Why to End the War on Yemen – The Reconstruction the US Ignores

TEHRAN (FNA)- In December, the Senate successfully passed a War Powers Act resolution calling for the end to US support for the Saudi War on Yemen. The House leadership at the time refused to allow a vote, but with the Democrats now the leadership, such a resolution is expected to be voted on in the next six weeks.

It is widely expected that both houses of Congress will successfully pass War Powers challenges to the Yemen War, though they say the exact timing may be unclear because of the government’s shutdown. Even then, there is an expectation that President Trump will veto the measure. This would be a politically difficult veto for the president, as the War Powers Act is explicitly meant to give Congress oversight of US wars, and a veto would effectively be the president overriding Congress on refusing to back a war that was illegally launched in the first place.

This is while the only way out is a renewed call for political negotiations, playing on the fact that the Yemeni factions want peace. For that call to be effective, the US government is required to shift its present course of actions with a three-pronged strategy:

- Back the ceasefire in order to allow humanitarian assistance into the country.

Financing aid while continuing the air campaign is as a cynical manoeuvre by the US and its Saudi allies that do not know where to bomb next. For this aid to reach vulnerable populations, both the US and Saudi Arabia must respect the ceasefire and stop bombing the war-torn country.

- Allow the UN as a mediator and give up on hosting one-sided political talks in Riyadh or elsewhere in Europe. Riyadh is clearly no acceptable destination for Ansarullah, and would likely be contentious for almost all other Yemeni factions. Instead, the US should capitalize on the impartial stance taken by the UN toward the conflict and ask them to facilitate a dialogue – without any interference.

- Take responsibility for the destruction and help the UN in its reconstruction and development vision for Yemen.

If the US wants to truly demonstrate a “Yemen resolve to act alone,” it needs to show that Yemenis can rebuild their country devastated by this illegal conflict - one that, unlike war-torn Libya, Syria, or Iraq, might be salvageable.

The US should build upon the UN resolution to secure and finance a long-term reconstruction plan for Yemen. The plan should be based on the ultimate objective of integrating Yemen within the UN, making use of its human and natural resources and capitalizing on its strategic coastline.

To that end, the US government must not write a check to the Saudis and leave Riyadh to sort Yemen out on their own. Yemen’s experience has shown time and again that Saudi Arabia and its allies are unable to build state capacity or to provide effective long-term development - a failure that helped bring Yemen to the brink of crisis in the first place. Whatever international reconstruction vision emerges, the US is responsible to be part of it, and should remain part of its development and implementation long term.

The US has a particular responsibility at the UN too. The decision by the UN to press forward with a ceasefire resolution, however limited, was a welcome show of determination. But it needs to be carried forward, and supported by national actions, including the ending of all US support for the war strategy and resumption of reconstruction efforts.

In this deliberate man-made crisis there is no firewall between a political process to end the fighting and the humanitarian catastrophe that the world does witness day in, day out. Unless there is outside pressure of a substantial kind on Saudi Arabia and its allies, civilians will continue to endure terrible suffering. While Saudi and Emirati airstrikes are the primary cause of civilian deaths, many more have died from the impact of the US-backed blockade: drought, disease, starvation and preventable deaths.

In summation, those who turned Yemen into a failed state are now required under international law to take responsibility for its reconstruction and peace efforts. They must help the UN to improve humanitarian and commercial access into and around Yemen, including the full functioning of all ports and Sana’a airport. They must help the UN to repair public service infrastructure such as water provision and hospitals, which has been damaged during the US-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes. They must also pay for all the damages they have caused to the country.

Yemen is a complex society, but the choices facing the Saudis, the Americans and their allies now are simple. They cannot continue the failed war, see more people die, and watch malign geopolitical consequences grow. The people of Yemen and all warring factions want peace and unity. The Saudis, the Americans and their allies must stop the protracted war and give international reconstruction efforts a chance to make a difference.

Endless US wars

Stephen Lendman

The US wages war across the world to help extend the days of its own hegemony and the illegitimate existence of the Zionist regime of Israel which have already been numbered. Stephen Lendman, retired businessman, who has dedicated much of his time to write on political affairs, has authored a feature on some of the reasons of unending US wars.

All US post-9/11 wars continue unresolved - Afghanistan the prototype for them all.

America's military, industrial, security, media complex (including Wall Street) supports waging them endlessly. That's why they don't end.

Military Keynesianism on steroids reflects longstanding US policy. For the Pentagon it's "long war." I call it forever war, the human toll of no consequence - millions of casualties post-9/11 alone, human suffering immeasurable.

US policymakers support endless aggression, smashing one sovereign independent state after another, seeking unchallenged control over planet earth, its resources and populations.

The nation's resources are heavily used for mass slaughter and destruction. Bipartisan policymakers support America's permanent war economy, continuing endlessly.

Government financed and promoted war-making comes at the expense of vital homeland needs gone begging.

The same agenda endured since WWII - from Korea to Southeast Asia to Central and Latin America, the Balkans, the West, East, Central Asia, North and Central Africa, its horn, and elsewhere.

War-making takes precedence over everything else, peacemaking considered un-American. There's increasingly little public space to improve the quality of our lives.

Growing numbers of Americans are poor, disadvantaged, and uneducated. Homelessness and hunger go largely unaddressed.

State capitalism reflects the American way, a business partnership, running a war economy for greater power and wealth at the expense of a nation in decline, corrupted leadership, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten to assure steady funding for America's wars, no matter the cost and enormous harm they cause.

Militarism and belligerence are parasitic, inefficient, ineffective, self-destructive, immoral, and illegal. 

Wealth is transferred from ordinary people to its privileged class. Physical and human capital are undermined. There's increased vulnerability to hurricanes, widespread blazes, droughts, floods, and other natural disasters.

On the phony pretext of protecting national security, fundamental human and civil rights eroded - totalitarian control, tyranny and ruin replacing a free and open society.

US wars of aggression are unresolvable because bipartisan policymakers want them waged forever, beholden to interests supporting them.

Congress has appropriation power. Wars can't be waged without majority support for funding them. Ongoing ones can end by cutting off the money spigot - never since WWII except after 10 years of Southeast Asia war.

After escalating it earlier, Nixon ended America's longest war in modern times until Afghanistan and Yemen, both wars begun within weeks of each other post-9/11.

He threatened entrenched military/industrial/security and other interests, why he was marked for removal and had to go.

He survived and reinvented himself, traveled the world, wrote books, and was respected as an elder statesman.

Jack Kennedy was eliminated for wanting US forces out of Vietnam before December 1965, urging rapprochement with Soviet Russia and nuclear disarmament, wanting the CIA "splintered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds," along with other responsible policy aims no top US officials support today - just the opposite, destructive over constructive ones. 

Talk of ending US involvement in Yemen, along with cutting off support for Saudi regime, is hollow.

UN chiefs are beholden to Washington and the West. Endless war in Yemen rage with virtually no movement for ending it.

AMN News highlighted the endless horror, headlining "heavy clashes breakout across Yemen despite calls for national ceasefire."

SouthFront reported that the Trump regime blocked a Security Council resolution, calling for ceasefire and delivery of vital humanitarian aid to starving Yemenis - neocon extremist Nikki Haley saying:

"We cannot support a resolution at the moment" - not even a watered-down virtually meaningless one, largely an attempt to permit aid deliveries through the key port city of Hodeidah.

Reportedly Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman "threw a fit" when shown the draft. The Saudis are serving US interests in Yemen and their own.

Washington, Britain and France supply almost 90% of Saudi regime's arms and munitions - supporting endless war, opposed to ending it, despite claims otherwise from Trump regime officials, none backed with positive actions, showing they're hollow.