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Jan. 22, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:09
Yemen Strikes 'Not Working'...So Biden Orders More Yemen Strikes!

President Biden has admitted that US airstrikes on Yemen have not "deterred" the Houthis from blocking ships from Israeli ports. In response, the Washington Post is reporting that Biden plans to escalate...but has no plan or authorization. This won't end well. Sign up for FREE updates from the Ron Paul Institute here: https://ronpaulinstitute.org/subscribe/

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Backed Into War 00:12:22
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
I'm doing fine.
I'm doing fine.
I always figure I'm doing fine if I'm doing better than it looks like the country is doing.
But I wished I could do more to help, but all I could do is give them my two cents worth.
They say, yeah, that's about what it's worth.
No, I hope.
I hope that is not the case.
I hope it's worth a nickel.
But no, I'd rather have it worth at least a silver dime.
A little silver in there might be better.
Anyway, there's a lot of people trying to help, a lot of people saying they're trying to help.
And anybody who wants to make it worse are always saying that they're going to help and take care of us, take care of the people.
And people go along.
We're going to bring you peace and prosper.
Hey, they've stolen our motto.
So they're always arguing the case, but the path is the same.
Yes, there is a difference between the two parties.
But deep down inside and on the big issues, I argue, you know, the momentum is spending, deficits, war, a violation of our civil liberties.
It's a shame that you have to argue that case because the founders did their best to try to protect those things, but the protection didn't last because the people, you know, failed, failed to follow because they told us that the document itself is not going to create magic.
And I guess they've been proven to be correct.
But right now, we're going to deal with, once again, the war issue going on.
And, you know, a few years ago, not many people knew about the Houthis.
They knew about it.
And Saudi Arabia tried to help them out and that sort of thing and fuss and fume.
You know, I always argue that if there's a problem over there, the neighbors ought to take care of it.
So who would be the neighbors?
I think the Saudis are close, but they have their own agenda.
But the headline on anti-war today from Dave de Camp, one of our favorite people, U.S. prepares for open-ended war against the Houthis in Yemen.
Open-ended?
That's the same old stuff.
You know, everything we've done, it looks like it's been open-ended, especially since World War II.
And unfortunately, we even got involved in some wars when we were declaring wars that didn't justify a whole lot of the agony that we went through.
If you look at the agony we went through in World War I and World War II, where we were participating in the rearrangement of the world and also rearrangement of property lines that we're living with today and still fussing with.
World War I did that.
World War II has done that.
So allowing the people locally to decide what kind of government they want is not part of the system that we're aware of other than in theory, because people always arguing for power and control and money, and they seem to win out until we go broke and then everything is up for grabs.
So we're moving right now to that period where we're broke and things are up for grabs.
But in the meantime, we have to deal with the details of war.
And this is what David deCamp is so excellent in.
And one paragraph here he has, some U.S. officials are worried that plans for an open-ended conflict with the Houthis will shatter their fragile truth.
Truce between warring factions in Yemen, which includes a U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia-led coalition.
So far, Riyadh has urged restraint and distanced itself from the U.S. anti-Houthi.
Well, I guess they didn't get my message.
They want us to fight their wars.
And that's unfortunately.
We've been anxious to fight the wars because our goals have always been empires.
And now it becomes questionable because of our ability, our talents, on our policies, as well as who's paying the bills.
So things are in a change, and hopefully we can contribute to a more positive change than we have today.
Yeah, we had this extraordinary situation.
I think it was on Friday or Thursday afternoon, where President Biden was, I guess he was getting ready to get on a helicopter, and a journalist yelled out a question to him.
And it really was extraordinary, and it's worth playing it.
So why don't we, if you want to get your earplugged, let's listen, it's a really quick clip, so we have to pay attention.
But this is really, this captures the Biden foreign policy.
Let's listen in.
Are the airstrikes to enemy working?
Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis?
No.
Are they going to continue?
Yes.
Are they working?
Are they stopping the Houthis?
No.
Are they going to continue?
Yes.
And so that's what we see if we put this up.
Now, Dave wrote up this article from the Washington Post that we have to look at.
It's a longer version of it.
If we can put that first clip up.
As the Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for a sustained campaign.
So the U.S., I believe, has hit Yemen seven times at least.
You're starting to lose track.
And it has not dissuaded the fighters at all from blocking the ships that are entering the Red Sea.
So the administration is planning to escalate and get more involved.
Now, a couple of things, points I want to make about this Washington Post article.
First of all, as is everything they do, this is propaganda.
It's regime propaganda.
Put this next one on because this is the obligatory line.
The White House convened senior officials on Wednesday to discuss options for the way ahead in the administration's evolving response to the Iranian-backed movement.
Now, you'll see that every single time.
Yes, Iran is an ally of the Houthi movement, but we have allies.
We have NATO allies.
You never said the U.S.-backed U.K. regime, the U.S.-backed German regime.
This is a way of continuing to bring Iran into this operation because the ultimate goal of the Washington Post and all the neocons who run around stinking up Washington is a war with Iran.
So I just wanted to point that out, Dr. Paul, to keep people in mind, keep that in mind.
And I want to do one more clip before I put it on.
This is from the Washington Post article because this is what the idea is all about.
The administration officials describe their strategy in Yemen as an effort to erode the Houthis' high-level military capability enough to curtail their ability to target shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or at minimum provide a sufficient deterrent.
Now, once again, this is more propaganda than truth because this is written in a way that suggests that the Houthis are simply firing missiles at every ship that goes through.
They're not.
And they've said it before.
They are targeting ships that are going to and from Israeli ports as a protest against Israel's activities in Gaza.
There's a specific reason.
It's not willy-nilly, but you won't see, unfortunately, the Washington Post point out the reason they're doing it, because the reason when you suggest it means that really there is less reason for us to get involved at all because they weren't targeting us before we started shooting at them.
You know, it's been going on.
It's been in the news more recently than a few years back.
But the U.S.-backed, this comes from that article, backed Saudi-led war against the Houthis killed.
This was a number that I was shocked, but I shouldn't be.
Killed at least 377,000 people between 2015 and 2022, according to the U.N. More than half of them died of diseases and killing.
And it just total unnecessary and everybody angling for money and power.
And yet, you know, the number shocks me.
It disturbs me.
But just think of how much carnage there is.
What if somebody purposely avoids listening to any of this news and this baloney stuff because it's so tragic and they don't even want to think about it?
So there's not a whole lot of people, you know, really can quite grasp this.
This is a big deal.
What about the killing going on in Ukraine right now?
You know, yes, there's talk about it, maybe a little bit more than average, but back when this should have been really talked about, I said, what are we doing here?
Are we participating in that?
And if it's a U.S.-backed Saudi-led war, I imagine you could guess where the money came from, you know, to maintain that war.
Well, the Saudis paid for it.
We gave them the best weapons we had, and they were defeated by the Houthis.
You know, after these many years now, there's a lot of deaths.
Of course, a lot of that, as you point out, was from disease.
But the point here for the Biden administration to have taken a lesson from, which they did not, is that the Saudis lost.
They had the best weapons.
They had all the money in the world, but they still lost.
Yet somehow they believe that escalating against the Houthis is going to be victorious this time.
But the question is, and the real thing that came out in this Washington Post article is the idea that the Biden administration does not have a clue what it's doing.
Put up this next clip because this, I mean, if you just read between the lines, you can see exactly the total lack of planning in this.
Officials say they don't expect the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria.
Well, did we ever expect they would last for 20 years in Afghanistan?
No, of course they don't.
But this is just an example of the absolute lack of planning.
And I think, Dr. Paul, and I think you would echo this, it goes back to the fact that they are doing this without the involvement of Congress whatsoever.
Yes, that's where the tragedy is, because that's where it could have been prevented.
So the desire isn't there to prevent it because of the lobbying efforts by the various factions.
Usually we have representation on both factions, that groups that they come, and that's why the politicians roll over.
But there's always a pretense, and that's what's so disgusting.
Right now, there's a pretense that we're going to do something, but if you're serious about a pretense, you're the worst people in Washington.
You mean you'd close down the government?
Well, what we're trying to do is trying to prevent the calamity of government and turning a very serious situation, even here in the United States, making it much worse because they can't do this on printing press money.
Eventually, there are ramifications for that, and there's going to be serious problems here in this country.
So that's where it is.
And your point is the right one.
Where did they get this authority?
They just took it.
But they're not the first ones.
You know, if you compare it to what Jefferson did when he wanted to do something overseas in the early years, he was meticulous at going to the Congress.
But it's one thing that they want to stay away from because, you know, Congress might put their foot down.
But right now it's going to continue like this, and the war looks like it's not going to end soon there.
And of course, we can't say much about the total war ending in Syria or Iraq.
You know, Iraq's getting more involved.
And then we have Ukraine going on.
And what do we have?
Perpetual Wars Debate 00:10:12
We have people getting up and saying, you're un-American if you're not ready to go to war against China.
That's what they want.
Disgusting.
Well, if you could put that same clip back up, because there's another point from the Washington Post article, and I'm sorry to go deep into it, but I think it's a signal to us what's going on.
So the administration says they can identify no end date or provide an estimate for when the Yemeni's military capability will be adequately diminished.
They have no idea what victory looks like is another way of saying this.
And they're acting as if they're fighting an army with army bases, but they're not.
The Yemenis use mobile weapons and they hide them in tunnels.
Everyone knows this, apparently except for the Biden administration.
And go on.
Now, this is an administration official, if you go to the next one, talking more about what they don't want to do.
He says, we're not trying to defeat the Houthis.
There's no appetite for invading Yemen.
The appetite is to degrade their ability to launch these kinds of attacks going forward.
So what this is, is an American narrative.
Our narrative is, here's what we want the world to look like.
Oh, we don't want to do anything like go to war.
In fact, we're not even going to call it war.
This next video clip is fascinating because this is, I believe, the State Department or Pentagon spokeswoman.
And she's asked by a journalist, you've hit them five or six times.
Are we not at war?
If we can cue that one up and listen to it, because this is a startling exchange, if you ask me.
It's about 42 seconds.
Dr. Paul, you're going to want to get your earpiece on and listen to this State Department briefing of the administration.
You said that we are not at war with the Houthis, but if, you know, this tip for tap bombing, we bombed them five times now.
So if this isn't war, can you just explain that a little bit more to us?
If this isn't war, what is war?
Sure, Laura.
Sure.
Great question.
I just wasn't expecting it phrased exactly that way.
Look, we do not seek war.
We are not at war with the Houthis.
In terms of a definition, I think that would be more of a clear declaration from the United States.
But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are defensive in nature.
Okay, good stuff.
We don't seek war.
You are bombing them.
You are literally bombing them.
That would be like if you went up to someone and punched him in the face for no reason and said, well, I'm not seeking a fight with you.
So then why are you punching me?
What would it be like without somebody to clarify things for us?
This really helps it.
Did somebody write one time and say that we'll end up with perpetual war for perpetual peace?
That's a baloney that they have.
And it's perpetual for sure.
She let something slip, though.
She said, Well, we're not at war because we don't have a declaration of war.
Suggesting that she recognized that that's important, yet, nevertheless, they feel that they have the right.
It's self-defense, however, many thousands of miles away the people in Yemen are about to invade us.
You know, that reminds me of when I had that little debate and made them vote on going to the war in Iraq.
And one of the members got up and said, Oh, this is important that it's not a declared war because it alters a lot of things.
It sets up a new set of rules regarding insurance and different things like that.
Yeah, that was interesting.
That was now.
Here it's getting even worse, Dr. Paul, and I hate to keep doing this, but let's look at this next clip because here's why Biden is doing this.
There's no more audio, it's just from the article.
The officials said Biden believed the United States had to act as what they describe, the world's indispensable nation.
So, that's the reason why he is attacking and escalating in Yemen.
Not because it's in our interest, it's our vital national interest, it's because we are the world's indispensable nation.
And if you go to the next one, this is the last one I just want to say about this from the article.
U.S. officials are also concerned that attacking the Houthis has thrust the U.S. into a conflict with little exit strategy and limited support from key allies.
And this is where you point out notably, America's most powerful Gulf partners have withheld their backing.
Now, I can report that just before we went live today, it looks like the Saudis have launched an artillery strike across the border into Yemen.
And that is a very dangerous escalation.
It's one that Washington will love because what it means, or what it could mean if it continues this way, is that the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, which was very significant, may start to unravel now if the Saudis start attacking Yemen again.
So, you can only imagine the neocons in Washington rubbing their hands together and saying, More, please, faster, please.
You know, in a way, they're bold because in between the lines, they're telling the truth that they don't want to deal with reality, they don't want to deal with the declaration of war or anything else.
So, they're excusing themselves.
But some of this stuff comes up, you know, and I'll say, Isn't it ridiculous?
They're actually making a true statement there.
But I think it's out of boldness.
I don't think they have any remorse or any concern or any understanding of economics, nor do I think they have much concern about protecting liberty.
If you want to have a government, we have to have something decent for them to do.
One of them is just leave people alone and keep people from taking liberty from other people.
But no, they became the participant.
It's the government that we have to worry about the most.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, speaking of the government, guess what it's all about?
Follow the money.
Put on this next one.
Now, this is from our friends at the Libertarian Institute, Kyle Anzalone, who does great work as well.
I mean, you just can't make this up.
Lawmakers push funding to replace weapons used in Yemen.
So, what's happening?
We are using, and actually, even some of the lawmakers are concerned about this.
We're using multi-million-dollar missiles to shoot down thousand-dollar drones, is what's happening.
You know, when I looked at this, I didn't believe it.
They have a big advertisement on it.
They can't be doing that.
They're putting it on.
Look who you're getting your greetings from.
Raytheon.
There's a lot of people work for them.
Yeah, but they're talking now because we have to send, we have to fire off all these multi-million-dollar missiles into Yemen, one of the poorest countries on earth.
Well, we need, and put this next one on this, is political reporting, and as reported by Anzalone, that as American warships burn through expensive missiles against Houthi targets in Yemen, lawmakers, lobbyists, lobbyists, and the Navy are angling to use a multi-billion dollar national security supplemental to replenish the Israeli.
I can't believe that I can't do that.
I worried about that a little while ago.
That's what they do.
It's never finalized.
So that's the reason that people who listen to government reports and try to protect themselves, both in protecting their liberties and protecting their finances, they might as well not pay much attention.
But I think it's pretty easy if you just look a little bit and observe what our recent history has been all about.
You can anticipate it pretty well.
And it'll make you look like you, oh, how did he know that was going to happen?
Well, they've sent us a lot of signals out because they've been doing it over and over again.
But the same people who have been right about warning about the conditions that we have now, how these wars perpetuate, are also making other warnings that not many people are talking about.
What happens when the bankruptcy is conclusive and they know it.
And just monetizing debt is not available.
Not because they don't want to, it's run out of steam.
And I think that's what we're facing.
I mean, remember when Bin Laden said his goal was to draw the U.S. into that region and spend a lot of money and lose a lot of lives?
Well, it seems to me like how the sort of asymmetric warfare with the Houthis is the same kind of thing.
We're going to throw up these little drones that cost a couple dollars, and you're going to launch a tomahawk that costs millions and millions of dollars, and we're going to do it over and over and over again until we bleed you dry.
And make a certain segment of the population very rich.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That's tragic.
Well, somebody knows how this works very well.
I'm going to put on this next clip.
And that person is our Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.
And he said that fighting in Yemen means Congress needs to add further spending for munitions to a supplemental military funding package.
He said, as I've warned for weeks, using million-dollar missiles to defend against $1,000 drones strains an already insufficient inventory of long-range capabilities.
So that massive, massive, massive military spending bill, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
We have to put a massive supplemental in it so that Raytheon and all the others have something to do with it.
And he complains about the policy.
They consumed all these weapons.
Who promoted those policies?
They had to get by him.
He supported that.
But, you know, it's unbelievable of their confidence that they can do this forever.
And it's unbelievable that the American people will continue to put up with it.
But it's believable to me that they're getting rather restless and they're starting to understand what is happening.
Hamas's Intelligence Struggle 00:03:13
Because I've looked at how the people reacted to COVID, the great harm there.
But the Ukraine war, you know, the people finally made a comparison.
Money to Ukraine versus our own borders?
No, no, our own borders.
We're not going to talk about that.
We don't have any obligations there.
They may get both.
You never know.
Brandon Circus is both.
Well, I guess the last one we want to do is similar because we are not, we're very good.
Washington is very good at very terrible planning.
But they're not alone.
And I think the Israelis are in the same situation now.
If we go to the next clip, this is something from anti-war.
We owe them some royalties for today, but U.S. intelligence says Israel is nowhere close to its goal of eliminating Hamas.
Now, any expert that we were reading beforehand could have told us that, but the subtitle, A Member of Israel's War Cabinet, suggested the idea of an absolute defeat of Hamas is unrealistic.
So the goals that they had going into this were completely unrealistic, and they're nowhere near them.
The fact that the U.S. intelligence community is leaking out this information, it's not to inform people like us, Dr. Paul.
It's to send a signal to the Israelis.
Listen, guys, things aren't going well.
We're tired of you blowing us off when we tell you to back down and things are getting more serious.
But it's U.S. intelligence.
They don't usually tell you or even bend this way to telling the truth.
And that is.
So they must have something.
It's not going to hurt their fundraising.
Yeah, we're having a tough time, but this is what we need.
And that's what they keep doing all the time.
Whether it was Korea or Vietnam or whatever, just add.
It's just astounding to me where I thought we had a pseudo-victory, you know, in Iraq and Afghanistan and place.
And it wasn't even pseudo.
It was just an I lie.
We're as active there as ever before.
Well, you look at the military establishment of Iraq.
We own Iraq.
We own Syria too, at least a portion of it.
But there's a few people there contesting us for the real estate in Syria.
Well, what's interesting what's happening in Israel is you're seeing a lot of military people saying your plan is total garbage.
We're not winning.
We're being defeated.
We're taking a lot of casualties, a lot more than people think, a lot more than it's being reported.
You've got families of the people being held by Hamas, furious with Netanyahu because he refuses to negotiate with Hamas to get these people released, to get a ceasefire in place.
The whole thing is going badly.
Israel in the face of the world has gone so far down.
It only has one ally left, and that's the U.S. government.
So things are going badly for Israel.
And I think this is really, I think this is a signal from the powers that be the deep state in the U.S. You've got to find a way to get out.
You guys are doing a good job killing women and children, but you're not killing Hamas.
You need to figure out how to solve this problem.
So you finish up.
Foreign Policy Tensions Rising 00:04:05
Yeah, well, I was going to do one more thing if you don't mind.
Sorry, I just wanted to remind everyone: if you go to that last clip, that the Ron Paul Institute, I put out a, and I've been able to keep up with it.
I was a little slow last year, but if you do that very last clip, I do an exclusive column for our subscribers, and I do it every week.
This week it came out last night.
The Biden Doctrine, if it's broke, don't fix it.
And it's based on that interview with Biden.
I distribute this for free to our subscribers.
I have a link in the description for where you can sign up for free.
I will again emphasize we do not lend out, sell, or anything.
Your name and your information is safe with us.
We just want to be able to keep in touch.
Sorry, I'm going to finish with a few comments of a political result of all this mess overseas because it has affected the politics here.
You know, we do know, and we've mentioned so often, that the politics have entered dealing with the money going to Ukraine versus going to our borders, and people are waking up to that.
And there's a real challenge.
I thought that might eliminate or at least lessen the amount of money going to Ukraine.
But there's some diehards there that are going to have an emergency appropriation and get their money.
But this is a, I want to make a couple of comments about from an article from Politico on the Senate race in California.
And I thought it was really bringing to light what's going on here.
And the title is, The Single Biggest Issue is Dividing California's Senate race.
Well, that's good.
So they have three senators running for, three candidates running for Senate.
Schiff, everybody knows about him.
Oh, yeah.
Adam Schiff.
And then Barbara Lee.
We know a little bit about her, and we have some respect for her.
And then there's Katie Porter.
And the interesting thing here is Schiff comes out as being very, very strong Israel.
Oh, yeah.
Shouldn't surprise anybody, pro-Israel.
And he would be joined by a lot of Republicans, you know.
And then Barbara Lee, who we've tried working with her, and we've been able to because she is an anti-war person.
But the position she has to take is a gentle position, but the right one.
She says, can't we just have a peace, you know, have a ceasefire?
And of course, they said that's treasonous.
You don't want to do that to even have a discussion.
So that's going on, but at least it's not on the table.
But that's the, then Katie Porter, they position her as a compromise, the middle of the roaders.
So you have those three.
And then the other thing that's interesting is the Republican candidates getting a little tension.
Steve Garvey.
I understand he was pretty good at baseball.
So that might be it.
So we'll wish him well, except, I mean, I don't think we can depend on him to call and say, hey, I want to be on your program because I agree with you on your foreign policy.
But anyway, that's still interesting.
So this issue of foreign policy has gotten involved in one big political issue in California.
And it'll be interesting to follow that and see if there's any good news to report and not have all just the pro-war people win all the marbles.
So I would like to, once again, as usual, thank our viewers for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
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