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 their 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.
All right, you guys, introducing John Qualey from CommonDreams.org.
And this one is from August the 25th.
Less than 24 hours after the Senate rejected efforts to curb slaughter, 26 more children killed by U.S.-backed bombing in Yemen.
So that was August the 9th, somewhere approximately 50 were killed in the bombing of the bus in the marketplace in Sadda.
And then there's this refugee camp, basically, internal refugee camp near the Hodeidah port, where 26 more were killed on August the 23rd in a bombing there.
And so welcome to the show.
Sorry, I want to clarify those facts real quick.
How are you doing?
I'm well.
Thanks for having me.
Happy to have you here.
Appreciate you doing this work.
And so the first thing is that I would ask you to clear something up for me.
I think, am I really learning that there's a difference between the NDAA and the DAA?
That they just passed the National Defense Authorization Act, and there's details on Yemen there.
But now there's this whole new Defense Authorization Act that was another now-blown opportunity to stop the war in Yemen.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And I had to check that myself when this story about Murphy's, which we can get into the Murphy's amendment.
I said, what is this amendment attached to?
Didn't we just pass this outrageous spending bill?
And yet here's another one coming down the pipe.
So that was the effort to get it attached.
But yeah, it's a separate spending bill that's on its way.
And so how many billion is that one for, by the way?
Well, I actually can't tell you off the top of my head, but a billion will certainly be the starting consonant.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, all right.
So first of all, when they passed the NDAA, which is funny because every year they pass 700-something billion or whatever for this thing.
But the most famous that it's ever been, it's actually good, it's notoriety, was for the NDAA of 2012 when Obama made it legal, when he signed it for the military to hold American citizens on whatever military accusations with no charges or trial.
And no one ever pays attention to the rest of the thing that they pass every year.
It's funny.
But anyway, they passed quite a few amendments to the NDAA this year, including some that somewhat restricted the president's ability to wage the war in Yemen.
If you could describe that, I guess I'd ask you to, but I think everybody already knows.
We talked with Bruce Fine on the show about how Trump immediately signed a signing statement, a la George W. Bush, saying, I don't care what you say, I can do what I want anyway.
Yeah, well, this is nothing new.
And what we do know is that none of this started with Trump in terms of the manner in which these wars have been executed, but that Trump has really been proud to say that he's taken the gloves off.
And so anything captured in sort of trying to curb the manner in which the U.S. is executing its foreign policy, there's been no check on Trump.
And he's really only made a situation that was already horrible under Obama that much worse.
Yeah, it's really, you know, it has been, as you're saying, has been and is ugly and is getting uglier over there.
And so there's also this new United Nations report that came out accusing the Saudis of war crimes there.
Yeah, which came out.
I mean, the timing of this, it's all been, you know, there's been again, this has been, you know, since the civil war really kicked off in 2015.
It's just gotten progressively day by day, week by week, month by month, and now year by year, just worse and worse.
And so, you know, if you look at a timeline from this last year, both in terms of what efforts were made in Congress or what pressure was put on the Trump administration to, you know, to stop the carnage or to roll back U.S. support for the Saudi coalition, it, you know, the cries for help and the cries to stop this insanity have gotten louder from, you know, the international community, from the United Nations, from NGOs on the ground, from, you know, human rights advocates have gotten just, you know, the situation never seems like it could get worse.
And then it gets worse, and then Congress has just, on multiple occasions, abdicated its responsibility and rejected efforts.
So this, again, this amendment by Murphy that didn't even get a vote is just the latest, and it was a pretty mild amendment to begin with, as much as you might champion it.
It was certainly a worthy effort, but relatively mild.
And it was right after this second massacre?
That's right.
It was.
No, well, it depends how you do the timeline.
But that vote happened Wednesday.
And then the second attack in which 26 children were killed happened, you know, within the next 24 hours.
And there were two attacks that day, separate attacks where civilians were documented to be killed.
So, you know, two weeks after, approximately two weeks after the school bus bombing, which caused enormous outrage and heartache, that bill was rejected by Republicans in committee.
And then less than 24 hours later, a new attack, or two separate attacks killed several more dozen children and other civilians.
And then that Friday was when the UN released its report documenting just their investigation into the manner in which the Saudis and the UAE have been conducting themselves and was very damning.
So all those things sort of happened within, you know, have been happening within the same, you know, 72 hours or so.
So it was a horrible week.
But again, it's nothing surprising, given what we've been seeing over the last month and indeed years.
Well, and, you know, I hadn't realized, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apparently had lied to Senator Warren in a committee hearing and said that, yeah, no, we don't have any, you know, direct connection or oversight about how these strikes are being carried out.
Which is a lie.
Yeah.
And then it was just, which, and I think we've already known all along, just from the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times and what have you.
But in this case, a story came out just a couple of days later, or maybe a day later or something, coincidentally, by Iona Craig in The Intercept.
And I talked with her about that article here on the show, and she had a document that was an American, I think, intelligence officer, Air Force intelligence officer, basically doing his immediate write-up review of why this strike went wrong.
One where they had almost wiped out this entire family.
They had just barely missed.
Luckily, they just missed.
Satellite JDAM thing went wrong or what have you.
But then, so that proved, you know, immediately, if you believe her and I do, that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was lying to the Senate about this.
And never mind, I mean, I'm no fan of Elizabeth Warren, but take her out of it.
It has nothing to do with it, right?
She's the boss.
She has oversight responsibility.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not a co-equal branch of government with a senator.
And yet, he acts like he can just bluff.
Yeah, and Iona Craig, who's just a fabulous reporter and has done some of the best stuff on the ground.
And so that reporting she did earlier this month about that strike, yeah, it told a very specific tale about the way targeting is being done.
But it's not been a secret that the whole U.S. cooperation is about targeting and hand-holding and advising and supporting.
And the Pentagon, who, again, I think on that same Friday that the U.N. put out their report, put out a very – it was either that day or the day before or the evening before – put out a very tacit, we're expressing concern about some of the civilian deaths.
And so they put out a very passive, unimpressive statement.
But then this week, in a press conference, asked about how far U.S. support would go for the Saudis.
You had General Dunford and Secretary Mattis speaking out of both sides of their mouths about – they'll take credit for what they understand as the time that the trigger wasn't pulled and the time that we've seen great concern for civilians.
And they even said anecdotes about – they're vague anecdotes about when missions were called back or targeting was suspended.
But then they take no responsibility at all for when these reports of bombings that kill mass numbers of children.
So it defies – they just think this was Mattis.
We're just watching the war.
We're just – we're not responsible.
But it couldn't be anything more empty than these proclamations.
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Well, and you know, not to sound naive, like I have faith in the political process or ever did or anything like that.
But it seems like if Americans were mad enough about this, then they could force the Senate to put a stop to this.
At the end of the day, ultimately, one of the last vestiges of the Constitution still in place, mostly, is that the Congress has to appropriate the funds and they can call off anything based on that power, ultimately.
And so there is a sense, I mean, hell, Donald Trump got elected.
That wasn't because of the corruption of, well, in some ways, but it was because of the openness of the process that actually is true.
Anyone can become the president if the people will let them.
It's not exactly all just royalty here, although the Bushes and the Clintons might allege you to think so.
And so, yeah, it's one of these things where, yeah, it's hopeless and we can't make them stop it, obviously.
And look who they're beholden to, these senators.
I mean, Dianne Feinstein is literally married to an arms dealer.
So is she even a senator or she's just a corporate representative of this arms dealership in the Senate, literally holding a place in the Senate?
And on it goes like that, not to single her out.
They're all like that.
But somebody's got to do something.
And some of them are trying.
I guess that's the thing.
Chris Murphy keeps really complaining about this, and Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee and some others have tried to do something about this.
They just keep failing.
So it seems like something's got to be done here.
What's to be done, John?
Well, it goes to your deeper point is that, yeah, some of those lawmakers have put forth, I guess, what you could describe as a valiant effort.
I mean, Sanders' resolution that was co-sponsored, like you said, with Mike Lee and Murphy again earlier this year.
That was in March, maybe.
That was defeated, and 44 Democrats signed onto that.
It wasn't enough to pass.
And I think Iona Craig's comment at the time was that those 55 senators who voted against that have blood on their hands.
And they do, the blood of children and civilians and adults.
And it's amazing.
But that bigger question is about there is no public opposition.
There is no anti-war movement that puts any pressure on those remaining senators.
I mean, some don't need it.
Some don't need to be told that this is wrong, that this isn't in our interest, that this is self-defeating.
But there is not enough public pressure to bring to bear to put this to an end.
And so the complicity runs deep.
And then it's a story that you could ask Americans a lot of questions, but one of them is, how is this in your interest to be bombing schoolchildren in Yemen and then demand that voter give you a good answer about why this is in our national interest?
And you won't – I don't think you'll find one, but there's just – most people don't realize what's going on.
They're fed a bunch of baloney about why, in fact, we're engaged there.
And so there's enormous amounts of misinformation.
And then there's just a lot of people's attention elsewhere.
And then that's a media story about why people don't cover this.
And then people who do cover it even realize that it's not the story people want to hear.
People don't want to read about Yemen.
They don't want to read about poverty and cholera and dead kids and al-Qaeda and Houthis that they don't understand.
And so it's – and it's all wound up in part of back to the NDAA and our Pentagon spending and our wars overseas that never end.
I mean it's part of a – there's just an enormous complacency, and it's heartbreaking and infuriating.
Again, if you look at the timeline about how these things have progressed and how many good people, anti-war groups that do exist and have been doing – breathlessly trying to speak out against this, again, both in the United States and certainly overseas and NGOs and, again, back to the United Nations, who have just repeatedly said this is – you have famine.
You have a cholera outbreak.
You have one of the poorest countries on earth on the brink of – and not on the brink.
I mean we debate the words.
I mean there is a famine.
There is mass death and displacement and suffering going on.
And it doesn't – for most Americans it just doesn't exist.
It doesn't count.
It doesn't happen.
And that's – and so lawmakers who are being – we got 500 other things that they're being told are more important, but it's shocking and it's shameful.
So again, the blood on our hands comment I think is as deep as the complicity, and it's really hard to grapple with.
Yeah.
Well, I think you put it very well.
It's like kind of some mathematical ratio between the level of devastation and pain and grief and the degree to which nobody cares or has any interest in it whatsoever.
It just seems so unfair.
They're like, hey, you got to at least pay attention and know what's going on at all.
And yeah, it is.
It's the height of cruelty.
It's worse really than the war in Libya, which is pretty damn bad and has reinstituted chattel slavery there, that kind of thing.
And we could count them off.
There's more.
But yeah, this is the weakest country in the Middle East if you don't count Somalia across the bay there.
And we're bombing them too.
But so now to the – oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, no.
Just acknowledging you're right about Somalia.
And again, all of those, whether it's Libya or Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, ongoing, this is all part of a narrative.
And I don't think you can detach one from the other.
This has become the way of war.
This is the endless war, and Americans seem to be very resigned to it, wringing their hands at Trump and wringing their hands at lawmakers they disapprove of.
But this question of war spending and just sort of congressional abdication of their constitutional responsibility, like you mentioned, is just clear as day that they are simply not interested in offering oversight or putting a check on Trump and Obama, for that matter, again, who had a large hand in unleashing some of this carnage.
It's just been part of the story of this century.
And that's really a huge part of it, too, is all the bipartisanship.
And everybody's such a damn political sellout and doesn't want to attack their own side.
And then so they just stay silent rather than be hypocritical about it.
They just don't say anything.
Yeah, and that complicity begets complicity.
I mean, I think that works in the populace.
I think it certainly works in Congress, where in order to stop it, you have to admit that it's been a mistake all along.
And people are always very reluctant to admit their mistakes and just walk back from the precipice.
But I would just ask people to ask, what is the benefit of our participation in this?
And you can criticize the Saudis and the Emiratis all day, and they should.
I mean, they should be globally condemned, and they certainly have been.
But our responsibility is for our role in this.
Again, maybe I wanted to mention, too, just beyond the military cooperation, which is tacit and specific.
And again, there's a lot we don't know about how much they're participating in this bombing or that bombing, or was there U.S. sign-off or intelligence on this targeting or that.
It's very hard to know.
And of course, the Pentagon will drag its feet endlessly about investigating what went wrong and how can we do it better next time.
And they keep playing this game as though it would be worse if we weren't there.
So we're there to make sure things aren't as bad as they could be, which is vapid as could be.
But at the end of the day, our role, our complicity goes beyond just the mechanics of it, but also, of course, the political coverage and sort of the international free pass that the Saudis and the Emiratis get when you have the U.N. up in arms, you have the global community up in arms about some of the...
And again, the U.S. isn't alone.
The U.K. has a lot of complicity in this.
And then we haven't really even talked about the arms sales and the weaponry that are being funneled into Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to carry out these attacks.
But there's a lot more to be said there.
But again, that sort of political coverage that is offered by...
Regardless, the U.S. doesn't want to be responsible for the deaths of children in school buses and in marketplaces and at cholera centers and in hospitals that have been bombed.
But they give enormous political passageways for Riyadh and the monarchy there.
So it's just atrocious.
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To try to push on this in the best ways they know how.
Is there anybody I'm leaving out?
I mean, because people listening may really want to participate in this.
They just don't know how.
Well, Code Pink certainly has been vocal in their opposition and part of that coalition and Peace Action and Women Without War and Amnesty and the human rights groups have been outspoken about their targeting and just opposing the way the strikes have been conducted.
And again, NGOs have played a really big role from MSF, Doctors Without Borders, just decrying.
Red Cross has evacuated an enormous number of their staff and MSF has done the same and all of those groups and many more that I can't name, though I should, have been very outspoken about the conditions on the ground.
There's great journalists.
You mentioned Iona Craig.
There's great Yemeni journalists on the ground who people can read and pay attention to.
But, you know, the U.S. groups that are speaking out do so consistently and bravely and they should be applauded.
But I do think that the proof is in the pudding that – I hate using that phrase, but I just did – that there's just not enough political pressure outside of them from constituents.
And even in the midterm, when you have a very contentious midterm, this is a conversation that isn't being had largely and that's not true of all candidates.
Some have been much more outspoken than others, but it remains to be seen what happens in November and if any of this calculation can be changed.
But if it's not a political demand before an election and during a campaign, it's hard to know if there'll be any political traction for it, whoever takes office in the next session of Congress.
So it's hard to blame something that doesn't exist, but I think that ongoing and continued absence of a vibrant and politically powerful anti-war movement is something that all of those groups who we mentioned also lament and recognize.
They do what they can, but you can't create that.
So I don't – part of the importance of reporting on this is – I don't know how you shame people into feeling sad or feeling responsible or feeling just angry that this is the situation we've put ourselves in after 17 years at war.
Not that that's when war started, mind you, but when will that be put to the test in Congress and when will pressure really be applied?
And I think Chris Murphy's point, again, when he was trying to raise energy and support for his amendment last week was we just bombed a school bus.
We did it.
The Saudis maybe pulled the trigger, but we are directly responsible for that, and if that – for those with kids, for those without kids, for those who see the school bus go by in front of their house or down the street starting next week, U.S. school kids go back to school, or actually probably many already have, depending where you live.
I don't know how that doesn't seep into people, and yet we've been seeing this in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq and Syria for, like I said, going on 17, 18 years.
So it's – but it's got to happen, and people are going to get fed up, and I hope it's soon.
You know, it seems like we could – we certainly deserve at least one good member of the House or the Senate to be loud and consistent on this stuff.
I know Tulsi Gabbard's all wishy-washy on Iran and Palestine, but she's good on Syria.
I'm cool with that.
And Rand Paul, I've seen him say great stuff about the war in Yemen.
I saw him saying to Neil Cavuto one time, listen, Neil, if our side wins, if what we're doing here succeeds, we could actually put al-Qaeda in power in the capital city.
Man, are you reading me?
And Neil Cavuto's going, oh my God, Senator Paul, I'm starting to understand who's on whose side over there now, and it's frightening.
But that was it.
That was the last time we heard from him a year and a half ago.
Where the hell?
This could be good for him or Murphy or anyone else to completely flog this every single day.
What a good man up there, you know, pushing to help save innocent civilians from being killed with no complaint.
What are they going to do?
Say he's helping the Iranians or something?
None of that's going to wash.
You know, any one of them could do better than a half-assed job, and it would be good for their own interests, it seems like to me, to do it.
Well, again, ask people, ask voters, you know, why is this important that we do this to you?
What do you get out of it?
And you'll be hard-pressed to get a good answer outside of, you know, killing brown people is a good idea in faraway lands.
But there is not, again, it just goes back to where ought the pressure come from.
It has to come from people first and, you know, politicians responding to that pressure and or leadership, you know.
Like, you know, Sanders' resolution from earlier this year was much stronger than what Murphy put out last week or, you know, Murphy's that was defeated last week.
Yeah, the War Powers resolution.
And there was, you know, I think that message resonated.
I think the fact that it got 44 Democratic votes – well, that's probably not an accurate roll call, but it got 44 votes.
I forget the breakdown of those days, you know, because maybe Paul and Lee were among them.
But then we had five or six Democrats, you know, Heidekamp and Don Lee, Manchin, and a couple others who voted against it, you know.
So you have this bipartisan agreement that the war in Yemen and the U.S. support for it is a good thing somehow in our interest.
But I would be hard-pressed to find a constituency, an informed constituency who would support that position.
Again, until I think the public gets informed and outraged enough – and like I said, there's a big part of this that's a media story.
You don't read about this on the nightly news.
Maybe once in a while.
I think the bus bombing at the beginning of the month did a little bit because of the optics and because of some of the, you know, video that emerged two or three days after the bombing that CNN had obtained of those children just moments or hours before they were killed playing on the bus.
You know, one of the kids had taken this video, uploaded it to social media somewhere.
And, you know, things like that break through, and you see that moment.
But otherwise, this is a story that has been – I mean, back to the adjectives and the warnings that have gone up to describe the situation in Yemen.
I mean, you had, you know, U.N. investigators and NGO heads saying we are running out of adjectives to describe how bad the situation is.
And the U.S., with this very direct and powerful role in it, hasn't at all been held to account.
And most of that is because the American people don't know about it, aren't informed about it.
So you have – you know, there's a whole system in place that just says, look at this other shiny object.
Don't concern yourself with this.
Don't worry.
We're fighting terrorism.
We're fighting the bad Iranians, and we're supporting our good friends, the Saudis.
And, you know, it's not your concern.
So there's an abdication from the media.
There's an abdication certainly in Congress.
And then there's a civil abdication of duty where it's just like we have become absolutely complacent in the face of, you know, our war paradigm.
So it's a pervasive and it's a problem.
But, you know, to your earlier question, it's we've got to figure out a way to bring it to an end.
Well, we still have some good writers, so that's good.
And, yeah, good work here.
I really appreciate it.
I know this does make a difference.
So thanks a lot.
Appreciate it, John.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
All right, you guys.
That's John Qualey.
He's at CommonDreams.org.
Less than 24 hours after the Senate rejected an effort to curb the slaughter, 26 more children killed by U.S.-backed bombing in Yemen.
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.
