06/19/15 – Daniel Larison – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.scotthorton.org for the archives.
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All right, next up, also from the American Conservative Magazine, it's our friend Daniel Larrison.
Welcome back to the show, Daniel.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
The appalling war on Yemen.
The starvation of Yemen.
The war on Yemen and our useless regional clients.
Well, it's all one big article here, I guess, and we'll get to Clinton and the Democrats maybe in the second segment, but could you please, I guess, give us a thumbnail, kind of an update on the situation as it stands right now, and I guess particularly with an eye to that starvation bit there?
Yeah, of course.
So the Saudis and their regional allies, most of the members of the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Egyptians, along with support from the U.S., have been bombing Yemen pretty much continuously for the last 12 weeks, and more important in terms of the humanitarian effect, they've been imposing an air and sea blockade on the country, which has provided, which has prevented necessities such as food and medicine and fuel from being imported into the country.
Yemen is an extremely poor country to start with.
It was already very heavily dependent on aid and outside imports, and unfortunately, because of the blockade, those imports are not being allowed in in the quantities that are required to sustain the population.
And so there is now great concern in many, many parts of Yemen.
People are now, many millions of people are at risk of starvation, many millions more are going hungry, and this will continue to get worse as long as the blockade is in place.
And indeed, the starvation article that I was writing was emphasizing that really near famine conditions are being created in parts of the country because they can't get the food that is required.
And this is a truly an extraordinary and kind of horrifying picture of what's happened since the intervention started in March, and it is due almost entirely to the actions of the Saudis, which of course our government has been supporting.
Man, yeah, and it's been reported early on by, I guess, the international organizations, NGOs, and UN-type organizations.
I know Patrick Coburn has been writing this, and Jason Ditz has been writing, that this country, previous to the war, imported 90% of their food.
So in other words, you know, you better get your regime change done in a week or two and get back to business as fast as you can, or we're going to have an absolute humanitarian catastrophe here.
And here we are, as you said, 12 weeks in, and are people starving to death at this point, or they're just going really, really hungry, eating dirt?
Well, they soon will be if they don't get food supplies.
The 6 million figure that was given by the World Food Program indicates people that are in need of emergency food assistance, which is essentially one step removed from being in a famine.
And you also point out the dengue fever and just the lack of medicine and the breakdown in trade and distribution of all kinds of important goods like that.
Well, that's right.
So the need for medicine is very great, of course, because of injuries from the war, and also because of diseases that are being created due to poor sanitation.
And that's being caused in large part because there's no fuel to run the generators in order to keep clean access to water, because a lot of the water that they have in Yemen relies on pumps from wells, and those have to be fueled by gas when the power is out.
Of course, lots of the power infrastructure has been destroyed by the bombing.
So each part of the campaign has reinforced every problem that Yemen has and made it worse.
All right.
Now, well, I guess you could pick these topics in whichever order you prefer.
The goals of the Saudis and how well they line up with their tactics and strategy for accomplishing those goals, and then, you know, in the other order, whichever you prefer, the so-called peace talks that have broken out.
Are they getting anywhere?
Is there a chance for a ceasefire and some kind of negotiated settlement short of peace talks?
So-called victory?
Well, I'll start with the ceasefire negotiations or the attempt to have ceasefire negotiations.
The UN has been brokering talks or trying to broker talks in Geneva this week.
It's got off to a slow start.
The Houthi delegation were delayed in arriving in Geneva, and then once they did arrive, they and the side representing the official government or the deposed government really would not meet with each other.
So the envoy had to go back and forth between them to convey their messages to each other.
And both sides' positions have hardened considerably over the course of the last two and a half, three months because of the war.
And there's really very little movement on either side towards any sort of compromise that would bring the war to a conclusion.
One of the reasons that the Houthis have not been interested in giving any ground so far, they've been gaining on the ground in Yemen while the air campaign against them has been going on.
So one of the main ostensible goals of the Saudi campaign to drive the Houthis back into their stronghold has utterly failed.
The other main goal that the Saudis have to restore the deposed president's power is as far from reality as can be.
In the process of waging war on Yemen with Houthi support, President Houthi support, Houthi has made himself hateful to most of his countrymen, understandably.
So there's really no realistic prospect of him coming back to power at the head of a Saudi force.
The other supposed goal of the Saudi campaign is to repel Iranian influence.
But since Iranian influence in Yemen before the campaign was negligible, there's really no way for them to achieve that either.
In fact, to the extent that there is Iranian influence in Yemen today, it's probably gotten a bit stronger, simply because the Iranians are exploiting the opening created by the campaign.
Yeah.
Now, is it too simple to say that Obama could make them call it off and knock it off?
He could just cease providing American support.
I don't want to overstate it, but I think the Wall Street Journal made it pretty clear that it's American boats and American planes in the sky that are basically running the war.
Well, certainly US support in terms of weapons deliveries and refueling make it much easier for the Saudis to carry out the campaign at the rate that they're carrying it out.
I think if we withdrew that support, it would be much more difficult for them to carry on.
And they would have to reassess whether they want to persist in that campaign.
Now, it's possible that they might still want to do that, that they might keep the blockade in place, in which case, Yemen would still be in terrible shape.
But I think the US could make it very clear that it doesn't endorse what the Saudis have been doing, or no longer endorses what the Saudis are trying to do, and call off that aid.
But there seems to be no inclination to do that.
You see a lot of these anonymous quotes in news stories from various officials from the administration saying that they're very concerned about civilian casualties and so on.
But they're not actually doing anything that would indicate that that concern trumps their desire to reassure the Saudis.
And this whole emphasis on trying to reassure them, I think is misguided, because clearly, no matter how much support we give them, they will always think that it's not enough.
So we're essentially trying to bribe them with our support, and they're not interested in doing anything that we recommend after that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm gonna try to do this right for once, Daniel.
We are talking with Daniel Larrison, that is make the break on time.
We're talking with Daniel Larrison from the American Conservative Magazine.
He's written quite a few pieces recently.
And thank goodness, too, because a lot of people just aren't doing the work on this.
They're letting it go by and be somebody else's responsibility.
Here at the American Conservative Magazine, keeping up with the war on Yemen.
When we get back, we'll talk more about prospects for peace here, and maybe what could be done about it on our end to try to do something.
I don't know.
And maybe what's really going on here in the larger regional context, too.
Hang tight.
Right back after this.
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All right, Joe, welcome back.
All right.
I got Daniel Larrison on the line from the American Conservative Magazine, American, the American conservative dot com slash Larrison.
Talking about the appalling war on Yemen.
And, you know, I guess you kind of already answered this a bit, Daniel, but, you know, in the big sense, why do we do this?
Why is the U.S. government going along with this?
How much control, how much responsibility really sits in D.C. versus Riyadh for the decisions being made here?
And and why would they do such a thing as work so hard to overthrow the Houthis?
And what the hell the Americans care if the Houthis are there?
And especially when the consequences are their opposition, who would assuming that their policy even worked, as you said, the Houthis are doing better and better, the more we bomb the country here.
But assuming that it even worked, it would be directly to the benefit.
And it is, to some degrees, to the benefit of Al-Qaeda.
And then, on the other hand, communists, avowed Marxists.
What are we doing over here?
Why is the U.S. security state?
They could have picked any side on this thing and had just as good an argument for what they're doing right now.
Well, I think one of the things that happened is that the Saudis decided that they were going to go ahead and do this out of their exaggerated fear of Iran or their desire simply to smash Yemen and keep it subordinate to them.
And they were going to go ahead and do this.
We jumped on the bandwagon, bizarrely, because there is this desire to make it seem as if we are always supporting the Gulf states.
There's this anxiety that we're not supporting them enough.
And then this is all tied in with the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, that if we don't do enough to reassure the Gulf states that they will go in directions we don't want with regards to nuclear proliferation or that they will drift out of our orbit, why we would be worried about them drifting out of orbit, I'm not sure.
Seeing the way that they've behaved over the last few years, in particular, you would think we would like to be rid of them.
These are governments that have sponsored or have certainly abetted the rise of jihadist groups all over the region, especially in Syria.
And they're now, as you say, fighting a war that is redounding to the benefit of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
So there's not really anything these clients are doing for us that merits all of the support that we're giving them as it is.
I think that that's the motive is to try to demonstrate that the U.S. is fully supporting them.
Now, do the Israelis have a policy on Yemen?
So I think they don't have a real policy as such, except to broadcast the alarmist claims about Iranian influence expanding into Yemen.
Netanyahu was one of the first people to repeat, and was basically a lie, that Iran controls Sana'a, the capital of Yemen.
Iran doesn't have control over any part of Yemen.
But this is a convenient story that opponents of the nuclear deal want to tell because it makes Iran seem more menacing and more alarming in terms of its growing regional power.
And therefore, if they're already doing this before we lift sanctions, imagine what they'll do after the sanctions have been lifted.
That's the story the Iran hawks want to tell.
And so the Israeli government has been echoing that line.
But it's basically just propaganda.
I think the Israelis, to the extent that they have a position, they're willing to endorse what the Saudis are doing because they also see it as an attack on Iranian interest.
Despite the fact that, again, Iranian interests in Yemen are minimal to non-existent.
So a lot of it is just fueled by paranoia about Iran, and it's not really based on anything.
Yeah, I guess in that sense, they could be talking about a fictional Yemen.
It's just basically an extra in the movie that they're directing here.
Oh, look, the expansion of the Iranian empire throughout the region.
It's just something to say, not really a movie.
That's right.
And it's mostly used as a foil to justify the aggressive policies that they and the Saudis want to pursue in the region for their own reasons.
All right.
Now, is there any real risk that the Saudis might actually get what they want here and help with the USAF having their back, flying as al-Qaeda's air force?
To dislodge and take Sana'a back and kick the Houthis out?
After all, Americans can put firepower on targets if it comes down to it, right?
Yes, although the U.S. is not directly participating in the bombing in terms of actually dropping bombs on the Houthis.
So they're really picking the targets.
They're doing the pudding, in a sense, right?
Well, yes, that's true.
That's true.
And they're all flying American F-16s and F-15s, right?
That's probably true.
But in terms of actually expelling the Houthis from the territory that they control, that would require some sort of formidable ground force that would be able to do that.
And right now, the Saudis seem unwilling to commit their own forces to do that for fear of being humiliated and for fear of being dragged into a land war in Yemen, which, of course, did not work out very well for the Egyptians when they tried something similar in the 60s.
So there's great reluctance on their part to commit to a ground war.
And the forces on the ground that are fighting against the Houthis are mostly not capable of taking the territory away from them.
They're mostly trying to hold their own ground in the south of the country.
And a large number of the people fighting against the Houthis right now come from the southern secessionist movement that aspire to recreate the old South Yemen, which was incorporated into Yemen back in the 90s.
So the goals of the ground forces that are most capable of opposing the Houthis right now are not the same as the goals of the Saudis and their allies.
And so it seems very unlikely that the Saudis will actually succeed in anything that they've claimed that they want to do.
Well, and now al-Qaeda is saying that their leader was killed in a drone strike and there in Yemen.
So I guess now we'll see what happens with the new leadership there and whether they decide to join the Islamic State or stay loyal to Zawahiri.
And there could be all kinds of consequences coming from that.
The decapitation strikes, a lot of times the spooks live to regret them.
Others die, but they live to regret them.
Yes, right.
And speaking of the Islamic State or ISIS, there are bombings claimed by people that say that they're in league with ISIS that took place against Shiite mosques in Sana'a, I believe.
So there are already indications of people that are at least claiming to belong to ISIS or to be in league with them are making headway in Yemen as well.
Yeah.
Now, I don't know exactly how strong it was, but we should mention that when all the protest movement came together to overthrow Saleh in 2011, they had their plans for their own new government before the Americans and the Saudis came and foisted Hadi on them in their one-man election.
And it may or may not have worked out, and there may have turned out to be a civil war anyway, but there's been intervention here.
A counter-revolution against the Arab Springs was led to this massive war now.
And we always truncate the antecedents, you know.
No, that's right.
And the current campaign really is an attempt to try to reimpose the government that was already once imposed on the country, which obviously most of the people are not interested in having back.
So the idea, which is often voiced in pro-Saudi arguments, that this is somehow for the benefit of people in Yemen is just completely delusional and obviously untrue.
Yeah.
Well, Jason Ditz is reporting today that a fistfight broke out at the meeting there in Geneva on Thursday.
So, you know, maybe they can do a little bit better and we'll see if we can...
I don't know if there's going to be any kind of end to this soon, but I guess maybe it is serving to benefit the arms manufacturers.
If nobody else, they get to empty some inventories and refill them again, huh?
Well, unfortunately, they should be, aside from jihadists, they should be the only ones that would benefit from any of this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Aside from the jihadists, of course, just like in all of our policies.
Whether we're fighting them or fighting against them, it's still always to their benefit, isn't it?
All right.
Seems to work that way.
All right.
Hey, thanks very much for coming back on the show, Daniel.
I sure appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Good to talk to you again.
That's the great Daniel Larison, everybody.
He's at the American Conservative Magazine, runs a great anti-war blog there, theamericanconservative.com.
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