The US-facilitated Saudi blockade is leading to severe food and water shortages in Yemen. When Iran tried to land a humanitarian cargo plane in Yemen this week, the Saudis blew up the runway so it could not land. What's behind this escalation? Where might it lead?
The US-facilitated Saudi blockade is leading to severe food and water shortages in Yemen. When Iran tried to land a humanitarian cargo plane in Yemen this week, the Saudis blew up the runway so it could not land. What's behind this escalation? Where might it lead?
The US-facilitated Saudi blockade is leading to severe food and water shortages in Yemen. When Iran tried to land a humanitarian cargo plane in Yemen this week, the Saudis blew up the runway so it could not land. What's behind this escalation? Where might it lead?
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.
Today we'd like to talk a little bit about Yemen.
We've talked a lot about Yemen already but things aren't getting better today.
But in particular there has been escalation and I, as an individual concerned about just the disaster of the kind of policy that we follow, I want to look into a little bit about why the people, especially the children, are starving in Yemen and also are without water and medication.
It sounds a little bit like what was happening in Iraq leading up to the Iraq war.
So we know that just recently there was a bombing by the Saudis in collaboration with American policy of an airport that prevented a plane from landing, which did not have weapons on.
It was a Red Cross type airplane coming in for humanitarian reasons, but it could not land once the airport was bombed.
And this was done by the Saudi airplanes.
What do you think is behind all this?
Why, all of a sudden, you know, it seems they're desperate.
And I just have so much trouble comprehending how a policy could be designed literally to starve people.
And this is, and we're part of it.
This is so annoying to me.
Well, Yemen sort of has the unfortunate distinction of being in the eye of a storm in the target between, I think, really what are two proxy wars.
You know, you have the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel on one side, and you have Iran, Syria to a degree, and certainly to a degree, Russia and China if you get even further out on the other side.
So this is sort of a much larger global war, and I think that's why we've been so concerned, and we've done so many of these programs about it.
So in a way, Yemen suffers, but just a quick backup of what happened.
You know, the leader of Yemen, Hadi, was basically a U.S. and Saudi puppet.
He took over in a coup.
He had himself elected as the only candidate on the ballot.
And the Houthis, who had been treated very badly by the bombing, this is a tribe of people there.
They rose up, as they've done in the past, and they moved through the country and they ousted him.
He fled to Saudi Arabia and from Saudi Arabia called on Saudi Arabia to bomb his own country.
So the Saudis are saying we need to restore the legitimate government of Yemen.
So that's the backdrop of this.
Yes, you know, the airport is probably the significant airport for Yemen, and it's blown up and this plane can't land, and that's significant.
But, you know, they get most of what they use in food and medicine and water.
It comes in by ship.
But we know that the borders have been blockaded by the U.S. Navy.
They don't allow any of these ships to come in.
And they're literally, you know, starving and squeezing these people.
So it isn't just the bombing, it's bombing on top of a blockade.
And just, I don't know what would satisfy them.
Where does this end?
What do you think they're expecting to happen?
Well, if you just look at the numbers, the figures, you can see a major humanitarian catastrophe.
Apparently, some 12 million people are without food.
25 million have no fuel.
Even if they had food, they couldn't cook it.
And 13 million have no access to water, including in the capital where there's a critical water shortage.
So these are obviously hurting civilians more than anything else.
And you know, when these stories break, there's a lot of political grandstanding going on.
And probably on both sides, you know, they have to spin it in a certain way.
But, you know, this shipping incident that is occurring, you know, at the Straits of Hermus, a ship was stopped by the Iranians.
And the first day, it was unbelievable what was reported versus what was really happening.
You know, the Iranians had stopped the ship, an American flagship with 24 naval personnel on there.
And where did that information come from?
It wasn't exactly objective.
Yeah, the first reporting came from Al-Arabia News Service, which is a Saudi government-owned news service.
And you're right, it was very bombastic at first.
And as soon as that happened and the Al-Arabia report came out, the Neocons, the Neocon army took to Twitter and said, see, this turns out that it was a Marshall Island ship, and the Iranians' argument for taking control of this ship was civil.
And they claim they went through the process and that they owed some money to the port, and there were no weapons involved or anything like that.
And the exact details, I don't think anybody can be absolutely sure.
But in some ways, it looks like the U.S. has backed away from that because we have this conflict.
In one sense, our government is trying to work out, I think sincerely, an agreement with the Iranians on nuclear proliferation.
And yet there are some of our people in our country, the neocons, who do not want this to happen.
Then, of course, you probably have some people in Iran that doesn't want this to happen either.
So they sort of backed off.
And one U.S. official said that we don't actually have any legal authority and responsibility to do anything about this ship because there are no Americans involved.
So in a way, I think the whole thing seems to be downplayed right now, which is encouraging because the neocons didn't win the PR fight on this and use this to escalate the military confrontation.
Yeah, I wish that would mean that they had given up, but we'll find something tomorrow.
But it's interesting, you've pointed out many times this idea that wealthy and well-connected corporations can socialize the costs of their security.
This is almost an example of that, even the expectation that they would have the U.S. Navy.
You know, over the years, I've never thought, and I don't think the American people have thought a whole lot about Saudi Arabia.
You know, that's where we get our oil, and they're sort of neutral.
They don't send troops to our NATO fights and things like this.
But lately, they've been more in the news, and I think some Americans are waking up.
Well, maybe this country isn't such a close friend, especially when we join them in this bombing.
And that disturbs me.
At the same time, our government's trying to do something more with the Iranians.
But this to me just seems like it's not going to go away very quickly.
My guess is that there are some cooler heads in the Pentagon that realize, and these are the non-political people, the people that understand military strategy, they realize that the Saudi strategy in Yemen is a loser.
It makes no sense at all.
It's a crazy strategy.
And I think they are hoping that the Saudis will back off a little bit from what they're doing.
Yeah, but I indicated that I didn't think Saudi was so much in the news over the years, but more so now because they're involved in incidents like this.
But they are involved with our government.
We don't send them foreign aid, but we send them dollars because we buy their oil and there's a lot of cooperation there.
But they actually feel a need to lobby our government.
I mean, it's amazing how important it is for these governments to lobby us.
I can't believe it's happening, you know.
But isn't it true that they spend a lot of money on lobbying Washington?
Sure, they recycle these petrodollars back to the U.S. buying billions of dollars worth of weapons for sure.
But also in the first decade of the 21st century, they've spent over $100 million lobbying the U.S. government.
And that's not saying how much they spend lobbying the U.S. people with propaganda.
But just in the U.S. government, you see the big PR firms, Hill and Knowlton and the others, these are very, very well-connected Washington PR firms that are making millions.
Yeah, and that's not going to stop because a lot of people think the solution to excessive lobbying is to control the money.
And they're talking about American citizens, which I don't believe in.
But it seems like there should be a limit on this.
But the proper form of government would discourage all kinds of lobbying and financial involvement.
Government has too much to offer domestically.
So it's the businessman.
Well, I'm doing it out of my self-interest.
I'm doing it to protect myself.
And some are just trying to keep the government out of their back, off their backs.
But the foreigners have a reason to lobby too, because everybody either wants our protection or they want a special deal on trade or something.
But if you had the proper government, they would be wasting their money.
You know, there wouldn't be any incentives of foreigners or domestic business people to try to buy off these people because they would have nothing to sell.
But that's a pie-in-the-sky dream.
I don't expect I'll see that, but that's where the real problem is.
I've always argued that just regulating individuals' money where they can't lobby for good stuff, petitioning government, because that should be a right to do this.
But right now, I think this is getting worse, mainly because of this starvation and what's going to happen in spite of the conflict of interest that we see.
But I really am annoyed, the fact that we are now close partnership in a military operation to undermine the government, which has been undermined because some of our previous involvements.
Al-Qaeda's Growth Amid Bombing00:02:06
And here we are on these bombing runs.
And does it really accomplish any military?
No, it makes the military situation that much worse.
And who will suffer?
And these are, so many of these people are all for this.
We're for the children, and we want to take care of the middle class, you know, and look at what they're doing over there.
The other final thing to think about is how Al-Qaeda has benefited from this bombing thus far.
They have taken over vast swaths of land in Yemen.
I think that's another reason why the Americans, the Pentagon and the American government is getting nervous with the Saudis because their bombing is directly affecting and encouraging al-Qaeda to take over.
You know, if you did a statistical study on the significance of al-Qaeda, I think it would be dollar for dollar, the more dollars we spent, the greater threat al-Qaeda becomes.
I mean, when you look at Iraq, no al-Qaeda there.
Yeah, we had a bad guy there, but he was sort of held Iran in check, this sort of thing.
But now, so we go into Syria.
Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda doesn't exist, but we have ISIS.
Oh, yeah.
But we have to do something.
We have to do something.
So there is a blowback.
There is a consequence.
And I think your point about Al-Qaeda is absolutely right, that our policies for a long, long time have actually given the incentives.
Because I believe there are radicals in all religions, and they're always there.
But if they can get the support of a general population, their numbers can grow when they grab hold of an incident like that.
And I think this is what's happened in the Islamic areas that people have.
It's a tendency.
But I think that really happens in all religions.
And I think to a degree some of that happens here in this country because you've got to be patriotic and you have to support this.
ISIS is coming.
ISIS is coming.
The Al-Qaeda is going to be here.
And if we don't do this, you're un-American.
So I think the American position is non-intervention, mind our own business, promote peace and prosperity.
Set a good example for the world, maybe people would want to emulate us and we would never have to use force and bombs and intimidation to try to have our way around the world.