Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 41 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/18/18

Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The American War in Yemen

By       (Page 1 of 3 pages)   No comments
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Tom Engelhardt
Become a Fan
  (29 fans)

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

It was the rarest of graphics in the American news media: a CNN map in which recent Saudi air strikes in Yemen were represented by little yellow explosions. Below them were the number of civilians killed ("97," "155," "unknown casualties") and, below those, the names of the makers of the weapons that had done the killing (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics). In fact, in the nearly three decades since the Soviet Union imploded, U.S. weapons makers have had a remarkable grip on the global arms trade (latest figure: 34% of all arms sales) and regularly sold their weaponry into places that were hell storms of conflict, particularly the Middle East. Nonetheless, remarkably little thought is given here to how snugly death and destruction in distant lands fit with these glory days of U.S. weapons makers, their soaring profits and rising stock prices.

Fortunately, we now have a report from Code Pink, "War Profiteers: The U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes," that focuses on the five largest U.S. arms makers -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- and their dealings with just three countries: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. It couldn't be a grimmer tale -- or, more accurately, the beginning of one, for as that report points out, while the U.S. spent $1.3 trillion on its wars between 1999 and 2011, it also spent a staggering $1.8 trillion in those years to buy, as Code Pink puts it, "new warplanes, warships, weapons, and equipment, most of which were unrelated to the wars it was actually fighting." (And those figures seem, if anything, to be on the rise in the Trump era.) Keep in mind as well that the Pentagon is slated to receive more than six trillion taxpayer dollars in the next decade alone. The Code Pink researchers grimly point out (as few others do) that

"Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was paid $20.2 million in 2017, even as the company's weapons killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy made $24.8 million, as millions of people became refugees, fleeing the carnage caused by its weapons. Boeing CEO Dennis A. Muilenberg made $18.5 million, as even the World Bank noted that 90% of the people killed in today's wars are civilians, mostly women and children."

As that CNN map suggests, of all the wars underway from which the U.S. weapons companies are profiting, none may be bleaker right now than the Saudi war in Yemen. Five years old and a human tragedy of the first order, it has become a catastrophe of still unknown but staggering dimensions for Yemen's civilian population. Today, TomDispatchregular Rajan Menon considers that local Armageddon and the grim role the U.S. military (and those arms makers) continue to play in it. Talk about -- to resurrect a phrase from a long-gone era -- "merchants of death"! Those five giant arms makers give the phrase new meaning in our time. Tom

Yemen's Descent into Hell
A Saudi-American War of Terror
By Rajan Menon

It's the war from hell, the savage one that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with seven other Middle Eastern and North African states, have been waging in Yemen since March 2015, with fulsome support from the Pentagon and American weapons galore. It's got everything. Dead children in the dozens, a never-ending air campaign that pays scant heed to civilians, famine, cholera, you name it. No wonder it's facing mounting criticism in Congress and from human rights groups. Still, ever since President Donald Trump (like Barack Obama before him) embraced the Saudi-led coalition as this country's righteous knight errant in the Middle East, the fight against impoverished Yemen's Houthi rebels -- who have, in turn, been typecast as Iran's cats-paw -- has only grown fiercer. Meanwhile, the al-Qaeda affiliate there continues to expand.

For years now, a relentless Saudi air campaign (quite literally fueled by the U.S. military) has hit endless civilian targets, using American smart bombs and missiles, without a peep of protest or complaint from Washington. Only a highly publicized, completely over-the-top slaughter recently forced the Pentagon to finally do a little mild finger wagging. On August 7th, an airstrike hit a school bus -- with a laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin -- in northern Yemen, killing 51 people, 40 of them schoolchildren. Seventy-nine others were wounded, including 56 children. Soon after, a U.N. Security Council-appointed group of experts issued a report detailing numerous other egregious attacks on Yemeni civilians, including people attending weddings and funerals. Perhaps the worst among them killed 137 people and wounded 695 others at a funeral in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, this April.

The attack on those schoolchildren and the U.N. report amplified a growing global outcry against the carnage in Yemen. In response, on August 28th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis let it be known that the Trump administration's support for the Persian Gulf potentates' military campaign should not be considered unreserved, that the Saudis and their allies must do "everything humanly possible to avoid any innocent loss of life." Considering that they haven't come close to meeting such a standard since the war started nearly five years ago and that the Trump administration clearly has no intention of reducing its support for the Saudis or their war, Mattis's new yardstick amounted to a cruel joke -- at the expense of Yemeni civilians.

The Statistics of Suffering

Some appalling numbers document the anguish Yemenis have endured. Saudi and Emirati warplanes officially have killed -- and it's considered a conservative estimate -- 6,475 civilians and wounded more than 10,000 others since 2015. Targets struck have included farms, homes, marketplaces, hospitals, schools, and mosques, as well as ancient historic sites in Sana'a. And such incidents haven't been one-off attacks. They have happened repeatedly.

By April 2018, the Saudi-led coalition had conducted 17,243 airstrikes across Yemen, hitting 386 farms, 212 schools, 183 markets, and 44 mosques. Such statistics make laughable the repeated claims of the Saudis and their allies that such "incidents" should be chalked up to understandable errors and that they take every reasonable precaution to protect innocents. Statistics compiled by the independent Yemen Data Project make it clear that the Gulf monarchs don't lie awake at night lamenting the deaths of Yemeni civilians.

Saudi Arabia and its partners have accused the Houthis, the rebels with whom they have been in such a deadly struggle, of also attacking Yemeni civilians, a charge Human Rights Watch has validated. Yet such a they-do-it-too defense hardly excuses the relentless bombing of non-military sites by a coalition that has overwhelming superiority in firepower. Houthi crimes pale by comparison.

And when it comes to the destruction of civilian lives and livelihoods, believe it or not, that may be the least of it. Take the naval blockade of the country by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that cut the number of ships docking in the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida from 129 between January and August 2014 to 21 in the same months of 2017. The result: far less food and medicine entered the country, creating a disaster for Yemenis.

That country, the Arab world's poorest, has long relied on imports for a staggering 85% of its food, fuel, and medicine, so when prices soared, famine spread, while hunger and malnutrition skyrocketed. Nearly 18 million Yemenis now rely on emergency food aid to survive: that's an unbelievable 80% of the population. According to the World Bank, "8.4 million more are on the brink of famine." In December 2017, following a barrage of bad publicity, the Saudi-Emirati blockade was eased marginally, but it had already set in motion a spiral of death.

The blockade also contributed to a cholera epidemic, which the shortage of medicines only exacerbated. According to a World Health Organization report, between April 2017 and July 2018, there were more than 1.1 million cholera cases there. At least 2,310 people died from the disease, most of them children. It is believed to be the worst cholera outbreak since statistics began to be compiled in 1949. At 800,000 cases between 2010 and 2017, Haiti held the previous record, one that the Yemenis surpassed within half a year of the first cases appearing. The prime contributors to the epidemic: drinking water contaminated by rotting garbage (uncollected because of the war), devastated sewage systems, and water filtration plants that stopped running due to lack of fuel -- all the result of the horrendous bombing campaign.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Valuable 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Tom Engelhardt Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Uncovering the Military's Secret Military

Tomgram: Rajan Menon, A War for the Record Books

Noam Chomsky: A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age?

Andy Kroll: Flat-Lining the Middle Class

Christian Parenti: Big Storms Require Big Government

Noam Chomsky, Who Owns the World?

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend