improved thanks to US intelligence and training” ignores that the coalition has frequently targeted civilian structures and infrastructure on purpose. Our military has just confirmed that they don’t track what happens after the refuel coalition planes, so by their own admission they have no way of knowing what the coalition is doing with the support that our government happily provides. The coalition has committed numerous war crimes, and so long as the US provides refueling and arms for their bombing campaign our government is complicit in those crimes. Voting for S.J.Res. 54 is also a vote to put an end to that complicity. Because US support for the coalition is so important to their war effort, they would be hard-pressed to continue their campaign without it. Halting support for the bombing campaign is the best option that the US has for ending the war and ameliorating the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Continue reading “The Wall Street Journal’s Pathetic Case for Supporting the War on Yemen”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Zaid Jilani reports that the U.S. military has no idea what missions are carried out in Yemen by the coalition planes that they refuel:

In a surprising admission on Tuesday, the head of U.S. Central Command – which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia – admitted that the Pentagon doesn’t know a whole lot about the Saudi airstrikes in Yemen that the United States is supporting through intelligence, munitions, and refueling.

U.S. CENTCOM Cmdr. Gen. Joseph Votel made the admission in response to questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“General Votel, does CENTCOM track the purpose of the missions it is refueling? In other words, where a U.S.-refueled aircraft is going, what targets it strikes, and the result of the mission?” Warren asked.

“Senator, we do not,” Votel replied.

If the U.S. military doesn’t track what the coalition planes do after they are refueled, it can’t honestly claim that it isn’t aiding and abetting coalition violations of international law. They don’t know what the coalition planes they refuel do later on, and perhaps they don’t want to know. If the U.S. isn’t tracking how our assistance is used, it isn’t credible to say that our government is using that assistance to change the coalition’s conduct of the war for the better. The U.S. is blindly enabling indiscriminate coalition bombing without making any effort to understand the effects of our support.

Continue reading “End the US Enabling of Saudi War Crimes in Yemen”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Many of the detainees seized during Mohammed bin Salman’s purge last year were subjected to physical abuse, and one later died from his injuries:

During months of captivity, many were subject to coercion and physical abuse, witnesses said. In the early days of the crackdown, at least 17 detainees were hospitalized for physical abuse and one later died in custody with a neck that appeared twisted, a badly swollen body and other signs of abuse, according to a person who saw the body.

Mohammed bin Salman’s power grab and subsequent shakedown of detainees were always aimed at consolidating power and extracting money by force. That seemed clear enough at the time, and this report just confirms it. The “anti-corruption” spin was always a pretext for doing these things and never a very convincing one, and it is a measure of how easily seduced by Mohammed bin Salman’s promise of “reform” they are that so many Western observers accepted his explanation at face value. Obviously, torturing people into handing assets over to the state is a crude abuse of power that has nothing to do with fighting corruption. Abusing detainees into signing over their wealth is consistent with Mohammed bin Salman’s heavy-handed crackdown on internal dissent and his prosecution of an atrocious war that is creating one of the worst famines of modern times. If foreign investors were nervous about the prospects of doing business in the new Saudi Arabia before now, this story should make them extremely wary. When the crown prince comes to the U.S. later this month, his hosts should force him to address the many abuses committed by his government. With any luck, he will find that many of his would-be investors don’t want to do business in a country ruled by such a reckless and incompetent man.

Continue reading “The Saudi ‘Reformer’ Who Uses Torture”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

James Jay Carafano must assume that his audience doesn’t know anything about the war on Yemen:

Instead of turning our back on Yemen, the U.S. should focus on ending the war.

If US support for the Saudi-led coalition were withdrawn, that would go a long way towards ending the war by making it much more difficult for the coalition to continue waging it. Carafano frames stopping US support for wrecking Yemen as “turning our back on Yemen,” which is about as misleading as can be. The US has been turning its back on the civilian population of Yemen for the last three years by aiding and abetting the governments that have been bombing and starving them. He notably omits any mention of the coalition’s commission of numerous war crimes against the civilian population. The plight of the civilian population created by the coalition blockade is likewise nowhere to be found. If the US were no longer enabling coalition war crimes and collective punishment, that would be the first time in years that our government would be seriously paying attention to the plight of the people of Yemen.

Carafano writes:

America is there for a reason: to keep the region from falling apart. The collapse of any friendly regime there is bad for us.

The first part of this is debatable, but when applied to Yemen it is clearly not true. US involvement in the Saudi-led war has been contributing to the country’s fragmentation. The war is causing the country’s devastation and division, and by supporting it the US is encouraging those outcomes. There is no “friendly regime” in Yemen to be defended. The Hadi government has no legitimacy in the eyes of most Yemenis and has virtually no support anywhere in the country, and the coalition’s goal of reimposing him on Yemen will never be reached.

Continue reading “The Ridiculous Hawkish Arguments for Supporting the War on Yemen”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Alex de Waal recently spoke to PBS Newshour about contemporary man-made famines, especially the one caused by the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen:

MEGAN THOMPSON:

How would you counsel the U.S., and other governments, to end this famine, or possible famine, in Yemen?

ALEX DE WAAL:

We should have a peace process. We should have a normalization of economic activity but we must start with lifting that blockade. And I think the what is required in order to move in that direction is public outcry [bold mine-DL]. This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue on which people of all political colors can agree that starvation, mass starvation when it is inflicted in this way is completely unacceptable. It should be regarded as a crime. And ultimately those who who actually inflicted or stand by and allow it to happen should be brought before a court of law. And if that’s not possible at least they should be brought before the court of public opinion that says it’s utterly unacceptable to behave in this way [bold mine-DL].

The Saudis and their allies need to be publicly pressured into lifting the blockade of Yemen, and in order for that to happen their Western patrons need to be called out again and again for their role in enabling this massive crime. It bears repeating that more than eight million people are on the verge of starvation largely because of the coalition blockade, and millions more are badly malnourished. The vast majority of Yemenis lives in the areas that the coalition is deliberately starving of basic necessities in a cruel policy of collective punishment. The US ought to be condemning the perpetrators of this crime and seeking to end their blockade, but instead our government has been backing them to the hilt and helping them to cover up what they are doing to Yemen.

Continue reading “Stop the Saudi-Led Coalition’s Starvation of Yemen”

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

John Bolton defends preventive war against North Korea, but he won’t call it by that name:

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an “imminent threat.” They are wrong. The threat is imminent, and the case against preemption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times.

The concepts of preemption and imminent threat have been so thoroughly warped by the Iraq war debate that their proper meanings have been all but lost. Preemption means striking before an impending attack occurs, but there is no such attack being prepared by North Korea. If the U.S. strikes North Korea first under these circumstances, our government would be committing an act of aggression pure and simple. There would be no preemption, because there would be no attack to preempt.

Continue reading “John Bolton Wants Preventive War Against North Korea”