The violence in Yemen is rapidly escalating. The US is sending more weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is bombing the country. Iranian war ships are said to be in the area. Is this a wise intervention for the United States?
The violence in Yemen is rapidly escalating. The US is sending more weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is bombing the country. Iranian war ships are said to be in the area. Is this a wise intervention for the United States?
The violence in Yemen is rapidly escalating. The US is sending more weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is bombing the country. Iranian war ships are said to be in the area. Is this a wise intervention for the United States?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
Today with me is Daniel McAdams who is the executive director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
He is also the co-host of this program.
Daniel, nice to have you with us today.
Yes, let's take on the world.
Good.
You know, I sort of wished we didn't talk so much about Yemen.
But, you know, the news sort of compels us to keep going back.
And I'm always hoping that my concerns and worries about it being the beginning of a really big war, I just wish that would go away and we could say, well, we can forget about Yemen.
But, you know, a lot of people think that it's new, a new problem.
And we will talk about one of the newer problems in development, why we're talking about it again.
And I'll just read this headline.
It says, the expedited weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia signal deepening U.S. involvement in Yemen, of course.
And I want to make one point before we get into that is it's not brand new.
This is not a new subject because the first time I gave a serious thought to Yemen was back in the year 2000.
And that was when the USS Cole was bombed by a terrorist attack, a suicide bomber, and really disabled the USS Cole.
And this was, to me, rather amazing.
There were 17 Americans killed, 39 wounded, so it was a significant event.
And it was said at the time that this was done by al-Qaeda.
Well, why would they just up and do this?
There must have been a lot of resentment to use suicide bombing against Americans who were using a port in Yemen.
And so it's been ongoing for a long time.
The one incident that I remember clearly about that amazed me was that although we're capable of policing the world and run the world empire, we couldn't get our ship back.
That we had to hire out some people.
And I don't know whether it was Swedish or another country like that came that was capable of lifting the ship and bringing it back so we could repair it and go back to war again.
But that's sort of an incident to show that maybe a country that can't take care of itself has a problem.
And I sort of think that's related a little bit to the fact that we still depend on Russia.
We're trying to go to war with Russia and yet we depend on them for getting to our space station.
But anyway, on this weapons, what do you think of this?
How could this be a strong negative?
And how could they justify this?
What's the purpose of us getting more involved in this region?
That's the one thing that strikes me is there really is no way for the U.S. to justify its deepening involvement in Yemen.
They can say they want to reflect the will of the people, but the will of the people, you could say, is just as accurately reflected in the Houthis that have overrun what they view as a corrupt leader, which is Hadi.
He's a fellow, as you remember, was cooperating with the U.S. in allowing them to drone his own people, and that produced a lot of civilian casualties and a lot of resentment.
So you could say that Hadi is just as corrupt, just as illegitimate as the Houthis.
And of course, the Houthis in the media are painted pretty bad because we're at war, in a sense, with them, and we're helping the Saudis.
But I don't imagine the Saudis are interested in Yemen because they're spreading peace and democracy.
They certainly don't have any democracy in Saudi Arabia.
And it's a strange system.
It's a rather ruthless system.
You know, there's some ruthless things going on with Islamic State.
You know, they're pretty ruthless and they make no bones about it.
But here's a country that beheads probably more people than any other country.
And it's not for capital offenses.
Sometimes for social infractions and religious infractions.
And yet, here they're our best allies.
There's so much hypocrisy in our foreign policy that we have to do whatever is conceivable to stop ISIS never considering why are we doing it.
You know, I was at a speech this weekend at the University of Minnesota, and they asked me that, what should we do about ISIS?
I say, well, yes, there's something we should do.
We should do a lot less.
You know, why are we stirring up trouble?
And why do we send weapons over there that end up in the hands of ISIS?
So it doesn't seem like our foreign policy actually accomplishes the pretense that we're making the world safe for democracy.
You know, what's even more, I can't even, mind-boggling is the only word I can come up with.
The U.S. is now complaining that the chaos in Yemen is allowing al-Qaeda to make great gains.
Well, the chaos has been caused by the Saudi, U.S.-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen.
It's allowed the al-Qaeda to make great gains.
And don't forget also that we lost a half a billion dollars worth of weapons in Yemen that are really anybody's for the taking, the Houthis, al-Qaeda, whoever.
And we can't say this is the first time our policy has backfired on us.
And sometimes I wonder, it seems to be so ridiculous whether somebody deliberately tries to create chaos.
But what was the story in Iraq?
What could we do to build Iraq more so than what we have done?
What could we have done more to deliver Iraq to a closer relationship with Iran?
But there was no al-Qaeda.
And you know, most Americans still believe this, that al-Qaeda was there and they had something to do with 9-11.
So it's almost a rule rather than the exception.
When you say that was the same rule in Syria on our interference, actually helping the people that we end up fighting.
At least by their own terms, you know, they say that we're opposed to ISIS, we're opposed to jihadists in Syria, but then there are many, many examples of the U.S. inadvertently or advertently arming them, supporting them, hoping that they will do their bidding.
So it really is playing with fire and it has backfired.
You know, the one statement that came out of Saudi Arabia, I sort of thought that this is ridiculous.
Their goal is to restore stability.
Stability in Yemen.
And yet, do you think that the Saudis are sitting there thinking that the Yemenis would be invading Saudi Arabia?
Yeah.
Well, you know, Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was there this past couple of days, and he said the U.S. is committed to defending Saudi Arabia, you know, in a conflict that has nothing to do with it next door, an internal conflict, A, and B, why?
Why do we have to be committed to defending one of the most authoritarian dictatorships on earth?
See, I don't believe for a minute that Saudi Arabia thinks the Yemenis would be invading.
I mean, it's not a military invasion.
I think what they're concerned about is a democratic revolution.
You know, some of these things, like you already pointed out, the Houthis might represent a democratic majority, and even though they're in a civil war.
But I think the Saudis are terrified that that's going to happen.
And they're already talking about who's going to defend Saudi Arabia.
And there's no doubt who's going to defend Saudi Arabia.
The American taxpayer, the American military, we're already doing it.
We've done it for years.
I mean, this is how this whole thing got started in 1991.
It was, you know, theoretically to stop Saddam Hussein from bombing us with a nuclear weapon.
But it had a lot to do with Saudi Arabia.
So it's been going on a long time, even since World War II.
And something, especially now with a glut of oil, you know, it used to be, they weren't even too bashful about we're there for oil, and they knew darn well.
But all of a sudden, there's a lot more oil in the world.
You'd think they say, well, maybe we don't have to be so aggressive in that region.
What do you think the odds are of that happening?
Yeah, exactly.
But you know, the other important wrinkle, I guess, in the story today is we're hearing that Iran is moving some of its destroyer and another naval ship into the area.
And of course, a lot of the interventionist or neocon media here in the U.S. is having with big headlines, see Iran's getting involved, Iran's getting involved.
But you know, if you look at a map, Iran is almost right next door.
This is chaos is happening in their neighborhood.
I compared this to what would happen if we had a destroyer in the Gulf of Mexico and they say, oh, they're getting ready to invade Mexico, you know, something like that, because it is close, and they obviously have the right to do this.
And there are unfortunately too many war vessels every place in the world, but it seems like we justify it because we're every place in the world.
I mean, we occupy all the oceans of the world.
Well, that's why they even say that it's pretty dangerous because they're moving their ships closer to ours.
We're already there.
And of course, with this activity and the concern that I have is probably nobody's going to sit down and say, well, when can we start the big war?
Big wars get started in a way because things get out of control.
And when you see these military operations getting closer and closer, yes, we don't have troops there, but we have a lot of advisors there.
We're putting more money in there.
We're putting more weapons in.
The Iranians are bringing a ship in.
And remember, there was a time when we accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner.
So who knows?
One of these missiles may go astray.
And we say, oh, those Saudis, they didn't know how to operate our missiles and hit an Iranian ship.
Maybe it'd be a complete true accident or something, but it could escalate very quickly into something that none of us are going to like.
So I sort of think this makes the strong argument that if we just look and get the people in this country to look at the total failure of our system, of our, you know, of our policies for the last 15 years or so, you go back further, but especially since we've been very, very much in the Middle East since we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, that it isn't working.
Unintended Consequences Cost Us00:00:18
There's blowback and there's unintended consequences and the costs are skyrocketing.
So the big question is, you know, are we going to have the big war before we go broke or are we going to go broke before the big war and maybe fewer people will get killed?