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Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Aren't you guys introducing Eric Ikenberry?
He is director of policy and advocacy at the Yemen Peace Project at yemenpeaceproject.org.
Welcome to the show, Eric.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Hey, really appreciate it.
It's well, an extremely important, if not the most important, one of our horrible wars right now.
It's hard to kind of measure that.
Anyway, really appreciate the work that you're doing.
You got this great article.
It's at lobelog.com.
You know that.
I'm telling everyone else.
He's got this great article at lobelog.com.
Jim Loeb, the great Jim Loeb, his blog, lobelog.com.
And it's called Congress, White House, reaching a breaking point on Yemen.
Oh, say it ain't so.
Tell me what's going on here.
Yeah.
And so I wrote the article in response because on the same day last week, we had three different congressional offices.
Well, two individual ones and a collection of House Democrats drop letters condemning in part or in whole sort of U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition intervention and demanding answers from the administration, demanding transparency.
And these three letters, even though they dropped on the same day, have only been one part of a barrage of letters we've seen all summer, some from increasingly centrist and even conservative or hawkish offices condemning in whole or in part U.S. support for the coalition.
And it kind of got me thinking about the utility of why we're seeing so many letters, because we had such a big blockbuster legislation several times.
We had a war prize resolution in the House.
We had a war prize resolution in the Senate.
We had a blockage of precision guided munition sale that almost went through.
And so my analysis or my read of the situation, which partly is my hard-nosed analysis, partly is maybe due to some wishful thinking on my part, given that it's my day job.
But, you know, the idea that these letters, inasmuch as they're bringing on more conservative voices, are sort of generalizing opposition to this war, and that even though we've had only strong minorities for withdrawing U.S. support for the coalition in these past sort of blockbuster legislations, that these letters could signal or could be a stepping stone towards getting a majority and could be helping build opposition that may materialize later this autumn.
It could materialize next year at the beginning of a new congressional cycle.
That's sort of the argument in a nutshell.
But these letters, letters aren't always as boring as they appear.
Now, isn't there some kind of vote coming up this week, or a threat of one?
Yeah, there's a threat of a vote.
So, Senator Chris Murphy out of Connecticut, who's been very, very good and very strong on these issues for a number of years now, I mean, like all of us whose office was so horrified and so shocked by the coalition's bombing of a school bus full of children in Saada in northern Yemen several weeks ago, and then the further revelation from what we've seen on the ground that it does look like a U.S. made, a Lockheed Martin-manufactured precision-guided munition was used to strike this bus full of children, that he's going to try to do...
I don't have the best intel, I'm still trying to learn, but he's going to try a somewhat unorthodox maneuver with DoD appropriations.
Right now, the Senate is dealing with the massive DoD appropriations bill to fund the Department of Defense.
And so, Senator Chris Murphy has introduced an amendment that would end all U.S. support to the coalition until the DoD can certify in writing that the coalition is not violating laws of war, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, with U.S. munitions, with U.S. refueling, which, of course, the DoD cannot do right now, given what's publicly available and what's at public knowledge.
So, we're pushing offices, we're seeing if that can get a vote on the floor, because there is a chance the amendment could get a vote on the floor, and that could be, if we can whip up enough support, another kind of signature vote on this.
But it was introduced very late last Friday, sort of reading the text today, it would be a very quick turnaround if this were to happen.
But it's another sign of encouraging ongoing opposition.
Nobody's letting this go.
And now, how's that different from the resolution amendment that was added and passed with the NDAA?
This would cut off support until the DoD produced a certification that, given the wording of the amendment as is, the DoD simply could not produce.
The DoD could not say that the coalition is not using.
But what is the NDAA amendment say?
Because that was a pretty good one, too, right?
But I guess it fell short of this.
The NDAA amendment was really good.
It was a good signaling amendment.
And it sort of is part of this evolution towards congressional, we hope, will be full-scale opposition towards ending this war.
But the NDAA amendment was a little looser.
So it wouldn't have cut off assistance up front like the Murphy amendment would.
It would give the State Department an opportunity to deliver a certification on three different or four different requirements, that the coalition is making a good faith effort to participate in negotiations, that they are making a good faith effort to increase humanitarian access, and they're making good faith efforts to decrease the amount of money that's going to be spent on the law of war violations and targeting of civilians.
And this was strong legislation.
It was welcome.
But there are ways that the Department of State could make the certification.
For example, how do you measure a good faith effort?
There's ways you can kind of sneak around this.
And even if Secretary Pompeo couldn't deliver a certification, which, frankly, he wouldn't and shouldn't, there was still a national security waiver that would require a little extra legwork from the administration.
But essentially, the administration would be able to get out of it and would be able to get out of placing conditions on support.
The Murphy amendment would just stop it cold until the DoD can prove otherwise, which is a bit more dramatic and a bit more straight to the point.
Yeah.
Well, and so I think you were saying some previously very hawkish or generally very hawkish, I shouldn't say previously, some generally very hawkish members have been lining up behind maybe going along with this now.
Is that right?
Yeah, there's been some encouraging signs, I would say one of whom is Bob Menendez.
Bob Menendez is no doubt.
I'm sure if you could quickly review the public record of where he's voted on various foreign policy issues in the past, his stance on issues like Iran, North Korea, things like that.
But he released a letter and this is part of the barrage and what he's talking about.
He released a letter in late June or early July, invoking his privilege as a ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to say, I know that the U.S. government is planning to conduct a transfer of some 120,000 precision guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sometime soon, because the government's been pushing this deal on Congress, although they haven't announced it yet.
And he's invoking his privilege to say that he will oppose any fail until the administration can answer these three or four questions he had had, which are much like Murphy's questions, questions that the DOD could not answer about, is the coalition, have they stopped committing IHL violations?
Well, obviously no.
And things like that.
That was a very strong effort.
That was an encouraging sign.
Even Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a letter in early June, opposed U.S. support for the coalition's terrible offensive on Hodeidah city and port, which has since sort of been diverted.
And you had me on a couple of months ago to talk about that, I think.
But Senator Corker went on record opposing that facet of U.S. support.
On the House side, we've seen Representatives Eliot Engel and Steny Hoyer, very centrist Democrats in the leadership.
Eliot Engel is not known for being a dove, Hoyer is not known for being a dove.
They've signed, I think, now three letters over the last month opposing certain aspects of U.S. support and demanding answers and clarification from the government on the extent and scope of U.S. support.
This is what I'm talking about when I'm saying we're seeing more hawkish offices, more centrist offices, even some Republican offices kind of get on board with these letters.
And my hope is, and my sort of analysis is, that they are staking out symbolic rhetorical territory that a hard vote in the near future, they will have to follow up on in that kind of scenario.
Scott Horton Well, and it might be worth bringing up, I don't know, I guess it's kind of quaint, right?
But to coin a phrase from John Yoo and those guys back in the Bush administration's torture regime, that this is all illegal, right?
There never was authorization for a war against the Houthis in Yemen.
And, you know, it's kind of sort of deniable, I guess, because it's the Saudi-led coalition.
And yet, we know that the entire war is only made possible by American support directly, you know, military support and the rest of it, too.
We're the empire and Saudi's the satellite, and that's how this works.
And furthermore, that this is the war at the same time the CIA is bombing al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
This is the war for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as they've been working with UAE forces on the ground all this time, and this kind of thing, as we all know.
And against their bitter enemies, the Houthis, the ones that we're attacking.
So, is that part of the debate in the Congress at all, that this is a completely unauthorized war?
I mean, in Libya, Obama said, well, yeah, it's kinetic, this or that, but since they can't shoot back at us, and it's really just a turkey shoot, that means it's not really a war.
If it was a war, they'd be able to at least moderately defend themselves.
That was their legal justification.
There is none here, right?
I mean, they're just winging it.
And anyway, is that part of the debate in the Congress at all?
I think it's certainly part of the debate.
I think that part of the debate has been a bit latent since the War Powers vote in the Senate in March, but I think it's right there.
A number of offices, when they talk about this privately, acknowledge up front that Congress has never authorized this.
And given the scope, I mean, talk about us being the empire, them being the satellite, but given the scope of our support, I mean, our support is such that it violates the War Powers revolution, because Congress has never voted on it.
And so that is a potential.
I can't say I know of an office planning to introduce this, but that is a potential route forward that an office could just introduce a straight-up bill saying, we suspend or we withdraw all support to activity that has not been congressionally authorized in Yemen, probably making some national security exceptions.
You could also have another War Powers resolution fight.
Something I'd like to point out that's interesting, looking at this, Congress has not yet voted to say the war in Yemen is illegal, but it has not yet voted to say the war in Yemen is legal.
The War Powers resolution attempted in the House last fall, House Concurrent Resolution 81.
That was shot down by the Rules Committee before it even came up for a vote.
And then the House, the sort of compromise resolution, the non-binding one that came out of that, admitted that Congress hadn't yet authorized refueling and logistical assistance to the coalition.
In the same way, the Senate moved Corker and the Senate leadership, Republican leadership, moved to table the Senate War Powers resolution.
They actually, I mean, my sense would be if they really pushed it and brought it to the floor at that time, we might not have won on a straight-up vote.
And then it would have been horrifically, you've gambled, you could have argued that that would have legalized US support, but they didn't, they tabled it.
And so the question of legality is very much up in the air and it's definitely an avenue that offices do still talk about and you'll probably see them pursue at some point in coming months, I would say.
Yeah.
And now, so what's really changed up there?
Is it that the front line did a thing and showed the starving children or was there, I guess, obviously the bus bombing must have made a couple of clicks on the dial or on the scale or on the aisles or however you count them, people changing sides on this.
But was there something else or it's just the culmination of it's been going on for so long now and someone back a long time ago promised them it would be short or what's the deal?
Yeah, I think on one hand, I think there is a bit of a culmination here.
In fact, you've had a ton of pressure and a ton of press relatively.
Some people talk about Yemen being the forgotten war, but at least from where I'm standing, we've seen increasing press attention, increasing reporting, increasing consternation, outrage with coalition activity.
And so I think something like the Assad bus bombing, which was horrific, was kind of an, oh, here we go again.
I can't believe we're still, we do maybe have to rethink support because we've given them so many chances, chance after chance to improve and they just haven't, they refuse to.
But I think there's also an element of, and different people who work on this might tell you different things, but I think the attempted attack, the attempted assault on Hodeidah city and port was still obviously going to be a disaster and still obviously going to undermine, if it went forward, totally undermine the new UN special envoy attempts to restart negotiation.
But a lot of offices that were willing to cut the coalition flack on some of their decision-making, that was such a bad faith move that they could no longer do that.
And the humanitarian consequences, I mean, have been so dire, but if a full attack went forward, would continue to be even more dire by orders of magnitude that they could no longer view the coalition as anything but at the very least a grossly incompetent ally and partner, if not actively stoking and worsening the humanitarian situation.
So I think that assault has actually backfired, at least in the halls of Congress.
I think it has backfired for the coalition and congressional opposition heavily signaled privately and publicly is one of several reasons why they didn't move forward with a full offensive, like they were saying they were going to do for weeks and weeks in May and June.
Well, all right.
So I don't know, man, I don't really believe in this kind of thing.
But I've been told by people like you, that no, really, it works.
If people will get involved and call their congressman, this kind of thing that they really can help you and what you're trying to do up there.
So give us your best rap.
Well, you need to call your congressman because support is, against this intervention, is mounting.
And maybe I'll give you a bit more of a utilitarian argument, although I work in human rights and pacifism, that's not necessarily my rap.
But this war in Yemen is very easy for the United States to stop, relatively.
It's very easy for the United States to withdraw support.
It's easy for the United States to lean on the Saudis and Emiratis to end this war, to enter into negotiations, to fix the negotiations.
It's not like trying to, not that we should be there at all, but it's not like trying to disentangle yourself or withdraw from Iraq and Syria.
So this is eminently doable.
And public pressure is one of multiple factors, not the only one.
But increased public pressure is one of multiple factors that could really push offices to reconsider their support for the conflict.
And what I would even say if I were being particularly utilitarian, although we are a nonpartisan organization, is we're seeing this become more and more of an issue or a litmus test within the Democratic caucus.
So if you live in a district with a Democrat, you should also be pushing your Republicans, too, because we need to swing Republicans.
We need to swing many more Republicans that are currently involved.
But if you know you have a Democratic member of Congress and you know they're on the fence, then maybe call them up and say, hey, I saw potential presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren were talking about this.
I saw progressive leader in the House, emerging progressive leader Ro Khanna.
I need to see Bob Menendez talk about this.
Why aren't you talking about this?
You might be able to peer pressure them somewhat.
Maybe not my best rap, but one of them I can give.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, and, you know, whichever, wherever you live, try to attack the left from the left and the right from the right, because everyone's sick and tired of being attacked by their opposite.
But if they're attacked by one of their own saying, hey, man, get it together, then that's a lot different.
It can be.
And so, you know, if you're calling your Republican congressman, blame this whole thing on Obama.
Stupid, weak, loser Obama stuck us with this war, and, you know, our hero Trump thought he could wrap it up, but it hasn't worked out.
We should just call it off before it gets worse and this kind of thing, right?
Why not?
Just the same as what you're saying is, hey, if Bob Menendez can get it together on this, where the hell are you?
That's a good one.
That's a really good one, I think.
But people need to think along those lines of who it is that you're talking to, because if you're just a liberal attacking your conservative congressman and saying, be more liberal, that's not going to work very well, you know?
No, probably not.
They will push you to the bottom of the column.
Yeah, yeah.
But so, you know, there's always a very conservative case for peace to be made.
And of course, a leftist one as well.
So, you know, I think definitely that's the right take.
And listen, I really appreciate all of your work on this.
You know, I sit around worrying about it and complaining about it and, you know, interviewing people about it, I guess.
But you're actually doing the kind of work to push those votes and make that difference.
So I really appreciate it.
Well, at the same time, your media work is part of that cumulative effect you were talking about earlier.
So you're not so uninvolved.
Don't worry.
You try.
You do what you can.
That's what Bill Hicks said.
You do what you can.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
Eric Eikenberry, everybody.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Loblog.com, y'all.
Congress, White House, reaching breaking point on Yemen.
Hey, participate in breaking their point.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
