US calls for ceasefire, keeps attacking Yemen

by William M. Boardman 

In case you missed it, US efforts to prolong the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis in Yemen continue to succeed spectacularly. US military support enables the Saudi coalition to continue to bomb markets, docks, mosques, hospitals, school buses, weddings and funerals, and other civilian targets with impunity. The Yemenis have no effective air defenses.

On March 26, 2015, with the blessing and tactical support of the Obama administration, Saudi regime and its comrades-in-crime launched an illegal, genocidal, aggressive war on Yemen. Since March 2015, the US and the Saudi coalition have subjected Yemen to daily war crimes, not only killing civilians but destroying non-military targets of all sorts, causing a form of biological warfare with a cholera plague, as well as massive famine for more than half the country’s 25 million people. The UN’s World Food Programme head said on September 27: “Yemen is a disaster and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel right now.” Yemen was not a significant issue in the American election, even as the Trump administration sanctioned and supported military escalation that heightened the suffering of millions and that has already killed tens or maybe hundreds of thousand.

At the US State Department, on November 7, the press briefing focused on the ideological basis for punishing Iran for continuing to abide by the nuclear agreement that the US pulled out of. The US blames Iran for Yemen, too, with no evidence whatsoever to support the propaganda bias. Eventually in the briefing there was a question about Yemen which the State Department spokesman Robert Palladino avoided answering quite embarrassedly as the US is a major partner in the crimes committed by the Saudi regime and its accomplices.

Within the context of pervasive American deceit regarding Yemen, spokesman Palladino probably allows for some technical truths to appear. Yes, after the US called for a ceasefire, the Saudis escalated their bombing of humanitarian targets. The Saudis may or may not have consulted with the US, but the Trump administration has no stomach for criticizing this bloodshed any more than it actively objects to the gutting of Jamal Khashoggi.

According to Palladino, “the destruction of critical infrastructure or destruction of the delivery of vital aid and commercial goods is unacceptable,” which seems to be a statement of law and decency acceptable to any humane observer. Palladino implies the lie that these crimes against humanity are unacceptable to the US, but he doesn’t actually say that. Clearly, having spent years enabling the Saudis in committing war crimes, the US finds the destruction of Yemen quite acceptable. That’s what Palladino really means when he says the US is “closely following the developments,” in the hope that Yemeni carnage can somehow persuade the Iranians to trust us.

OK, what about that US call for a ceasefire, why isn’t that working?

On October 31, US Secretary of War Jim Mattis spoke about Yemen at the US Institute of Peace with presumably unconscious irony. Mattis said, self-contradictorily and revealingly:

We’ve got to move toward a peace effort here, and you can’t say we’re going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days. We’ve admired this problem for long enough down there.

Later the same day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement:

The time is now for the cessation of hostilities…. Substantive consultations under the UN Special Envoy must commence this November in a third country…. It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction.

There was not a tweet from the president in all this. Can one presume anything from that? In September, Pompeo certified to Congress, over the objections of staff, that the Saudis and their allies were doing their darnedest to reduce civilian casualties and the US should continue to support them. This was before the Saudi escalation on Hodeida. There is no credible evidence anywhere that the US is serious about doing anything to end the murder of Yemenis. Pompeo proposed that the ceasefire start with Ansarullah ending their rocket attacks on Arabia. That’s the way the US deals with aggressive war in the 21st century: support the aggressor and demand that the victim stop resisting. And the Trump administration is even considering labeling Ansarullah fighters as a terrorist organization, presumably following a logic that would have made the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto resistance into terrorists. Bad faith has no limits.

Both Mattis and Pompeo tried to appear as if they were taking immediate action, while in the next breath putting off any action for the near future. The supposed ceasefire has now receded toward 2019as the UN’s Yemen envoy bows to the reality of US inaction and Saudi escalation.

If the US were actually serious about peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen, the US could exercise leadership in the UN Security Council to force a peace process. The US could unilaterally take immediate and forceful actions to stop the war. Pompeo could rescind the bad joke of certifying the Saudis as conscientious and responsible. That might not be enough, so Mattis could disengage the US military from the genocidal bombing campaign. Without US support – including cluster bombs and other ordnance – the Saudi aggression would falter if not fail. Rather than act rationally, Pompeo and Mattis chose to posture and preen in a charade of peace-loving rhetoric.

Well, their hollow performance was on Halloween after all, and that was perhaps the point. This was high-level US dishonesty, a shabby trick-or-treat deceit. It’s all trick for Yemen and endless treats for the Saudis. And for its lack of trouble, the US gets more and more blood on its hands.

Late on Friday, November 9, the US and Saudis announced that – at some unstated future time – the US will stop refueling Saudi bombers attacking Yemen. This is a cynical charade that will do nothing to reduce the bloodbath in Yemen, but may fool the gullible in the US that protest works.

First of all, with US help, the Saudis have developed their own mid-air refueling capability. The cessation of US refueling will have zero impact on Saudi war-making capacity.

The US will continue to support the Saudi targeting program. The US will continue to provide the Saudis with military intelligence. The US will continue to supply the Saudis with weapons and ordnance, including cluster bombs (designed to kill people and most effective against civilians). The US will continue to support the Saudi naval blockade, a primary cause of hunger and famine in Yemen. None of these or other elements of US participation in this illegal, genocidal war are addressed in War Secretary Mattis’s expertly opaque and misleading statement:

The U.S. and the coalition are planning to collaborate on building up legitimate Yemeni forces to defend the Yemeni people, secure their country’s borders, and contribute to counter al-Qaida and Daesh efforts in Yemen and the region.

The US and the coalition are the main attackers of most of the Yemeni people. The best defense for the Yemeni people is for the attackers to stop attacking, since the Yemenis remain well within their own borders. Southeastern Yemen is titularly under the control of the “legitimate” Yemeni government (based in Riyadh), but is effectively under a military dictatorship run by the United Arab Emirates. Eastern Yemen, which is thinly populated, is under fragmentary control of multiple forces, including Daesh and al-Qaeda, whose fortunes have been greatly enhanced by the US-Saudi obsession with preventing people from controlling their own country.

Mattis is trying to put rouge on a monster and call it beautiful. US policy in Yemen continues to be based on profound lies with no moral justification. Oh look, Mattis seems to say, we’re washing our hands of refueling bombers committing war crimes. Even in its narrow truth, this does nothing to support life or peace, and US hands remain drenched in blood.

That was authored by William M. Boardman who has over 40 years of experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction.

US support for the bombing of Yemen to continue

On September 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially certified Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates "are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations of these governments."

This is required to allow U.S. planes to continue refueling jets for the Saudi/UAE coalition, without which it could not keep dropping bombs on targets in Yemen. Secretary of Defense James Mattis concurred with Pompeo, though congressional legislation required only Pompeo’s say-so.

Anyone who follows international news could be excused for accidentally cursing at Pompeo’s statement. Among many attacks on civilian targets in Yemen, last month’s bombing of a school bus in a market district, which killed 51 people including 40 children, was among the most horrific, so much so that even Saudi Arabia admitted it was "unjustified." Of course, the Saudi regime should not be allowed to merely get away with investigating itself; indeed, Human Rights Watch released a 90-page report which is highly critical of the Saudi-UAE coalition’s investigations into its attacks, particularly on civilians.

That bombing, which shocked the conscience of the global community, was only the latest massacre of civilians in Yemen. In 2016, Saudi attacks on a market and funeral hall killed 252 people. In response, the Obama Administration halted the sale of precision guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, citing human rights concerns, but then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson overturned the ban in March, 2017. The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is considered the world’s worst at this moment, with well over 10,000 people having been martyred (an estimated 20 percent are children) and 15 million of the total Yemeni population of 23 million considered "food insecure," according to the United Nations. Add in the planet’s worst outbreak of cholera in some time, affecting over a million people, and one gets a picture of the dire situation since the civil war began in 2015.

The United States is the number one weapons dealer in the world, and Saudi Arabia is its biggest customer, having purchased more than $100 billion in armaments since 2010. The bombs in all three attacks cited above were built by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer and the largest US government contractor of any kind, with net sales of more than $13 billion in just the second quarter of this year. It’s not hyperbole to state Lockheed makes a killing, in more ways than one.

Earlier this year, the US Senate attempted to intervene to stop US in-air refueling of Saudi jets and other logistical, intelligence and targeting support. The bipartisan measure, led by Republican Senator Mike Lee and the Independent Bernie Sanders failed on a procedural vote, 55 to 44. Similar proposals also fell short in the House of Representatives, but peace- and human rights-minded House leaders, led by Democrat Representative Adam Smith, Ro Khanna (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Jim McGovern (D-MA), and others will soon try again to stop US support for the slaughter, thinking the school bus bombing may have shocked some hearts and may change some minds.

Concerned individuals should contact their House member and demand they support this common sense effort to cease US participation in this tragedy, without which the Saudi-led coalition could not continue and would likely be forced to negotiate more seriously with the Ansarullah-backed government.

Another, more long-term action people of conscience can undertake is to ensure one’s investments or other financial instruments do not benefit Lockheed Martin and other weapons contractors profiting from endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. Code Pink, Peace Action, American Friends Service Committee and dozens of organizations support the Divest from the War Machine campaign, where one can find out more about how to divest individual or organizational holdings from the arms merchants. Another good resource, focused on divestment from nuclear weapons manufacturers, which in general are also the largest weapons makers overall, is Don’t Bank on the Bomb.

Divestment is an important long term strategy, and a strong moral statement. However, the US Congress can act now, and must.

For more than three years, Raytheon, a major US defense contractor, has been aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen, manufacturing the world’s worst humanitarian crises and profiting upon the bodies of Yemeni children torn apart by their bombs.

Largely hidden from the public, billions of dollars have been made by American arms manufactures in the US-backed war in Yemen. As a result, the Saudis are able to deliberately produce massive civilian causalities, using Raytheon’s weapons with the purpose of starving the people of Yemen and depriving them of life saving medicine.

With one Yemeni child dying every ten minutes, without the help of Raytheon, the Saudis would not be as successful as they are now; at the same time Raytheon also benefits from that success, seeing a sharp rise in their share prices, because when civilian death toll rises, so do Raytheon’s stocks.

This can be quite difficult for many Americans to stomach, but the sad truth is that the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have correlated with the dramatic rise in Raytheon’s share price; in the three years the war has been active, Raytheon’s stocks rose by 94 percent, from $108.44 per share in 2015 to $210.70 in 2018.

Remnants of missiles from Saudis have been retrieved which trace back to Raytheon, hundreds of civilian deaths have been confirmed from these discoveries alone. Considering the fact that Raytheon’s weapons have been used to target weddings, civilian homes, water drilling rigs, and funeral ceremonies, the high rate of civilian deaths is not as surprising.

In April, the Saudis launched a missile at a wedding in northern Yemen, 23 people were martyred with the majority of causalities being women and children. The missiles were later shown to come from Raytheon’s factory in southern Arizona, and four days after the attack, Raytheon’s quarterly earnings rose to $633 million for $2.20 per share.
Bombing civilians in order to make the Ansarullah movement and the revolutionaries surrender appears to be the Saudi’s intent. In 2016, a missile manufactured by Raytheon hit a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing 11, including a staff member. Shortly after, Doctors Without Borders was forced to flee the country, making the humanitarian crises much worse.

Despite all these atrocities, the US government continues to supply the Saudis with arms for their assault on Yemen. In 2017 Saudi Arabia agreed to $7 billion worth of munitions from Raytheon and Boeing. On top of that, the US military is also providing the Saudis with midair fueling and giving them the exact coordinates of where to bomb. All the while weapons manufactures idly sit back making a killing profit off of the killing of children.

That was a put together, joint article written by Kevin Martin, President of Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with more than 200,000 supporters nationwide, and Marcelo Guadiana, who writes for the Borgen Project and Rouser News, focusing on war and poverty. He is a senior at UMass Boston a B.A. in economics.