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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe US is promoting war crimes in Yemen
The US is promoting war crimes in Yemen
By Trevor Timm - Thursday 18 August 2016 12.22 EDT
The humanitarian disaster there is, by some measures, greater than that in Syria. Why is Obama continuing to enable the Saudi bombing campaign?
Saudi Arabia resumed its appalling war in Yemen last week and has already killed dozens more civilians, destroyed a school full of children and leveled a hospital full of sick and injured people. The campaign of indiscriminate killing – though let’s call it what it is: a war crime – has now been going on for almost a year and a half. And the United States bears a large part of the responsibility.
This US-backed war is not just a case of the Obama administration sitting idly by while its close ally goes on a destructive spree of historic proportions. The government is actively selling the Saudis billions of dollars of weaponry. They’re re-supplying planes engaged in the bombing runs and providing “intelligence” for the targets that Saudi Arabia is hitting.
Put simply, the US is quite literally funding a humanitarian catastrophe that, by some measures, is larger than the crisis in Syria. As the New York Times editorial board wrote this week: “Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support.” Yet all we’ve heard is crickets.
High-ranking Obama administration officials are hardly ever asked about the crisis. Cable television news has almost universally ignored it. Both the Clinton and Trump presidential campaigns have been totally silent on this issue despite their constant arguing over who would be better at “stopping terrorism”. Beyond the grotesque killing of civilians, it’s clear at this point that the Saudis’ bombing campaign has also boosted al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) to a level which Reuters described as “stronger and richer” than anytime in its 20-year history...
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/18/us-promoting-war-crimes-yemen-saudi-bombing-obama
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cali
(114,904 posts)I know many people want to shut their eyes and ears to this and other things that reflect poorly on the U.S. and particularly on President Obama, but as the old saying goes: "Silence is the voice of complicity".
So I thank you for posting this and thoroughly expect you'll be attacked for doing so.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)has jack shit to say about Syria (you know, where real war crimes are being committed, not just "promoted"
on the day Amnesty released their report, yet still wants to beat the Yemeni horse to death and prop up his "America the Great Satan" mythos
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)think
(11,641 posts)than condemn, confront, and repudiate it.
By Jane Mayer - ANNALS OF JUSTICE FEBRUARY 14, 2005 ISSUE
January 27th, President Bush, in an interview with the Times, assured the world that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was born in Syria, was surprised to learn of Bush’s statement. Two and a half years ago, American officials, suspecting Arar of being a terrorist, apprehended him in New York and sent him back to Syria, where he endured months of brutal interrogation, including torture. When Arar described his experience in a phone interview recently, he invoked an Arabic expression. The pain was so unbearable, he said, that “you forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.”
Arar, a thirty-four-year-old graduate of McGill University whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teen-ager, was arrested on September 26, 2002, at John F. Kennedy Airport. He was changing planes; he had been on vacation with his family in Tunisia, and was returning to Canada. Arar was detained because his name had been placed on the United States Watch List of terrorist suspects. He was held for the next thirteen days, as American officials questioned him about possible links to another suspected terrorist. Arar said that he barely knew the suspect, although he had worked with the man’s brother. Arar, who was not formally charged, was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet. The plane flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan.
During the flight, Arar said, he heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of “the Special Removal Unit.” The Americans, he learned, planned to take him next to Syria. Having been told by his parents about the barbaric practices of the police in Syria, Arar begged crew members not to send him there, arguing that he would surely be tortured. His captors did not respond to his request; instead, they invited him to watch a spy thriller that was aired on board....
Read more:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-torture
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)
Javaman
(62,530 posts)Syria is horrible there is no debating that, but Yemen is also horrible.
we can agree on that, yes?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)While the 'U.S. war crimes in Yemen' threads have been getting action...
So I'm just wondering why...
Javaman
(62,530 posts)perhaps the war in Yemen is getting press because the U.S. is about to approve an arms deal with the Saudi's.
you have to read more than just the headlines.
cali
(114,904 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Do not put words in my fucking mouth, ma'am
All I'm trying to do is get some attention paid to my thread... Guess I'll keep kicking it until someone replies
Thank you
Javaman
(62,530 posts)"But I get it... Rightly or wrongly, I'll admit I have a certain 'reputation' here, and not only am I the least popular legacy poster, certain people have been trying to get me banned for 2+ years... If you or Cali had posted the Amnesty report, it would have 100+ replies by now."
cali
(114,904 posts)give a shit".
I posted PROOF that I have posted about Syria repeatedly. You have assiduously avoided that obvious post with its several links.
Don't try to squirm out of your own words.
cali
(114,904 posts)No one credible- and I mean no one- disputes that.
From the NYT editorial board:
A hospital associated with Doctors Without Borders. A school. A potato chip factory. Under international law, those facilities in Yemen are not legitimate military targets. Yet all were bombed in recent days by warplanes belonging to a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, killing more than 40 civilians.
The United States is complicit in this carnage. It has enabled the coalition in many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis to mollify them after the nuclear deal with Iran. Congress should put the arms sales on hold and President Obama should quietly inform Riyadh that the United States will withdraw crucial assistance if the Saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate peace.
The airstrikes are further evidence that the Saudis have escalated their bombing campaign against Houthi militias, which control the capital, Sana, since peace talks were suspended on Aug. 6, ending a cease-fire that was declared more than four months ago. They also suggest one of two unpleasant possibilities. One is that the Saudis and their coalition of mostly Sunni Arab partners have yet to learn how to identify permissible military targets. The other is that they simply do not care about killing innocent civilians. The bombing of the hospital, which alone killed 15 people, was the fourth attack on a facility supported by Doctors Without Borders in the past year even though all parties to the conflict were told exactly where the hospitals were located.
In all, the war has killed more than 6,500 people, displaced more than 2.5 million others and pushed one of the world’s poorest countries from deprivation to devastation. A recent United Nations report blamed the coalition for 60 percent of the deaths and injuries to children last year. Human rights groups and the United Nations have suggested that war crimes may have been committed.
Much more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/opinion/stop-saudi-arms-sales-until-carnage-in-yemen-ends.html?_r=0
It is shameful to deny that these aren't "real" war crimes.
Silence is the voice of complicity. What does that make defending war crimes?
Response to cali (Reply #5)
Blue_Tires This message was self-deleted by its author.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)we aren't allowed to bring up the horrible things going on in Yemen as well?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)I'd have thought it worthy of attention, but that's just me
But I get it... Rightly or wrongly, I'll admit I have a certain 'reputation' here, and not only am I the least popular legacy poster, certain people have been trying to get me banned for 2+ years... If you or Cali had posted the Amnesty report, it would have 100+ replies by now.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)Yes, there are horrible things going on in Syria and we all have known that for the last 4 fucking years of death and destruction. Much of which is at the hands of the U.S. bombing campaign.
but the U.S. is also now finalizing an arms deal to allow the Saudis' to continue their bombing in Yemen.
both are horrible places.
both are humanitarian crisis's.
But we can agree that human's have the ability to be concerned about more than one thing.
cali
(114,904 posts)I've been posting and posting and fucking posting stories about Syria and Aleppo.
The stories we aren't talking about: Aleppo.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028087152
There be heroes. In a city of two million people there are only 35 doctors remaining
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10028092396
Fighting Rages in Aleppo, Syria, Killing Dozens of Civilians
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028099187
There's much more. I've been posting about Syria for years.
It is absolute bullshit of the most odiferous sort to suggest that people on the left don't care about Syria and are only interested in slamming the U.S.
Shameful.