Exclusive: The West’s “humanitarian interventionists” howl over bloody conflicts when an adversary can be blamed but go silent when an ally is doing the killing, such as Saudi Arabia in Yemen, reports Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
Only a few months ago, interventionists were demanding a militant response by Washington to what George Soros branded “a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions” — the killing of “hundreds of people” by Russian and Syrian government bombing of rebel-held neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo.
Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)
Leon Wieseltier, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former New Republic editor, was denouncing the Obama administration as “a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time,” asserting that its failure to “act against evil in Aleppo” was like tolerating “the evil in Auschwitz.”
How strange, then, that so many of the same “humanitarian” voices have been so quiet of late about the continued killing of many more innocent people in Yemen, where tens of thousands of civilians have died and 12 million people face famine. More than a thousand children die each week from preventable diseases related to malnutrition and systematic attacks on the country’s food infrastructure by a Saudi-led military coalition, which aims to impose a regime friendly to Riyadh over the whole country.
“The U.S. silence has been deafening,” said Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for global advocacy at Human Rights Watch, last summer. “This blatant double standard deeply undermines U.S. efforts to address human rights violations whether in Syria or elsewhere in the world.”
Official acquiescence — or worse — from Washington and other major capitals is encouraging the relentless killing of Yemen’s civilians by warplanes from Saudi Arabia and its allies. Last week, their bombs struck a funeral gathering north of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, killing nine women and a child and injuring several dozen more people.
A day earlier, officials reported a deadly “double-tap” airstrike, first targeting women at a funeral in Sanaa, then aimed at medical responders who rushed in to save the wounded. A United Nations panel of experts condemned a similar double-tap attack by Saudi coalition forces in October, which killed or wounded hundreds of civilians, as a violation of international law.
The Tragedy of Mokha
On Feb. 12, an air strike on the Red Sea port city of Mokha killed all six members of a family headed by the director of a maternal and childhood center. Coalition ground forces had launched an attack on Mokha two weeks earlier.
Xinhua news agency reported, “the battles have since intensified and trapped thousands of civilian residents in the city, as well as hampered the humanitarian operation to import vital food and fuel supplies . . . The Geneva-based UN human rights office said that it received extremely worrying reports suggesting civilians and civilian objects have been targeted over the past two weeks in the southwestern port city . . . Reports received by UN also show that more than 200 houses have been either partially damaged or completely destroyed by air strikes in the past two weeks.”
The U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator further reported that “scores of civilians” had been killed or wounded by the bombing and shelling of Mokha, and that residents were stranded without water or other basic life-supporting services.
That could be Aleppo, minus only the tear-jerking photos of dead and wounded children on American television. However, unlike Syria, Yemen’s rebels don’t have well-financed public relations offices in Western capitals. They pay no lip service to the United States, democracy, or international human rights. Their foe Saudi Arabia is a friend of Washington, not a long-time adversary. In consequence, few American pundits summon any moral outrage at the Saudi-led coalition, despite findings by a United National Panel of Experts that many of its airstrikes violate international law and, in some cases, represent “war crimes.”
Aiding and Abetting
The United States hasn’t simply turned a blind eye to such crimes; it has aided them by selling Saudi Arabia the warplanes it flies and the munitions it drops on Yemeni civilians. It has also siphoned 54 million pounds of jet fuel from U.S. tanker planes to refuel coalition aircraft on bombing runs. The pace of U.S. refueling operations has reportedly increased sharply in the last year.
Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The Obama administration initially supported the Saudi coalition in order to buy Riyadh’s reluctant support for the Iran nuclear deal. Over time, Saudi Arabia joined with anti-Iran hawks to portray Yemen’s rebels as pawns of Tehran to justify continued support for the war. Most experts — including U.S. intelligence officials — insist to the contrary that the rebels are a genuinely indigenous force that enjoys limited Iranian support at best.
As I have documented previously, all of the fighting in Yemen has damaged U.S. interests by creating anarchy conducive to the growth of Al Qaeda extremists. They have planned or inspired major acts of terrorism against the West, including an attempt to blow up a U.S. passenger plane in 2009 and a deadly attack on the Parisian newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. The Saudis tolerate them as Sunni allies against the rebels, in the name of curbing Iran.
Though the Obama administration is gone, the Trump administration is flush with ideologues who are eager to take a stand against Tehran through Yemen and look tough on “terrorism.” Within days of taking office, President Trump approved a commando raid targeting an alleged Al Qaeda compound in central Yemen that went awry, killing an estimated 10 women and children. The administration has also diverted a U.S. destroyer to patrol Yemen’s coast.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to his credit, has cited “the urgent need for the unfettered delivery of humanitarian assistance throughout Yemen,” according to a department spokesman. But no amount of humanitarian aid will save Yemen’s tormented people from the bombs made in America and dropped from U.S.-made warplanes, with little protest from Washington’s so-called “humanitarian interventionists.”
Jonathan Marshall is author of many recent articles on arms issues, including “Obama’s Unkept Promise on Nuclear War,” “How World War III Could Start,” “NATO’s Provocative Anti-Russian Moves,” “Escalations in a New Cold War,” and “Ticking Closer to Midnight.”
Isn’t that what the Israelis have done in the past, target medical responders? Didn’t they do that in Gaza? May be they’ve trained the Saudis?
I don’t think it’s moral hypocrisy. Putin is in Syria. He isn’t in Yemen. You attack your enemy where you find him. Once you define Putin as an enemy, for whatever reason and however unjustified some people may find that reason, you attack him where he is and that has nothing to do with morality. It’s just common sense.
The hotheads in Yemen are a force for evil. They are being fought by General Whatshisface, our guy in Yemen and our gallant Gulf Stare Arab allies. America has a moral obligation to see our pals, the Shriners, through their current troubles, for, aside from Israel and the Gulf states, they’re the best friends America has in the region – with apologizes to the good Lebanons and the King Michael of Jordan. Let freedom’s eagle sore!
NOFP
Not
Out
Freaking
Problem
If Yemen doesn’t want attacked, it should send its fighter jets to blast Saudi Arabia and Mecca.
But civil wars are not the responsibility of USA.
One thing is certain. This system that we have promotes certifiable psychopaths straight to the top of the power structure. Anyone who could sanction the mass slaughter of innocents on the scale they do, is right up there with the bloodiest tyrants the world has ever known. Their criminal hubris is as chilling as Freddie Kruger made real.
Very profound – the system draws psychopaths…
Lois Gagnon, Ain’t That The Truth !!!
Yes, in a poorly-regulated economy, it is the greedy bully-boy who rises to dominance of big business, not the hardworking well educated professional who may have some moral education. The warmongers could get nowhere without the control of mass media and elections by economic concentrations. It is the rise of economic concentrations that has led to world wars and the generations of warmonger tyrants since WWII, and their dominance of media to demand war, their dominance of policy by the executive, and their destruction of freedom of thought and expression.
It’s usually said that men quest for power because they want to live forever in the history books. I guess many (most?) of them don’t mind that history’s judgement will brand them oppressors, hypocrites, warmongers and genocidal maniacs.
Back in the 1950’s political cartoonists like Herblock and Shoemaker used to draw vignettes of the great dictators in the afterlife. I’m sure there was more than one that depicted Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo playing poker down in Hades with the A-bomb and the H-bomb also in the game. They were all smoking cigars and drinking hootch like heavies do. I think Stalin had just died and wanted a seat in the card game in one such cartoon. I’m sure that game has since expanded to include many more players, and someday even Barack and Hillary will be dealt in. The Devil must be running a huge casino for deceased tyrants by now.
Bad is good now…and really in a sick sadistic way……I have surrendered……nothing anyone can do……..
Light something.
Realist, how come Harry Truman wasn’t in the cartoon ‘
winning the card game in Hell and Burning 10 times Hotter
and Screaming 10 times louder as his “Reward”?
After all, little old smiling Harry from Missouri was the only one to
actually use the A-Bomb. May He Burn In Hell Forever.
Harry still had another 20 years of life in him at the time. As did Mao, Tito and other leaders considered villains by the American media. I’d like to read the history books a hundred years from now, assuming humans are still around to write them.
Nearly two million Brits have protested for understandable reasons against Donald Trump being hosted by their queen. As bad as our (?) president might be, Her Majesty has hosted much worse, including former kings of Saudi Arabia and a number of cruel dictators.
Mostly everything from the west is total BS….And that’s not applying to Trump……The Obama critters ???….and I say critters because they are the lowest of low…….Meanwhile the world’s most mysterious AWESOMELY EQUIPTMENT army ISIS has drones……Now please tell me how a desert resistant army receives DRONE TECNOLOGY……..Israel? Saudi Arabia? USA???
Leon Wieseltier, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former New Republic editor, was denouncing the Obama administration as “a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time,” asserting that its failure to “act against evil in Aleppo” was like tolerating “the evil in Auschwitz.”
Aleppo, the greatest atrocity of our time? Really? As tragic as Aleppo and Yemen have proved to be they are not the greatest atrocities of our time. The illegal and immoral war on Iraq, supported by Mr. Wieseltier – https://newrepublic.com/article/112701/iraq-war-10th-anniversary-symposium – remains the greatest crime of the 21st Century; that is, our time. Mr. Wieseltier and his fellow warmongers and hypocrites should not only STFU but go find a deep hole into which they might crawl and hide in shame. Many opponents of the Iraq war predicted it would destabilize the Middle East and possibly beyond. Aleppo and Yemen can therefor be regarded as consequences of that crime.
Evil is relative. If there is a lesson for our times, that’s the one. It used to be simply banal but now it’s important, too.
Absolutely about the destruction of Iraq as the crime of the century (and its prerequisite 9/11)…..Leave it to someone from Brookings to twist the reality of Aleppo into some bullshit about Assad’s army brutally crushing their civilian brethren. Yes, Obama, why did you stand by and do nothing while your pentagon and alphabet soup was busy waging a dirty vile mercenary war on Assad & the people of Syria? Why did you think it ok for those mercenaries to garrison themselves in East Aleppo (holding populations hostage & committing atrocities against them; and shelling the population of West Aleppo) and then go on to completely misportray the situation?
But Brookings wants us to think poor Obama watched Assad perpetrate the greatest atrocity of our time, when in fact Obama & others foreign to Syria and her people bear responsibility for the atrocities.
Agreed!
Jonathan Marshall – great report! Keep up the good work.
“A United Nations panel of experts condemned…” Useless, ineffective organization that should be thrown into the trash bin of history.
“The U.S. silence has been deafening,” says Humans Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch, whose voice helps facilitate regime change, was in 2010 given a $100 million pledge by George Soros over a ten-year period.
“Donald Trump has yet to take power, but a major human rights group heavily funded by billionaire progressive George Soros is already out with a new report lumping the U.S. in with major human rights abusers like China, Russia, Egypt and Syria all because of the Republican president-elect.
As The New York Times notes, the designation of the U.S. as a major human rights abuser marks a first for HRW in the 27 years it has released its annual survey.
“The rise of populism poses a dangerous threat to human rights,” Roth said in a video introduction of the report.”
Way to go, Trump! The U.S. is now on Human Rights Watch list. Kenneth Roth says so. Kenneth Roth is the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, and has been running it since 1993, for 23 years.
“In 1987, Roth was hired by Aryeh Neier to be deputy director of HRW and since 1993 (when Neier left to become head of George Soros’ Open Society Institute), Roth has been the organization’s executive director.”
Open Society Institute, Human Rights Watch = Soros. So Soros breaks the Bank of England in 1992, and voila, the Open Society Institute is born! All in a hard day’s work.
Roth has a two-minute video on human rights (2017). In it he mentions Erdogan of Turkey, Sisi of Egypt, Xi Jinping of China and Putin of Russia. Nowhere in his video is the word “Israel” mentioned.
The US is being far from silent in the ‘actions speak louder than words’ department. It continues to mount an embargo on any assistance going into the Houthi-held areas that aren’t cleared through the US ‘defense facility’ at Djibouti and that is highly-restricted. A load of food and and medical supplies was allowed to ‘rot’ after being unloaded there from a ‘detained’ Iranian vessel. Arms and other equipment is still ferried directly to the invading forces and the UN is permitted to supply some aid to ‘safe’ (liberated) parts of Yemen. The US drone campaign, as well as strategic raids on terror targets, continues unabated, as it has for he part 25 years. And of course the US sells the ordinance and equipment used by the Saudis and some other invading forces.
The silence in most respects is deafening because of the resulting explosions. What’s missing is any cogent reporting on what the US is actually doing in Yemen.
A Must read article at link below:
—————————————————————————-
“Yemen: The Anguish, Bloodshed and Forgotten Heroes in a Forgotten War”
Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/10/13/yemen-the-anguish-bloodshed-and-forgotten-heroes-in-a-forgotten-war/
Stephen – great link. Thanks.
As I remember, it was in one of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films when he was questioned by one of his superiors regarding his predilection for shooting criminal suspects. To which he replied. ‘There’s nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot.’ That pretty much sums up US foreign policy. In this case, the right people are anyone who stands in the way of the US hegemonic project. Unlike the Russians whose bombs are bad bombs which kill good people, our bombs are good bombs who kill bad people.
The whole thing is patently infantile, but it speaks volumes about western civilization and where it is going.
I wonder if the human race will survive long enough to be able to look back a few hundred years and reflect on the current era.
If so, I wonder if it will be considered a second Dark Ages.
It’s got to be one of the most violent times ever, and given the power of the weapons and the huuuge supply surely this century plus the last one are the deadliest ever……?
evelync, this Dark Age is different from the first one in the sense that it is so GROTESQUELY IMBECILIC that
one has to finally laugh instead of crying. No, the Human
Race will destroy itself way before a few hundred years
from now. I’d say 25-35 years from now, at the most.
And of course The Land of the Free And The Home of the
Brave is Leading The Way to Annihilation.
So Dance, Dance, Dance to the Music of the Earth’s
Rhythm & Blues, And ” Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, But Rage, Rage Against the Dying Of The Light”
(Dylan Thomas). And Laugh Like It’s a Marx Brothers Movie.
I imagine the future will look back on our civilization as being one of missed opportunity. Here we are the nation with the largest military this world has ever seen. Why we could dictate peace if our values were to do so. Instead we create all sorts of boogie men to run fear into the hearts of our civilian population, and thusly the Deep State gets granted complete access to rob the national treasures of our great land to go and fight wars. If the future somehow ends up acquiring a rational fair minded people, we here stuck in our current time will look stupid and greedy for what we have rot.
Why the necessity too “dictate” anything? The USA is the wealthiest power on earth, not because of its military, but perhaps despite it. It could have done a world-wide Marshall Plan that would have brought far more peace, and respect for America than any dictation, and at far less cost.
America was ‘on the right track’ after World War Two with a notably generous spirit until the mean-minded idiots gained control. They still run the country. With diminishing returns and a staggering debt.
Either there are an awful lot more bad people than we thought, or Americans can’t shoot as well as Dirty Harry. They should know, however, what happens when you give a goof a gun – that’s part of US history.
My impression was that President Obama’s support for the Saudis in this was the payoff for wrecking the Russian economy with free-flowing oil, reducing the world price. Having the middle name “Hussein” may not have been enough.
If there is anything to my ugly hypothesis, it sure makes fools of the many Republicans who mocked the President as weak and indecisive.
For those of us who are pro-American, and who like Mr Obama, it certainly takes a deep breath at the sore reminder that realpolitik is red in tooth and claw.
Mr. Lloyd Jones: So you “like Obama”. Why? Is it because you like
Drones that tear little babies’ bodies into tiny fragments?
Is it because you like Criminal Bankers being Bailed Out,
and rewarded handsomely for ruining millions of working
folks’ lives, while the guy you “like” turns his back on those
same working citizens? Is it because you like the jailing of
whistleblowers who reveal dirty secrets the government
doesn’t want the citizens to know? Jailing the most Whistleblowers
in History? Is it because you like War Crimes, and a Chief
Executive who makes JOKES about War Crimes?
Or is it because he’s a “Cool Cat” who smiles a lot?
You seem to have the Moral Sense of a Jellyfish, but I don’t
want to disgrace Jellyfish by associating them with you.
There is not a double-standard. There is only a single standard to be applied whenever the footsoldiers of Soros’ masters in the Anglo-American financial oligarchy are facing defeat – whether they are jihadists in Aleppo or swastika bearing Nazis in Kiev. That outcry, almost always against Putin’s Russia, is then echoed by Obama and his new trusty sidekick John McCain.
Look at recent history from above, take into consideration all of the lies that have been revealed through whistle blowers, leaks, good investigative work, and then ask yourself who has been at the forefront of it all. Be honest.
The Saudi princes are vulnerable. In order to maintain their position, they must feed oil money into the religious arm of their country (or face annihilation), and they must also keep the U.S. happy. The U.S. turn a blind eye toward the Saudi money spreading Wahhabism throughout the world; all they care about is that the money keep flowing.
But this isn’t really about religion, the Saudis against Iran or the Saudis against Syria or Yemen, Shiites against Sunnis. Same as the fighting in Syria has not been because of a ‘civil war’. These are just plausible excuses told to unsuspecting Westerners who wonder why these wars continue. All of these wars would disappear overnight if the U.S. wanted them to. Sanctions, anyone? How about the threat of a good leveling of your country, your palaces, your malls?
The U.S. (and Israel) want to get their chessboard in order, and the way I see it is that the Saudis are used to bring this about, just as ISIS and al-Qaeda are funded, trained, armed and used as proxies to fight their wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa. The Saudis are pawns, but they have no choice; they are told what to do. The U.S. arms dealers and weapons manufacturers are, of course, happy with the wars, but I don’t believe the wars are being waged on their behalf, to make them rich. They are just lucky beneficiaries of the fun and games.
What’s really being fought over in Yemen? I don’t believe it’s religion. Follow the money.
there is no morality cast in the shadow of a dying empire. it was built fast and will die even faster. the fake news of 911, the saudi involvement and the criminality of the release of saudis just after 911 is simply an interference with justice. this should let the deepest of patriots recognize that it is time to turn inward and stop the blather about the deadly hypocrisy. the enemies of the constitution (what’s left of it) need to be imprisoned and the prisoners of the corporatized penal system need to be released. the base mentality that operates the killing machine in yemen is the same mentality that controls the totalitarianism of the new U.S.A. watch it carefully it is moving between your ears.
The constitution creates two classes of people in America: 527 salaried elected members of the USA; and 340,000,000 not-elected. The constitution allows the 527 persons to keep secrets from the 340M and the constitution allows the elected, salaried few to separate themselves, their activities, and their intentions from access and view of the masses.
The problem of global government mismanagement is the constitution.. Its not the criminals that may have found ways to get themselves elected The problem is the cartels, special interest briberies and secrets allowed to those in public positions.
Yes, the elected may be criminals but the real problem is not the elected, instead it is in a constitution; that makes impossible stopping those who are criminals and whose intentions are unworthy from getting elected.
Any constitution which allows systems and means to exist which enable those with unworthy intentions to gain control the 527 salaried persons elected to operate the government is fatally weak. Essentially unworthy people have discovered mechanisms which direct the government’s use of force, its control over the flows of money, its control over culture and custom, and its control over legal control of the people). Worse, those in control have developed this wonderful machine of government into a slave driving machine and made its product extortion and bounty extraction from those it is suppose to protect from such things by the wisdom of good governance. Those elected are middle men, hired to push the buttons that operate the machine, that has been engineered for unworthy purposes and made available to the unworthy.
Response to Chirs Chuba I saw video after video of White hats in Syria busying turning Syrians into history.
The problem, as the founders knew well by the warnings of Aristotle, is that demagogues become tyrants over democracy by creating foreign enemies to demand domestic power as false protectors, and to accuse their moral superiors of disloyalty. They can do this now because economic concentrations control mass media and elections.
The founders provided no protection of US government from economic power because it was not concentrated then. The emerging middle class failed to add these protections as economic powers grew. A new War of Independence from economic aristocracy is needed to restore democracy and eliminate foreign wars of aggression.
You’ve probably seen this before, but here is something more recent, by Hermann Goering:
Interview in Göring’s cell (3 January 1946)
Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Regarding ‘double tap strikes’, I googled for videos after a 60 Minutes episode on the White Helmets since they claimed that 160 of their workers have been killed by those type of strikes. The interviewer ate it up. The funny thing is that I could only find videos of people TALKING about double tap strikes on the White Helmets but I accidentally found good video evidence of the Saudis doing actual double tap strikes on the poor Yemenis. It made me sick. While it’s not my call, Graham, McCain, and Rubio are going to hell.
The White Helmets are full of it, they are constantly videoing their so-called rescues. If there were double tap strikes, they would have captured those too.
Off topic, but I just have to let CNers know: there’s a brand new absolutely spectacular documentary film showing now and for the next few weeks at indie theaters across the nation, it’s called “I Am Not your Negro.” It’s about writer-intellectual James Baldwin. Can’t recommend it enough.
Chris Hedges recently wrote that it’s one of the finest movies he’s ever seen.
Thanks so much, Drew!!!
I found it at a Landmark Theater in Houston.
Sounds excellent!
Appreciate the heads up?
Here’s more of what Chris Hedges wrote about I Am Not Your Negro: “…one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen—I would have stayed in the theater in New York to see the film again if the next showing had not been sold out.”
That’s extraordinary for a documentary – it must have been very beautifully done – I’m so looking forward to it.
Thank you!
P.S.
Meant an exclamation mark NOT a question mark, lol….
Absolutely a great movie…only because of the subject. I saw it on SuperSuck Sunday! There are YouTube videos that are Well with it….William F Buckley vs Baldwin at Cambridge gets the best of both..though Buckley knows he’s toast he gives it a try..
A citizen of what is a crypto-military dictatorship is expected to swallow a lot of garbage. But we should never expect that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today will do anything other than increasing that violence in the times to come. Until the End.
As long as the money tit of oil nourishes the super-rich elites, they will continue to kneel at the foot of the Saudi king. What surprises me is that the Trumpistas and the other greed-besotted have not yet come to the easy solution of just taking the candy from the pampered babies and sending them all back to roam the dunes.
Oh yes, that magic word: turnover. As long as the Saudis are using their weapons, they will need to buy more. More weapons bought, the greater the turnover. The greater the turnover, the higher the stock price. Etc. You know how the closed circle of finance functions.
But seriously, if Trump was a real savage businessman, he’d take the oil, screw the weapons industry and send half the population of the Red States to colonize the place and run the oil industry. Prosperity for all!
After that kind of action, his family would rule the United States for ever.
(Am I serious?) (I don’t know. What do you think?)