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 hacked.
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 us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying 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, y'all.
Introducing Hassan El-Tayyab.
He is with Just Foreign Policy.
So Robert Naaman's group, they do, you know, sneakers on the ground to work lobbying on Capitol Hill.
And I met Hassan when I was in Washington, D.C. a couple of weeks ago and gave that speech for the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy.
And he was the guy who asked the Yemen question at the end and is doing work on it right now for Just Foreign Policy.
And so welcome to the show, Hassan.
How are you doing?
I'm well, thanks.
Appreciate you joining us today.
And so, yeah, let's talk about this activism.
Who is doing what on Yemen?
We have a lame duck Congress now, but they still have power.
And then we have a new Congress coming.
And we have, of course, obviously the context since you and I last spoke is that, well, the war in Hodeidah is getting worse.
But the secretaries of defense and state say they want a resolution sometime soon here.
So I'll let you take it from there.
What's the latest?
Okay.
So there are two bipartisan bills, two war powers resolutions sitting, waiting to be voted on sometime in the lame duck.
So on the House side is H. Con Res 138.
And on the Senate side is S.J. Res 54.
And the House side bill was introduced by Representative Conner, Massey, Jones, Smith.
And on the Senate side, it was introduced by Senator Sanders, Senator Lee, and Senator Chris Murphy.
Now, since, you know, the situation in Yemen, the humanitarian situation is horrible.
Obviously, Saudi Arabia has cut off the flow of food, fuel, medicine, and clean water with a terrible blockade.
And they've been doing air strikes on a lot of civilian, agricultural, and economic infrastructure.
So humanitarian situations really are getting so dire.
We were at 8 million people on the brink of famine.
That number has been revised to about 11 million in the past month or two.
So we are hitting a real crisis point.
And we think in the next few months, the U.N. might call this a famine.
And it would be the worst famine in the past 100 years.
So that's why there's been so much bipartisan support and pressure for a resolution to this conflict.
And post-Khashoggi, there's been even more.
So you've seen a lot of senators in the pro-Saudi camp actually come out and really condemn Saudi Arabia's behavior.
Even Senator Flake has gone as far as saying if the allegations are true, we are going to have to cut support for the United States' role in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Just so your guests know, the United States is providing targeting assistance and mid-air refueling for Saudi warplanes.
So we're deeply committed and complicit in these actions.
Yeah.
So right now, the House bill— Again, let me just back up a little bit and talk about what the vehicles are that we're using in the War Powers Resolution.
So a War Powers Resolution is a bill in Congress that would basically, if passed, require the president to end hostilities in a conflict zone within 90 days.
And so I think right now that's pretty much the best vehicle we have to hold the administration accountable.
So the House bill has about 80 co-sponsors, and among them are some— like the ranking Democrats on most of the national security agencies, National Security Committee, like Adam Smith, House Armed Services, Representative Engel on Foreign Affairs.
And also the Democratic whip in the House is also on the bill.
So there's definitely prominent Democratic leadership.
So I am cautiously optimistic.
I think when you mentioned the ceasefire that was requested by Mattis and Pompeo, I think it's pretty convenient timing as we approach these two votes that they come out with this.
Right.
Yeah, definitely.
And I think we should emphasize it's not quite unprecedented.
They did try this one time.
I guess a year ago it wasn't a War Powers thing, but six months ago it was, right?
Last spring it was an attempt to use the War Powers Act.
Do I have that right?
Yes.
A year ago it was the House, and they used a different avenue, right?
Yeah, so they did try the War Powers Resolution with HCON Res.
81.
That was essentially the same character, minus Adam Smith.
But you're right, in effect, because that got tabled, and they introduced a compromise bill in H.R.
599.
So they used a different vehicle on that.
But then that's really a big deal.
It should be taken as a big deal that Congress would invoke the War Powers Act for an ongoing conflict and try to force the president to stop.
Absolutely.
This is a huge deal.
It's getting a lot of national attention, and I think rightfully so.
Obviously, desperate times call for desperate measures.
It's an extremely blunt tool, and it forces the administration's hand.
Yeah.
And I think that's needed.
I'm going to say this, because it's important anyway.
It's important to me, especially for some reason or whatever, but I think it's important for the overall thing, too.
Was it your fault, or is it Rand Paul's fault that he wasn't on your list of Senate co-sponsors of this thing?
So, it was not my fault.
God dang it.
Yeah, we really were trying to get him on that bill.
He was MIA last spring, too.
I believe he might have some issue with the vehicle of the War Powers Resolution.
I'm a little unclear as to exactly why I haven't personally talked to him or his staff, but that's what I'm deducing.
I believe he actually voted the right way on the procedural vote that we had in March.
He did vote against tabling it, but he didn't sign on to it and help support it with the rest of the guys there.
You got it, yeah.
But you do have the Liberty Caucus types, right?
There are anti-war right-wingers involved in both houses.
Absolutely.
We've got four Republicans on the co-sponsoring H. Con Res 138, so four House Republicans.
I will throw out there that we have Representative Buck, who's actually a really prominent Republican on the Rules Committee, who's going to go to bat for us a little bit, so I think that's good.
On the Senate side, we only have one Republican co-sponsor, but I do think things have shifted post-Khashoggi and post-the humanitarian situation getting so dire.
Yeah, the bus bombing, too, I think probably had some effect PR-wise.
Oh, absolutely.
They overlooked a lot of them before that, but this was one with the backpacks and the video and everything.
It had that kind of made-for-TV aspect to it.
Just horrifying.
Yeah, and while these incidents are so horrible to see, like that one in particular, just the visuals were so awful, I will throw out there that some of the work they're doing that isn't as flashy, a bombing agricultural infrastructure can do as much damage or much worse.
Yeah, I just interviewed Martha Mundy about her new report for Tufts University about that, deliberately targeting flocks of sheep, targeting all the irrigation networks, targeting grain silos, targeting all of the infrastructure of basic farming, food production and distribution, quite deliberately a war of genocide, and all under the American government's umbrella, as you said.
It couldn't happen without American participation in the care and maintenance of the jets and all the rest of it.
Yeah, within probably 24 hours, if the U.S. cut support, the whole Saudi military could be grounded.
Yeah, totally agreed.
Yeah, no question about that.
I don't think.
And the UAE would have to withdraw all their mercenaries and whatever, too, including al-Qaeda.
And so now here's my thing.
I know this stuff is too complicated for the average congressman or senator, but I think maybe if you can make it simple enough for them that they can kind of get it on the first try and really kind of have an effect on, like, make their eyes open a little wider for a second, that like, hey, you know how we're taking the Saudi side against these Shiite guys because Iran and this and that over there?
Well, the thing is, remember how it was already the case that there was al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula?
Remember we were fighting them?
Well, guess what?
That's whose side we're on now against the Houthis, see?
And so I think if it's easy enough for like even a Republican congressman or senator to go, oh, I see, so al-Qaeda and Saudi being on the same side, I guess that does make sense, right?
A little bit, huh?
Something that like, hey, I know you don't mean it, but this war is treason.
We can't do this.
I mean, what are we doing?
We're fighting.
We got al-Qaeda is joining the UAE ground forces fighting in the battles with American air cover.
I mean, this is crazy.
And anyway, I think it's so crazy and so simply crazy that maybe you could even really get them on that basis.
That like, kind of even whisper it to them like, listen, it's not deliberate treason, but it's just, you know, in effect, look at whose side we're on here, guys, you know?
I bring that point up at every single lobby visit I go on.
And I've been on quite a few on this one particular bill.
I drop off an AP article published August 7th of 2018 that basically points to exactly what you just said.
And that is a really good counter narrative to, you know, to what they throw at us, which is usually like, well, the Houthis, the Houthis are, you know, they're supported by Iran.
And I say, well, you know, al-Qaeda actually attacked Americans on American soil.
The Houthis have never done that.
Well, you know what too, man, you could quote Ronald Reagan when he was talking about Lebanon, saying that it's foolish to get involved in Middle Eastern politics because it's all just too complicated and too irrational.
And you can't really predict whose side you're accidentally helping.
When you think you're doing one thing, you actually end up doing something else.
The great Ronald Reagan said, hey, be careful about screwing around over there, especially, you know, with ground forces and this level of air involvement and side picking between these different countries.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think that's, you know, what you say rings really true.
And I wanted to actually just segue off onto the left-right coalition we're building in a time of extreme partisanship.
This is an issue where I think, you know, we can potentially bring folks from both sides.
And, you know, we've definitely got progressive and Republican co-sponsors, you know, like Tea Party folks.
But even in the grassroots, I'm working, I'm in lobby visits sometimes with, you know, in defense of Christians or Freedom Works or defense priorities.
I just had a meeting with some folks affiliated with the Koch Network.
So it's, there are a lot of people that, regardless of the other differences we might have, we can come together on this common sense issue.
Yeah.
Well, and not just common sense, but the most important emergency.
Right.
Of all of our wars that are going on right now, this is the very worst one.
Absolutely.
Against the most helpless people.
And so, you know, it's, it's not just common sense that we should all agree on it, but it's absolutely necessary that we can put aside everything else to agree on it.
Exactly.
Yemen can't wait.
The humanitarian situation is dire.
And, you know, as, like I said earlier in our discussion in about, if things on the ground do not get better, and like there are about half a million people that just have been evacuated from the port of Pudeda, and that is the lifeline for, you know, 14 million Yemenis.
So if, if things don't change and get better very quickly, we could see, you know, potential, you know, some mass casualties in the range of four to eight million people within six months.
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Well, and of course, you know, I actually just talked with Andrea Carboni from Akla Data about, you know, and they're only counting the violent combat deaths.
They're not counting the, you know, the deprivation and the cholera and all the rest of it, because that's kind of outside their purview.
But just in combat deaths, they're saying that it's, I think he said 56,000 that they can document as of right now, but he's pretty sure that it's as high as 60 or 80,000 have been killed in combat.
And that includes, you know, civilian victims of airstrikes, as well as combatants on the ground and what have you.
So this is, of course, far higher than what you get to read in the newspaper most of the time that really plays this down.
Yeah.
And, you know, I want to just add 100,000 Yemeni children have starved to death since the start of this conflict.
And so that's while that's not a combat death, that's also significant.
And, you know, the humanitarian situation they've cut off, like I said earlier, the flow of fluid, fuel, medicine and clean water.
So if folks get a cold, they might perish because of the lack of medicine and how close they are to, you know, not doing hot in their health.
Right.
Yep.
And I mean, it's almost unbelievable.
It should be a shocking, but not surprising, I guess, that here we are having this conversation in November of 2018.
This war is still going on against the poorest country in the Middle East where everybody's already half hungry anyway.
And quite deliberately waging, as we were talking about before, a deliberate campaign against their food resources, their water, their electricity, their sewage, their hospitals, their everything.
It's a medieval siege against people who were already born lost in the first place.
You know, it's important to know how vulnerable Yemen is because 85 percent of their food actually comes from outside the country.
So if you do have a blockade and if you do start targeting agricultural infrastructure and economic infrastructure can just have dire consequences.
Also, the food that is in Yemen is very unaffordable to the people.
So there's just been mass inflation and also lack of wages for so many of the people there.
So it really just couldn't be worse.
Yeah.
And of course, as you know, Scott Paul from Oxfam was on the show the other day, too, and was talking about how the Saudis quite deliberately overly onerous restrictions and inspection regime on all imports means that some huge proportion of it spoils before it can ever even be offloaded after jumping through all the Saudis hoops.
And then, as you said, all the rest of the price inflation and the rest of that just makes it impossible.
He said, oh, there's food for sale, but nobody can afford it.
And people are just laying down dying.
Yeah.
So one message I want to have for your audience is, you know, if so, since Max and Pompeo made those statements, you know, I do actually believe that.
But fortunately, there was clearly defined or else.
And it put a lot of a lot of the onus on the Houthis to sort of make some concessions out front.
But I want to say can't hold a U.N. state accountable for war crimes in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
How do we ever expect to hold the Houthis accountable, which are essentially a rebel indigenous tribe that has taken over the capital of Sauna?
So I think we have to use the leverage where we can.
We can't necessarily just use our words to control the Houthis, but we can facilitate the peace process by holding Saudi Arabia accountable for what they're doing.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so tell us more about all this activism.
Again, the resolutions, the best congressman to contact, the best congressman staff to work with, the ones that you're working on, how people can help you and whatever the hell else you got to say along those lines.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think people know it's bad, but how do we fix it?
Right.
So the War Powers resolutions on the House and Senate, they're going to get action within the next few weeks.
I think the Senate bill could be voted on as early as the end of November.
And the House bill could be voted on as early as December 7.
Now, as far as congressional targets, let's start with the House.
If folks are out there, schedule a meeting with their representatives, see if they're on the bill.
Definitely just look up H-Con Res 138 on the GOV website.
But as far as really gettable targets, I would say Representative Bratt, Garrett, Biggs, Bloom, Harris, Sanford, Meadows, and Davidson are my top, top Republican targets.
On the Democratic side, we are looking a lot, you know, there's a lot more Democrats on the bill.
But for some reason, Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam Schiff have not got on board.
Adam Schiff is really important because, like I said, we've got all of the ranking national security Democrats except for House Intelligence.
You got to flatter Pelosi.
You got to just tell her, you know what, ma'am, you got it right on Iraq War II.
It's the greatest moment in your career when you told George Bush, no, and they did it over your dead body, but you did everything you could to stop that war.
And this is one of those times.
Yeah.
And so, yeah.
Because she didn't do everything she could to stop the war, but she did vote against it.
So anyway, make her feel good about opposing wars.
It's the only way to go.
Ring the bell, make her salivate, you know?
Exactly.
And we are planning a few actions.
If any of your listeners are out there, are available on November 20th.
We're going to be doing two rallies outside Adam Schiff's Hollywood Ave. office and outside of Pelosi's office in San Francisco.
And those are going to be from 2 to 5.
Okay.
Listen, I got to make sure I have your email address and I can put you in touch with antiwar.com's LA faction here.
Okay.
Great.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
So I'm interrupting.
Keep going.
More.
Phone numbers, web addresses, coalitions, organizations.
The quickest, I think the easiest way to go, if you don't have time to go to a rally or schedule a lobby visit, is just simply call your representative and tell them, you know, support any legislation that would end U.S. involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen.
And you can call.
This is a great number.
It's a number provided by FCNL.
It's 1-833-STOP-WAR.
Again, I'll just say that one more time.
1-833-STOP-WAR.
And if they call that up, it'll take you to the Capitol switchboard.
You just say your representative by name and they'll transfer you right there.
And just, you know, they'll tabulate.
And the more calls we get in, the more momentum this will have.
That's a great idea.
Having that one number that forwards people on to their own congressman.
Oh, it's super easy to remember.
You know, and then it also helps us keep track.
Like in that Senate battle, we got, I think, like 20,000 phone calls from that one hotline alone.
So it was great to be able to track that.
And, you know, listen, I think it should be reiterated that a lot of people are anarchists and don't believe in the system at all.
And I don't think that believing in the system at all is required for participating in it.
Because it's all we got.
And we have the world's greatest emergency right here.
And so the priority is to do everything we can to get the people who have the power to stop it, to stop it.
What else is there to argue about?
But it's worth bringing up because I'm not trying to make Democrats out of people.
But I think that no matter who you are, that this is something that we can do is have a marginal amount of participation in this debate.
And all the people with power are bad on it, or almost all the people with power are bad on it.
It takes the American people to be good on it and force this issue.
I think you may have seen the headline where MSNBC didn't say the word Yemen once for a year.
Solid.
Can you believe that?
A year, they didn't cover it once.
And so, but you know who did is a lot of regular American human beings who refuse to put up with this and are doing everything they can.
So, you know, that's the thing, man.
People got to be able to participate in something.
It doesn't imply consent necessarily.
You know, it just says this is what we have as an opportunity to do.
Yeah, just, you know, call them up, give them a piece of your mind.
And, you know, that's, I think that's important.
It doesn't mean you have to support everything that they do.
It's just, you know, call them up, give them an earful.
And say that these war crimes that we're supporting in Yemen are just not okay.
And we need to act right now.
All right, man.
Well, OK, again, that number is 833-STOP-WAR to call your congressman.
So that's a good one.
And make sure to catch him at a good reasonable business hour.
And that kind of deal.
And then JustForeignPolicy, I think it's just JustForeignPolicy.org is the URL there, right?
Exactly.
And any other URLs or phone numbers?
Oh, the resolutions again, everybody.
HCONRES 138 and Senate Resolution 54 are the ones that we want to support here.
And then any other URLs or phone numbers you want to mention here?
Yeah, sure.
It's Senate Joint Resolution 54.
But yeah, just, you know, keep the pressure on.
And I think they, you know, they got everything they need to know right now.
OK, right on.
OK, well, thank you, Hassan.
Really appreciate it.
Hey, peace, y'all.
OK, guys, that's Hassan El-Tayyab.
Tayyab?
Sorry.
And he's working with Robert Naiman at JustForeignPolicy over there, you know, kicking in senators' doors and congressmen's doors and trying to get them to listen to Reason on this.
And they could use your support.
So do what you can.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fools Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
