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All right, you guys, introducing Derek Davison, writing again for Jim Loeb over at loeblog.com, only the best stuff there.
This one is called 60 Minutes Imagines a Different War in Yemen.
Welcome to the show, Derek.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, man, good to have you back on the show.
So I didn't watch it, but I saw on Twitter everybody complaining that there was no mention of America's role.in the war whatsoever, so I'm glad I missed it.
So go ahead and state your case.
Let's hear it.
Yeah, so I unfortunately didn't miss it, despite my best efforts.
Really?
Sorry about that.
So basically, I mean, the first segment of last night's 60 Minutes was about the war in Yemen and the starvation specifically that it's caused.
And, you know, they did, I don't know how long the segment was, maybe 10 minutes of, you know, discussing the humanitarian catastrophe that's unfolding there and showing these horrible images of starving Yemeni children and talking about the you know, the hundreds of thousands of people who are at acute risk of dying soon and the millions more who are suffering from malnutrition.
And there was no mention at all of the fact that the United States is enabling all of this.
So it just was so egregious.
And, you know, this is a thing that happens over and over again when American media talks about Yemen.
They either downplay or ignore the fact that this all wouldn't be able to happen.
I mean, it literally couldn't be happening without the United States going along with what the Saudis are doing.
So, you know, it just hit me in the moment.
And I wrote a, you know, a little rant, I guess, about it.
Yeah, good times.
Thank goodness you did, too.
So listen, I just saw Marcy Wheeler.
It's apparently from yesterday or something, but a good tweet where she was getting some response saying, how come we're calling this a famine instead of a genocide?
When, you know, a genocide is when it's a deliberate famine being inflicted on somebody by somebody else.
In this case, us on them.
And of course, that's the reason.
That's the answer to the question.
Because America, the world empire and Saudi Arabia are satellite.
We're the bad guys.
Yeah, I mean, it's a political distinction, right?
I mean, to call something a genocide.
Well, as compared to just when it's a drought and people go hungry because they have a poor economic system and bad weather, which is right.
But I mean, Mother Nature can be mean, but that's not genocide, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, but, you know, I think she's right.
There's there's really this is a deliberately inflicted, you know, starvation crisis that I think could easily be called a genocide.
But because, as you say, you know, we're the ones doing it or we're the ones enabling our buddies to do it.
You know, the political talk about that.
So there's a phrase called plausible deniability.
And the easiest example that comes to mind to me, I'm sorry if this is a lazy one, but Ronald Reagan wanted to sell some missiles to the Ayatollah at the same time he was backing Saddam Hussein.against him in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
And I don't know if Reagan was even in on it, but his men anyway.
And what they decided they would do is they would have the Israelis sell them some missiles and then we would pay the Israelis back because then it would be plausible deniability.
But in fact, most people don't even know that part of the story.
One, because Israel's involved.
And so don't talk about that.
But mostly because it wasn't plausible, right?
It was just deniability, but everybody saw right through it.
It was Reagan selling missiles to Iran.
And as the story goes, Reagan sold missiles to Iran.
And the deniability part is just a footnote in the story, right?
So in this case, everyone says, oh, the Saudi coalition, the Saudi coalition, the Saudi coalition.
But if it can't happen without the world superpower enforcing the blockade, delivering all the weapons, providing for the carrying and feeding of the weapons, the refueling of the planes on the way to their targets, according to the L.A. Times, helping pick the targets, etc., all of this stuff.
Is that plausible that this is a Saudi war at all?
Or this is no different than George Bush marching the 3rd Infantry Division into Iraq in 2003?
I think the distinction I would make between the sale of missiles to Iran and this is that that was an American, an intentional American policy that we funneled through a third country to, as you say, provide some semblance of plausible deniability.
I mean, this war is very much what the Saudis want to be doing.
The reason that we're enabling them is because we want to maintain good relations with the Saudis.
And particularly under Trump, I mean, you know, one of my pet peeves that didn't obviously come up in the 60 Minutes piece is when writers refer to this as the Trump policy in Yemen, when in fact it started under Obama.
And the reason that Obama got involved was this was at the same time that he was doing his nuclear negotiations with Iran, and it was sort of a quid pro quo that if the Saudis didn't make too much fuss about those negotiations, America would back whatever insane policy they wanted to pursue in the region.
It certainly, our involvement has escalated under Trump.
I think there was a, I can't remember where it was now, but there was a report just a week or two ago that said, you know, we've done vastly more, more than double the amount of refueling aid this year than we had done by this point last year.
So our involvement has escalated under Trump, but that's, you know, a product of his overall, you know, pro-Saudi agenda, which is just, you know, far beyond even the usual American president.
Well, let me try to split the difference then.
What about the policy in Syria, where that was placating the Saudis too, going along with that policy, and yet we all know that if Obama had said, or I presume, you can correct me if you disagree, I presume that if Obama had told the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and the Israelis that you guys may hate Assad, but we hate al-Qaeda more, and we're the boss, and we say no way are you backing the uprising in Syria, then that would have been the end of that.
And that was plausible deniability too.
You know, Flint Leverett from the National Security Council and high-level CIA analysts, he was on the show in probably 2012 or 13, and I asked him, well, this is just plausible deniability, right?
Oh, the Saudis are doing it.
I mean, who's zooming who here, right?
And he said, that's right.
It's America's policy to back these terrorists against Assad in Syria.
We're the power, and Saudi works for us, and so placating them, that's certainly part of it, right?
But is it really fair to say the policy belongs to Riyadh and not D.C.?
Right, and I think in Syria you're right.
It was American policy that Bashar al-Assad was a bad dude, and he was allied with Iran and Hezbollah, and they were trying to create this Shia crescent across the Middle East or whatever.
I mean, that was United States policy that we wanted Assad gone.
And we saw what happened in Egypt when Mubarak was ousted, who was a U.S. ally but was a dictator along the same lines, and we saw an opportunity to get rid of an unfriendly dictator in Syria, and so we went in on the side of the opposition.
I think that what happened to the Obama administration was they jumped in with the rhetoric that Assad must go, and he's illegitimate, and he's killing protesters and all this stuff, and then came to realize after they'd done that that a lot of the opposition, or at least the most active opposition, was made up of al-Qaeda and ISIS types.
And so they had to try and pull back any direct American aid to the opposition, but instead use countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia to funnel aid to them.
Sorry, hang on for just one second.
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And now, I mean, I guess I see what you're saying.
And you know, Patrick Coburn wrote at the time, too, that a huge part of this was just internal politics inside Saudi Arabia.
MBS, the now crown prince making his reach for the crown at this point, at that time was the brand new deputy crown prince and defense minister.
And he launched this to solidify his political position inside the kingdom.
There was a big part of it.
And that was the New York Times story, and I try to repeat this all the time because I think it's so relevant and important and correct.
I think it's true.
It's in one paragraph.
They have my two favorite quotes about it.
They say, on one hand, they knew the war would be long, bloody, and indeterminate.
But anyway, they decided to go ahead and do it anyway because they had to, quote, placate the Saudis because of the Iran deal, as you said.
But that was the quote.
To placate them by starting a war.
They knew they couldn't win.
They knew they couldn't finish.
And oh, well, like George Bush, oh, well, that'll be up to some other president to figure out.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's Hillary will take care of it.
Don't worry.
There's there's certainly a failure of strategic thinking involved in this, particularly because they've sort of gotten rolled back now in the last few months.
But for a while, the only party in Yemen that had benefited from the war was Al Qaeda.
So, you know, we were directly sort of working against our own interests by by aiding the Saudis and destroying Yemen and leaving this vacuum for for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to fill.
I mean, it was just I think it was no more than, you know, a very short term, you know, notion that we need to do something to to keep the Saudis happy.
And so, you know, we'll support them in this.
Yeah, well, see, but this is the thing, though, right, is and I'm sorry to keep harping on this.
And I know it's just a metaphysical construct.
It's not even really a thing.
Responsibility.
You know, it's a it's a noun, but it doesn't have mass.
But so but the deal is, though, that we have all the power and they don't.
And if we weren't selling them more and more bombs all the time, which is, you know, the U.S. government has to license all of that.
Of course, it's part of the foreign policy to do that.
And if our mercenaries weren't taking care of all the maintenance for their airplanes and if our air force wasn't refueling them and if our Navy wasn't backing them up in the blockade on the sea, none of this would be happening at all.
Right.
Isn't it really our war?
You know what I mean?
I mean, it is.
I think it's you know, it's not intentionally our war.
It's sort of, you know, our war.
It's become our fault because we lashed ourselves to the Saudis and have refused to reconsider that decision.
So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I definitely would agree that it's it's our fault.
The responsibility here.
I mean, certainly the Saudis are to blame as well.
But but America is right there with them.
Yeah.
And now.
So tell me this.
It seems like 60 minutes is going to be a poor example of this.
OK, but I guess it's about half of one.
It seems like this story is finally catching on here a little bit.
It started out.
It was just, you know, Rand Paul and a couple of others.
I don't know all their names, but there are a few heroic congressmen on this issue and senators over the past couple of years, but very few.
But it seems like this is starting to catch on.
And part of it is that people are sick and tired of the Saudis at this point after 16 years of terror war and seeing how counterproductive our alliance is with them for those reasons.
You know, even in The New York Times and they run a front page story about, oh, look, the Saudis have been bankrolling the Taliban all this time.
We've been fighting them and, you know, all of this stuff.
People are sick and tired of them.
Right.
And so maybe is it possible you think that there could be, I don't want to say a sea change, but some kind of real, you know, stepping up of understanding in D.C. that, hey, look, we have to stop that.
We can't wage a war of starvation against these people like this.
This has to stop like, you know, before Christmas, like right now.
I mean, I think D.C. is always the last place for things like that to catch on.
But I do think that there's an increased public awareness that's had to do with a lot of different things.
I mean, as the Yemen, you know, as Yemen gets more coverage, the release of the 28 pages from the 9-11 report that dealt with Saudi Arabia.
There's a number of things that have happened in the last year or two that have, I think, caused the public to rethink America's relationship with Saudi Arabia.
And that's starting to kind of take a little hold in D.C.
But, you know, it's always going to be, you know, that's the last place for a major rethink of American foreign policy.
But there was the resolution that Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, just got passed.
It was, I mean, it was a toothless, you know, sort of declaration of Congress's opposition to the war.
They had a good one.
They had a good one.
Yeah, they had.
I mean, they wouldn't have even gotten it to the floor.
They had one that called for, you know, the immediate end of American involvement in the conflict, which would have been great.
But the House leadership, you know, wouldn't let it come to the floor like that.
So they had to take it down to this, you know, statement of displeasure, basically.
But that's a sign, I think, that there's, you know, even now in D.C. and on Capitol Hill, you're seeing some recognition that this relationship is toxic and it's taking the region and the world into some bad places.
Unfortunately, the very last place you're likely to see anybody reconsider this is in the White House.
You know, this administration above even the Obama administration or the Bush administration, you know, I mean, God, George W. Bush was holding hands with the Saudi royalty walking through gardens.
But what Trump has done, you know, exceeds even that.
I mean, he's so deeply, deeply committed to doing, you know, going along with what the Saudis want.
But it's hard to imagine him changing that.
Well, you know, I'm kind of conflicted because I have this dissonance in my head about how, well, you know, don't worry, we're told all the time.
Madison McMaster there and their brilliant geniuses, they're warriors with PhDs and they know what to do.
And then yet at the same time, yeah, they're just kind of accidentally stumbling, sleepwalking, being sucked into this conflict by their allies that they just can't seem to corral.
Where it seems like, come on, you know, well, I mean, he's got all the power from from the perspective of the U.S. military, which has, you know, basically is dogma at this point that Iran is the enemy and we have to do anything we can to or, you know, any any opportunity we have to counter Iran and support the Saudis is good.
Just, you know, for that reason, just for the regional balance of power, you know, absent any other considerations.
And that's, you know, I yeah, I definitely wouldn't look to to those guys to be the voice of reason on something like this.
Yeah.
And now.
So I'm sorry, this sort of goes without saying, but Jesus shouldn't that, you know, as we're learning here, this is the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history.
Correct.
It's the worst time that that ever happened to anybody.
And this is the real irony of this, too, is that and I've learned this from talking with Claire Manera from Doctors Without Borders, who's on the ground there trying to save people's lives, that if you can just give them some fluids, they can survive.
They don't even need antibiotics.
They don't even need medicine.
They just need to need enough fluids to survive two or three days to get through the worst of it.
And then they're good.
But otherwise they dehydrate to death.
And and so here's the most treatable illness, the most treatable fatal illness you could possibly have.
You don't even have to get it in the first place.
Right.
Well, yeah, that's a total breakdown and services and utilities.
So, yeah, it's you know, I mean, it's going to cross a million cases by the end of the year, most likely, which will be first.
It's already the, you know, biggest outbreak of cholera that's ever been recorded.
And it's there's no there's no way to even get the fluids into people because the Saudis have now, you know, instituted a total blockade on airports and seaports and even land routes into the territory that's controlled by the rebels, which is where the most acute need is.
So, yeah, it's it's only going to get worse.
It's only going to going to keep keep getting worse.
All right.
So now what about them snooty French and those busybody British and the pain in the neck Germans and all these people?
They saying anything of the Russians or the Chinese saying anything about this on the U.N. Security Council at all?
Is anybody pursuing real diplomacy here?
Not not that I've seen.
I mean, Yemen is.
Unfortunately, not at the top of anybody's strategic thinking, you know, plans.
So, you know, Britain is almost as culpable as the United States in terms of weapon sales to the Saudis.
They're they're, you know, up to their necks and what's happening.
And Russia is, you know, busy trying to cultivate its relationship with Saudi Arabia.
China has sort of a no problem strategy in the Middle East.
So they they tend to try and stay out of these things.
So, no, I mean, there really hasn't been any to my you know, as far as I know, there hasn't been any push at the U.N. for for, you know, some kind of resolution.
There's been like some aborted little kind of meetings in Kuwait and whatever.
But right.
I mean, the U.N. itself is trying to, you know, move a peace process forward.
But the Saudis are a huge impediment even to that.
You know, they put the they put President Hadi, who's the nominally legitimate president of Yemen, basically under house arrest in Riyadh.
They won't let him leave.
And there's no sense that even if he wanted to negotiate that he would be allowed to because the Saudis are in the driver's seat.
All right.
Sorry.
Hang on one more time here real quick.
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Should I ask you about the purge in Saudi and the rise of MBS here?
Sure, you can.
I wrote about that for Jacobin a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, okay.
Well, I didn't see that, but I'd sure like to hear.
So we know that, as I mentioned, he was the brand new deputy crown prince and defense minister at the launch of this war.
He's the one who launched it in Saudi.
Right.
And he was just, I think he was just defense minister when they started the war, but he became deputy crown prince shortly after that.
Oh, during the war.
So there you go then.
Right.
Just like Palpatine.
And he's now, you know, scratched the deputy.
He's just the crown prince and likely before too long is going to be king.
And now, so I really have neglected this story.
I've done a couple of interviews about it, but I've not done nearly enough reading.
But I did see a great thing at Moon of Alabama where Bernard was writing that.
Well, basically, it's the Salman, I mean, led by him, but it's the Salman family purging the Nayefs and the Abdullas and marginalizing their influence.
And I guess those are the cousins.
You know, I'm not exactly sure how it breaks down.
But the point being, I guess, that that's not how this works in Saudi, that they always have a real consensus among all the princes and princelings for the leadership.
And that they there hasn't been this kind of a ruthless purge and change of regime in this fashion.
You know, within recent memory, anyway, I guess I don't know the ins and outs of it, but that, you know, he's making some really powerful enemies.
And so how this is going to shake out is far from determined that kind of thing.
Well, it's yeah, I mean, he's he's making powerful enemies, but he's stripping them of their power in the process.
Like he's taken the one of the things that the Saudi family has always tried to maintain is a division between the three main armed forces in the country, which are the National Guard and the Interior Ministry, police and the military.
And he's purged now, you know, he purged Mohammed bin Nayef, who was who was crown prince and, you know, was ousted.
So Mohammed bin Salman could get promoted.
He was also the interior minister.
So he's purged him from the interior ministry.
This this latest purge nabbed Muqtada bin Abdullah, who was the head of the National Guard.
And he's replaced these guys with people that he knows are presumably knows are going to be loyal to him and indebted to him.
So he now controls all of the kingdom's military power.
You know, we we've there been reports now that all the that these princes that they've been arresting ostensibly on corruption charges are actually being shaken down for their money, basically.
And they're being they're going to have that money appropriated by the state, which obviously takes a great deal of their power away.
So I think it's he's making and he certainly must be making enemies within the family.
But the mechanisms by which those other princes could do something about it are being taken away from them.
And, you know, Mohammed bin Salman, for now, at least, is pretty popular with the Saudi people, or at least with young Saudis.
So he's got a popular like populist base of support.
Well, they're making a big deal about what a reformer he is.
He's let women drive.
That's pretty progressive.
If you're coming from the Stone Age, I can see that.
And now it's funny.
I mean, Adam Johnson at FAIR had a great piece about this sickening kind of lapdog approach that The New York Times and The Guardian specifically he singled out were taking to this that, oh, what a moderate guy.
Yeah, he's going to abolish Wahhabism and replace it with Sufism or some kind of thing, you know?
Yeah, I mean, he talked about returning Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam, which makes no sense whatsoever from a historical perspective.
There's no moderate Islam to return it to.
Saudi Arabia has always been extremist.
Well, and is that just a PR stunt to tell the Americans that, don't worry about me, you know, I'm going to bring them all into the 21st century now?
I mean, it's a PR stunt, but it also gives him cover.
I mean, the headlines, the big splashy stories here have been, you know, he's arresting billionaires and princes and all these prominent Saudis.
But he's also arrested a lot of regime critics that are just, you know, writers and religious figures, preachers, and, you know, from all across the spectrum, from people who would like to abolish the monarchy and democratize Saudi Arabia to, you know, people who think that the monarchy is too liberal and corrupt.
I mean, he's rounding all of those people up.
And I think, you know, to talk about restoring moderate Islam, whatever that means, gives him cover to continue to do that kind of thing and, you know, justify it in the name of this supposed liberalization.
Right.
Yeah.
It's funny, right?
They can completely, on 60 Minutes, completely omit America's role in the war, in the Saudi war there in Yemen.
And then when it comes to coverage of the new would-be king, they can just omit all mention of the Yemen war at all.
Right.
That somehow this is this great, yeah, he's like the Al Gore of Saudi Arabia or somewhere else supposed to love him.
Right now, yeah, because he's got all these, you know, big ticket projects like his, you know, they're selling part of Aramco for billions of dollars, and he wants to build a giant new mega city that's going to be, you know, the future of Saudi Arabia.
I can see the similarities with Al Gore.
He's kind of dazzling people with big stuff while he does some terrible things under the radar.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, and what a poor working radar it is, huh?
It's a selective kind of a thing, you know?
It's very selective, yes.
All right, listen, you do great work.
I really appreciate you coming on the show, Derek.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be here.
That is Derek Davison.
He's got this piece over at the Lobe Log, 60 Minutes imagines a different war in Yemen.
No, they just need some more aid money for select NGOs, and they're going to take good care of everything for you, okay?
That's all you need to know.
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