033 The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25, Page 4: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

033 The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25, Page 4: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

Now for the Outrage, and we have two, or in a way one and a-half as they involve the same person and the same topic, but two different examples.

The person is President Joe Blahden; the issue is his foreign and military policies.

On February 25, on Blahden's order, the US dropped seven 500-pound bombs in eastern Syria on what is claimed to have been a site housing Iran-backed militias. The attack, which killed 22 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was undertaken without Congressional authorization and was not in response to any imminent threat. In fact, it was avowedly labeled retaliation for a rocket attack a week earlier on a US base in northern Iraq, a base which the Iraqi parliament said a full year ago it wanted closed. To what should be no one's surprise, this "retaliation" did not stop and more likely provoked the rocket attack which followed the bombing.

It was so far removed from any useful military purpose that military experts quoted by USA Today said it was actually about "sending a message" that the US intended to remain "engaged" in the Middle East.

Perhaps the worst part of this was when White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of the bombing, "when threats are posed, he has the right to take an action at the time, and in the manner of his choosing" and insisted it was within his "Article II authority," adopting exactly the same sort of "presidents can do whatever they damn please with the military, we don't need no stinking Congress" attitude that has plagued our nation with war for decades without resolution or end.

Our second example shows that on the other hand, Joe Blahden doesn't always have to show he's tough enough to "take action." Consider the case of Saudi Arabia.

As a candidate, he promised to make Saudi Arabia "the pariah that they are" over the 2018 murder of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.

But when it came time to actually do something, he refused to take any action against Saudi Crown Prince and dictator Mohammed bin Salman even in the face of a US intelligence report concluding bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi's murder.

State Department spokesman Ned Price blew off the moral collapse by calling Saudi Arabia "a hugely influential country in the Arab world.” In other words, "Hey what did you expect?"

Instead, Price said, the US is "recalibrating" its relationship with the kingdom, a “recalibration” that looks a lot like another case of Obama 2.0: tsk-tsking and tut-tutting about massive human rights abuses, oppression, imprisonment, torture, kidnapping, and now murder while doing absolutely nothing so long as a few lessers can be thrown under the bus for the sake of appearances.

So again it's about "sending a message." It's just that this time, the message is "if you're at the top, then no matter what, so long as you sell us your oil and buy our guns, it's business as usual."

That is, the usual Outrage.

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page One: A Longer Look at Yemen

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page One: A Longer Look at Yemen

We start with one of our occasional features. It's called A Longer Look and the focus this time is on Yemen.

I have over the past 10 years or so brought up the war in Yemen, whose on and off civil war, which has been marked by some shifting alliances, is so complicated that even trustworthy sources, such as the BBC, the Guardian, al-Jazeera, and the Council on Foreign Relation's Global Conflicts Tracker don't agree on the roots of the current incarnation of the conflict beyond that it began with the 2014 overthrow of the government of 33-year strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh in favor of his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, creating an opening for Houthi rebels to secure the northern province of Saada and thereafter seize the nation's capital of Sanaa.

What every one can agree on, however, is that since Saudi Arabia's intervention in 2015 the civil war has become essentially a proxy war between the Saudis, with the United Arab Emirates as a minor partner, on the one hand supporting Hadi's government and Iran on the other supporting the Houthi rebels. In other words, it's turned into a regional power struggle fought out on the bodies of Yemenis.

From the start, the US has cast its lot with the Saudis, first through US drone strikes supposedly aimed at terrorism that actually began under George Bushleague but increased dramatically during the administration of The Amazing Mr. O, and later through the more direct involvement of continuing to sell arms and supply intelligence to Saudi Arabia even as it became undeniable that the Saudis were committing war crimes in Yemen, including blockading ports, blocking entry of food, medical supplies, and other humanitarian assistance, and engaging in a campaign of bombing civilian targets, including hospitals, markets, and residential areas.

As a result, Yemen is in the midst of the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. A 2018 report from Save the Children estimated that 85,000 Yemeni children had already starved to death and this October the UN reported that 100,000 children in southern Yemen alone could die of acute malnutrition if urgent humanitarian aid is not available.

How bad is it?

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification is a multinational project designed to present a common global scale for classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity and malnutrition.

So how bad is it? The first map on the right is its measure of current food insecurity in Yemen. Yellow means stressed; orange means crisis; red means emergency.

The second one is its map of projected food insecurity for the first half of 2021.

It's very bad - and it's getting worse.

And now COVID-19 has hit Yemen and is spreading unchecked in a country marked by a decimated health care infrastructure and disrupted access to clean water, sanitary systems, sufficient nutrition, and adequate shelter.

Even before COVID, the nature of the Saudi-led war had become so obvious and outrageous that in April 2019 Congress actually invoked the War Powers Act, trying to put an end to US involvement. Tweetie-pie vetoed it and there wasn't enough support to override it.

Since then, there have been several attempts to block arms sales to the Saudis; support for that has increased each time, but not yet enough to get it through.

Now there could be some hope: Joe Blahden, who was something of a dove in the Amazing Mr. O's White House, having opposed the war in Libya and the surge in Afghanistan, is heading into office having pledged to end unauthorized US participation in the war in Yemen. The word "unauthorized" leaves a lot of wiggle room: Does it actually mean an end to arms sales plus an end to the provision of logistical support, targeting assistance, spare parts, and intelligence? Or does it just mean wanting Congress to sign off on what's already being done?

We'll have to see but at least now there is more reason to think we can do this, that we can put an end to our part in this monstrosity, more hope than we've had so far. (In fairness, I'll note that some of those other forms of assistance, particularly logistical support, have already been cut back under pressure from Congress and the public.)

Speaking of now, not to be denied his literal pound of flesh, a week after the election, when any sane person knew he had lost, Tweetie-pie announced an intention to sell $23 billion in advanced weaponry to the Saudi ally in the war, the United Arab Emirates, including up to 50 F-35s. They are rushing to make it a done dealbefore January 20, apparently concerned that any such sale would be questioned by a Blahden administration - a concern given weight by the fact that a group of 29 arms control and human rights groups have condemned the sale, which would help give Blahden political cover to cancel it if it is done.

What may be worse is that Secretary of State Mike Pompous is reportedly soon going to classify the Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organization, which is likely simply to make matters worse by further restricting international aid efforts out of fear of being sanctioned by the US and driving up the already-unaffordable prices for food and other basic necessities, particularly in Houthi-controlled areas, which now encompass about 70% of Yemen's population.

Aid groups might try to find a work-around, but less altruistic institutions such as banks and shipping lines, a "terrorist" designation would probably deter anykind of work in Yemen.

Dave Harden, a former top official at the US Agency for International Development, believes the move could cause “a full collapse of the economy and complete devaluation of the currency” while effectively ending imports of food and vital sanitation products.

But the Tweetie-pie gangsters just don't care because labeling the Houthis terrorists will also be a poke in the eye to Iran, which, again, supports the Houthis and the hope is that this will anger Iran enough to be a hindrance to Blahden's intent to resurrect the Iran nuclear deal while being politically difficult for Blahden to reverse for fear of being called "soft on Iran."

Frankly, he should just realize he's going to be called that no matter what he does and just go ahead and do the right thing: Withdraw all support from the Saudis (and their allies) about Yemen; if the arms deal with the UAE has been finalized, cancel it; call for a ceasefire; demand that humanitarian assistance be allowed in the country and contribute toward that aid; if the Houthis have been designated as terrorists either revoke it or at the least assure aid workers they will experience no repercussions from the US; and acknowledge Congress's Constitutional authority in matters of war and peace - the latter of which I think will be the hardest one for us to achieve.

Look, you know how I feel about Joe Blahden: I greeted his election not with enthusiasm but with relief. But there are some ways in which he can be more than just "not Tweetie-pie," he can even be pretty good if the deeds live up to the words. This could be one of those ways. For the sake of honor and humanity and tens of millions of Yemenis, I hope it will be.

27.6 - Outrage of the Week: war crimes in Yemen

Outrage of the Week: war crimes in Yemen

Now for our other regular feature; this is the Outrage of the Week.

The poorest country in the Middle East is Yemen. And it has been in a bloody civil war since late 2014.

I'm not going to even try to disentangle the history of the war; I will just note that the actual current round of fighting, which is not the first Yemen has seen, broke out when Houthi rebels seized control of Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, in September 2014. A few months later, they seized the presidential compound, forcing President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to flee the country in late February 2015.

Since then, the fighting between supporters of the Hadi government on the one side - with outside aid coming from the US via drone strikes and from Saudi Arabia via blockades and an air campaign - and the Houthi on the other - with outside aid from Iran - has continued and gotten more vicious over time.

Despite the on-going brutality and suffering, neither side has gained a decisive advantage.

What has happened is that upwards of 10,000 have died in what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calls "the forgotten war." The health service there has "completely collapsed" and health workers have been working without pay for more than six months. UNICEF reports that of the total population of 27 million people, an estimated 21.2 million, nearly 80% of the total, need humanitarian assistance of some kind. Half of that number is children.

Of that 27 million, 3.3 million, more than 10 percent of the entire population, have been forced from their homes. Around 17 million people in the country are "food insecure," meaning they don't know from one day to the next if there will be enough food to eat, and 6.8 million of them "one step away from famine." There are 1.5 million malnourished children the country, 370,000 of them severely malnourished.

And over two-thirds of the people of Yemen lack access to safe drinking water, which has in turn lead to the worst outbreak of cholera in the world, an outbreak that is getting worse by almost any measure.

By the end of June, there were nearly 250,000 reported cases of cholera in Yemen, with thousands more every week. Already 1,500 have died. More die every day.

And at this point let's be absolutely clear about two things:

One, as noted in April by Idriss Jazairy, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and international sanctions, it is the air and sea blockade imposed on Yemen by Saudi Arabia that is the biggest single cause of this humanitarian catastrophe. That blockade has restricted and disrupted the import of food, fuel, and medical supplies as well as humanitarian aid. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has been carrying on a campaign of air strikes - over one-third of which have been against civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, markets, and mosques - that has been responsible for the destruction of infrastructure that has lead to the hunger and the cholera epidemic.

That is, Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a pattern of war crimes in Yemen.

And two, this would not be possible without the collusion of the US. We are actively aiding, abetting, and enabling war crimes in Yemen.

We are the ones who sell the Saudis the jets and the bombs.

We are the ones who helped with intelligence.

Sen. Chris Murphy

We are the ones who provided them with precision-guided weapons on the idea that they would help the Saudis to better avoid civilian targets only to, after discovering they were instead being used to better target civilian targets, nonetheless have now approved sending another $500 million worth of those weapons after an attempt in the Senate a couple of weeks ago to block the deal failed by a vote of 53-47.

The aid we give is even more direct: As Sen. Chris Murphy pointedly noted during the debate over that arms deal, "The Saudis simply could not operate this bombing campaign without us." Not only do we sell them the weapons, not only do we stand side by side with them when they are reviewing intelligence about targets, but "their planes can't fly without US refueling capacity."

The Saudi air war, the Saudi war crimes, could not happen without us. We are involved. We are guilty. We are guilty of war crimes in Yemen.

There is a move now in the House to bar the US from refueling Saudi jets. Frankly, while a worthy effort, the chances of that passing Congress and overcoming an inevitable veto are negligible.

So day after day, we are guilty of war crimes in Yemen. And the White House is prepared to encourage that while the Congress, it appears, is prepared to stand by and let it happen.

And that is truly an outrage.

What's Left #27

What's Left
for the week of July 7-13, 2017

Sorry for being late with this. I had some "I really, really, really hate computers" days this week, something with which we call can identify.

This week:

Good News: House Appropriations Committee votes to repeal AUMF
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-panel-approves-amendment-that-would-strip-trumps-war-authorization-powers/
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/340066-lawmakers-applaud-after-panel-approves-language-revoking-war-authority
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/340132-republicans-say-war-authorization-amendment-was-out-of-order

Good News: EPA can't delay methane leak rule
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2017/07/04/DC-federal-appeals-court-blocks-Environmental-Protection-Agency-s-effort-to-suspend-Obama-era-methane-pollution-rule/stories/201707040055

Good News: German parliament votes for same-sex marriage
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/30/534970093/german-lawmakers-approve-same-sex-marriage

Not Good News: Texas Supreme Court says states can deny benefits to same-sex couples
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/lgbt/2017/06/30/texas-supreme-court-rules-gay-couples-notguaranteedspousal-benefits
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/06/30/texas-supreme-court-ruling-houston-same-sex-marriage-benefits/

Clown Award: TheRump supporters
https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/chris-christie-beach/532536/
http://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-president-donald-trump-health-care-republican-gop-were-all-gonna-die-629883?utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=most_read&utm_medium=most_read1
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-fans-throw-conniption-fit-after-npr-tweets-out-declaration-independence
http://gizmodo.com/trump-supporters-cry-bias-after-npr-tweets-the-declarat-1796633566

Outrage of the Week: war crimes in Yemen

Thoughts prompted by the Fourth

6.1 - War in Yemen; US begins to back away

War in Yemen; US begins to back away

We're going to start with something that eventually, believe it or not, turns into a sort of good news kinda.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. It has been in a bloody civil war since late 2014. Even as the world was distracted by Syria, the death and destruction in Yemen mounted.

It is estimated that upwards of 10,000 have died in what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calls "the forgotten war." The health service there has "completely collapsed." There are 1.5 million malnourished children the country, 370,000 of them severely malnourished. UNICEF reports that of the total population of 27 million people, an estimated 21.2 million, nearly 80% of the total, need humanitarian assistance of some kind. Half of that number is children.

Of that 27 million, 3.3 million, over 10 percent, have been forced from their homes. Over half are "food insecure," meaning they don't know from one day to the next if there will be enough food to eat. Over two-thirds lack access to safe drinking water, which is connected to a recent outbreak of cholera, with the World Health Organization recording almost 5,500 suspected cases a month ago.

I'm not going to even try to disentangle the history of the war, especially since this is hardly the first internal conflict Yemen has experienced. I will just notice that the actual fighting broke out when Houthi rebels seized control of Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, in September 2014. A few months, later, they seized the presidential compound, forcing President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to flee the country in late February 2015.

Since then, the fighting between supporters of the Hadi government - with outside aid coming from the US via drone strikes and from Saudi Arabia - and the Houthi - with outside aid from Iran - has continued and gotten more vicious over time. As a quick aside, to show how messy civil wars quickly become, among those supporting the Houthi are supporters of Hadi's predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh - who was forced from office by an uprising supported by the Houthi.

Despite the on-going brutality and suffering, neither side has gained a decisive advantage.

Okay, so what's the sorta kinda good news? Because I'd say we could use some about now.

The Good News is that there is actually - or at least it appears there is actually - a limit to the atrocities our government will tolerate for the sake of "stability" and in the name of "fighting terrorism."

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been leading what we call so euphemistically call an "air campaign" in Yemen. It has consisted of attacks on hospitals, schools, markets, factories, and other clearly civilian targets. It has consisted of, that is, war crimes.

And now, belatedly and after multiple protests, but finally, the United States has decided to limit its military support to Saudi Arabia's campaign by cutting off supplies of certain weapons.

Just what weapons are involved is not certain, but it involves precision-guided munitions which the US had been supplying under the notion that such weapons can minimize civilian casualties - only to have them used by the Saudis, it appears, to more accurately target civilian and non-combatant targets. It finally got to be too much even for the cold hearts of the US military establishment.

However, the reason this is kinda sorta good news is that while we can be glad of the decision, it not nearly enough. It is not the cut-off in support that folks had hoped for. For example, the US will keep refueling the aircraft involved and will continue some other arms sales to the kingdom, including a $3.5 billion deal for Chinook cargo helicopters, which the US insists would not be part of offensive actions in Yemen.

As a result, William Hartung of the Center for International Policy called the decision to stop supplying precision-guided munitions a "weak signal," while Samah Hadid of Amnesty International said the move "falls far short of what is needed" and Rep. Ted Lieu from California called the decision to continue the re-fueling "completely bizarre."

There is one other point to consider: This is not the US's first hesitant step away from its embrace of Saudi Arabia's war crimes.

In May, Washington suspended sales of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia and in August, the US military began to back away from supporting to Saudi Arabia's campaign, pulling out a planning team that was coordinating with the bombing campaign.

Some have suggested that those moves, and this latest one, are less about any moral judgement on Saudi Arabia, an important regional ally we historically have tried very hard to avoid offending, but are more about concerns among some US officials that by not acting, the United States could be implicated in Saudi Arabia's war crimes.

Whatever the reason and yes, however weak the signal, we still should be glad it happened. Now it's time to pull the plug on all military aid and sales to the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. Now, that would be Good News.