All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, you guys, introducing Hassan El-Tayeb.
He is from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, that's fcnl.org, of course, the Quaker Lobby for Peace up there in Washington, D.C.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Hassan?
I'm well, Scott.
I hope you're well, too.
I'm doing all right here, but I got a couple chips on my shoulder.
The first one is that Admiral Kirby said that actually we're still providing maintenance for the Saudi Air Force, because of course we are.
And so I wonder whether that represents to you a significant rollback of the announcement of the rollback of the war at the beginning of February there.
They said they were going to end all resupply, maintenance, logistics, and intelligence support for the war against the Houthis, and that's a major, you know, one of the pillars there.
But then I don't think anybody asked any follow-up questions about were you helping them with targeting too?
Are you still selling them bombs?
What is the deal?
Yeah, Scott, you're bringing up some really good points, and we just haven't had a lot of clarity about what's going on.
And keep in mind that this admission that U.S. civilian contractors are still able to provide these spare parts and maintenance only came as a result of a really explosive CNN piece, you know, about the U.S.-backed Saudi-led blockade on Yemen.letters from Congress, including one, almost 80 members sent it, led by Reps.
Dingell.
Senator Warren's also doing one right now.
And the recent admission that the DOD, by the DOD, that U.S. companies are still authorized to maintain Saudi warplanes means that our government is still enabling Saudi's offensive operations in Yemen, including bombings and enforcing a really inhumane blockade of Yemen's ports.
And, you know, I think right now we should all be calling on the administration to use its existing authority to block U.S. civilian contractors from aiding the Saudi war effort before more Yemenis are plunged into starvation and famine.
Well, man, I'll tell you, it's a pretty tough position to be in, to be relying on Elizabeth Warren to get anything done for us here.
What is her letter?
And it's a resolution or it's just a letter.
What is she doing?
Yeah.
So, I mean, what I I do appreciate that Senator Warren is putting this statement together out.
It's a it's a dear colleague letter that's going to be signed by, you know, you know, well over a dozen members of the Senate, you know, basically calling on, you know, Saudi to lift the blockade on Yemen and also calling on Biden to use existing leverage, including pending weapon sales and the maintenance and spare parts support, you know, to pressure Saudi Arabia to lift the blockade on Yemen.
You know, I want to just note that Tim Lenderking, the U.S. envoy to Yemen that Biden appointed, you know, he has even said that, you know, it's the administration's official position that they want the restrictions on these ports to be lifted.
So if that's the administration's positions, why why hasn't that happened?
What this letter is asking is what leverage is going to be used to make that happen.
But you're right.
Just a letter alone is definitely not enough.
We need legislation.
We need a follow up.
We need a new Yemen war powers resolution to cut off this remaining support we were having to the war effort.
We need joint resolutions of disapproval and and to block the pending weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, because, you know, the Biden administration put the pause button on that, but they haven't officially canceled the sales.
So there's a lot that needs to be done.
But I you know, I applaud folks that are speaking out.
But like you said, we need way more.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I hate to say it, at least in effect, I guess this probably wasn't the original intent, but maybe it was, but at least in effect, that announcement that, oh, you know what?
It worked.
You guys are right.
We're going to call off all this support seems to have essentially been just a PR stunt and, you know, been it's been used to change the subject away from this crisis.
They gave us, you know, a quarter of a loaf or the promise of half a loaf here.
And we settled for that.
We being the the broad base of the outraged people who were yelling about this at the beginning of the administration here.
And now attention has been diverted off on to other things while the war continues on.
You know, I think you're making a good point is that our attention has been diverted and there's a lot of stuff going on here domestically.
I mean, covid is obviously a big concern.
But keep in mind, this is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
And you know, the U.N. food program, World Food Program, is basically saying that four hundred thousand kids could die from hunger this year without urgent assistance.
And we're seeing a kid die every seventy five seconds.
I mean, it's abhorrent.
And a lot of people don't know.
But the blockade is really one of the main drivers, if not the main driver of the starvation crisis.
Now, a lot of folks might say, well, we want to block weapons from getting into Yemen.
I think that's a fair concern.
I don't want to see any weapons in Yemen.
But there's already a U.N. verification and inspection mechanism or UNVIM process in place that actually approves these ships.
So we're not talking about ships that are carrying any, you know, contraband or illicit weapons.
These have all been approved by the U.N.
It's just Saudi is blocking these commodities from getting into the country as a tactic, as a bargaining chip, you know, in their war against the Houthis.
And that's just absolutely devastating.
We got 16.2 million people on the brink of a manmade famine.
And, you know, we just have to do everything we can to lift the blockade immediately, unconditionally.
We need to decouple it from ongoing negotiations because innocent people's lives should just never be used as a bargaining chip.
OK, hang on just one second.
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Now, so overall, you know, in terms of what I was saying about the public relations stunt here, has the temperature really gone down in D.C. as far as the attention to this, where, I mean, as you said, there are plenty of other issues for people to talk about and all of that, but has that been really successful in making people in D.C.?
I mean, the influential ones, the ones whose opinion actually counts, senators and people like that, that now they feel like, oh, well, everything is fine.
Biden's working on that.
They told us what we wanted to hear, and now we don't care anymore.
You know, it's a complicated question.
I think for some, yes, but a lot of others, no, and some surprising folks that I wasn't expecting to be vocal.
You know, there was a letter led by Meeks and Ted Deutch and actually Republican ranking member Joe Wilson on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all sent a letter saying that the blockade must end.
And there was another, you know, like I said earlier, Rep.
Debbie Dingell, Pocan, and Khanna, they led a 75-member letter in the House.
We had a 70-plus-org advocacy letter effort.
And then I'm also pleased that Senator Warren and a bunch of folks, Patrick Leahy, the chairman of Appropriations, is also on this.
So a lot of people are upset.
I think a lot of people are saying that they're frustrated by the administration's lack of clarity.
But what we haven't seen yet is legislation.
And that's got to be the next step, is, you know, are we going to introduce a Yemen War Powers to cut off this remaining support?
You know, are we going to put provisions on the Pentagon bill, the NDAA or the DOD approach, and just try to make sure that we're cutting this support off immediately and doing it, you know, because so many lives are on the line.
And I think, you know, there are a lot of folks, Senator Murphy, I will say, he has, you know, spoken about the blockade, but, you know, I was hoping to see more from him as one of the foremost senators in the U.S. Senate, you know, he's on the Middle East Subcommittee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And you know, we need to get folks like him speaking out and saying that the U.S. needs to use the leverage we have over Saudi to, you know, end this blockade before more lives die.
Yeah, man.
And you know what?
I had an argue with a friend who's pretty dang good on this on the show here, one of my regular guests on this issue, and we got into this weird bickering contest about whether it's an American or a Saudi blockade.
And the evidence to me is the Americans keep seizing ships.
Sounds like they're a blockade to me.
And this just happened the other day.
And it's not really a ship, it was a boat that they seized.
And to their credit, the headline writers in this case, or maybe even, you know, it was the actual statement by the military was that this is presumably on its way to Yemen.
We're not really sure, but we kind of think, but in other words, they really didn't have any evidence.
I know Gareth Porter has shown in the past, in at least one major case, I think, too, that the boat was actually leaving Yemen on its way to Somalia.
Because even in the, at the height of this horrible war, Yemen is so lousy with weapons that they're still small arms exporters in the middle of all this strife.
But if you just type in US Navy, Yemen, and then minus coal, obviously, because that'll be the big one, take USS Cole out of the search.
And then the second place you'll see where the Houthis shot a missile at an American ship that was enforcing this blockade, that'll be the second most popular story.
Delete that out.
And then you'll still find dozens of results for the Americans enforcing this blockade all along for the last six years, or what am I missing?
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, this is a US backed Saudi blockade.
I don't think I would leave Saudi out either.
I mean, you know, Saudi warplanes that are basically right now, according to the Pentagon, being maintained by US civilian contractors, overseen most likely by Pentagon officials, and you know, that approval process has to go through state and the Pentagon.
Those warplanes, we know this is happening.
They're enforcing the blockade.
They're doing airstrikes.
They're preventing ships from docking at Hodeidah port.
And now there's like over a dozen fuel vessels that are unable to berth in that port.
And you know, it's just spiking the hunger crisis.
So how is this not a US backed blockade?
How are we not complicit?
And as the lead security partner of Saudi Arabia, I mean, if we continue to sell weapons and provide military support for their offensive operations, I just don't understand how anybody credible could say anything otherwise.
And I'm kind of curious to know who that person was.
And that's that's that's fine if you don't want to share.
But it's just kind of laughable.
And I think these people really need to be called out.
Yeah, well, I wouldn't say he was spinning too hard for him.
He was just being real careful that he didn't say something too extreme, even though that really was the correct characterization.
But listen, this is the beauty from the point of view of the empire.
This is the simplicity and the elegance of leading from behind is the diffusion of responsibility.
Everything is everybody else's fault and nothing is anybody's fault.
And they can just continue on forever.
The Americans, I don't know, maybe they could get away with this.
But I don't think that if it was just their war, that they would have destroyed the civilian infrastructure in the way that the Saudis have.
It would just be too blatant a violation of all our signatures to all those Geneva conventions and all those things.
But we can sit there and the entire time aid and abet the Saudis for years on end doing the exact same thing.
And hey, it's the Saudi led coalition.
We're just providing them with a little bit of, you know, intelligence and maintenance and midair refueling and some help out there on the high seas.
But it's still it's their war, not really ours.
Just like it was NATO that attacked Libya, not Barack Obama.
Yeah.
I mean, so we most likely, you know, I mean, we don't know for sure, but midair refueling, I believe, has stopped.
I mean, Congress already codified that into law.
So if, you know, people forget that they act like it was, you know, by, you know, Trump or Biden's good graces that this happened.
But Congress already passed a bill in the National Defense Authorization Act codifying that position.
And so I believe that stopped.
I think, you know, they're saying that the intel sharing has stopped or the targeting assistance.
Let's say we believe that.
But, you know, this ongoing maintenance, I don't think people may realize how important that is.
Every time an F-15 lands, the tires need to be replaced.
And so without that daily flow of spare parts and technical support, they cannot operate this war effort in the way they're doing it.
And by the way, I'm sorry, let me let me just interject here real quick.
After our last interview or a few interviews ago, whenever it was that you had brought that up, I got into it with some Air Force guys on Twitter who were saying, look, man, that's just not right.
And I said, well, it comes from Bruce Rydell.
Oh, you were you were part of the I brought you in the conversation.
Bruce Rydell is the one who said so.
And he's former CIA and knows a lot of things.
And the argument, I believe, settled on, OK, not every time, but very often.
So, yes, the point is essentially conceded.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad.
Yeah.
That's, you know, I think Bruce Rydell, he's advised four presidents.
He's a writer at Brookings and a former CIA analyst.
And it's not just I've heard this from others, Larry, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, who actually did a lot of training of Saudi forces.
So, yeah, it's a, you know, don't take my word for it.
You know, call it Bruce Rydell, ask him about it and call up Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
And well, and the point being, too, that, you know what, if it's every three or four times they land, same damn difference for the larger point of can their Air Force fly without Americans taking care of every nut and bolt on that thing?
The answer is no.
Other than, of course, BAE systems, you know, refurbishing the British typhoons.
The other, what, 25 percent of their Air Force or something like that is maintained by the Brits.
But the point still stands, you know, whether the tires wear out after one, two or three or four landings out there on that hot tarmac, it's essentially the same difference for the question of, well, put it this way, could the Saudis do this themselves without us?
And the answer is absolutely not.
So yeah, well, and thanks for making that point.
Another thing, another common fear is that, oh, my God, the Saudis, if we stop this support, they're going to get their weapons and military maintenance support from China or Russia or somebody else.
And, you know, that's another fallacy.
It would take a long, long time.
Again, citing Bruce Rydell, he says it could take up to 10 years for them to actually switch out all of this hardware, all of this, you know, technological equipment that keeps these warplanes in the air.
I mean, it's kind of like switching from a Mac to a Dell.
It's not, you know, these parts are not interchangeable.
You can't just put Chinese, you know, systems or Russian systems and kind of marry it with the U.S.-made equipment.
And so the idea that we have no leverage over this situation is absolutely absurd.
And, you know, we need to have a backbone in this country.
Our lawmakers need to have a backbone and hold Saudi Arabia accountable to basic human rights standards that our warplanes or, you know, our maintenance support for warplanes or our weapons should not be going to kill civilians.
They shouldn't be going to starve a population of 30 million people into submission as, you know, Saudi Arabia tries to, you know, have their way over and their will over the people of Yemen.
So I think, you know, we need to see some legislation.
I think, you know, I will say that, you know, I know this is broadcasting in California.
Padilla and Feinstein both joined Senator Warren's letter.
So folks should give them a thank you for that.
And if anybody is in Arizona, Kelly and Sinema have not signed on to this letter.
It closes tomorrow.
What about Senator Paul?
Senator Paul has not signed on either, unfortunately.
I asked them directly several times.
So I but I think, you know, we yeah, we need we need Senator Paul on this.
And we we also had Republican member Joe Wilson from South Carolina get on.
So it's not that there aren't any Republicans speaking out about the blockade.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know what's with Rand on this.
You know, he was quiet during Trump.
And I get the idea pretty easy, right?
He was promised Afghanistan and Syria if he just shut up about Yemen.
Yeah, I'm sort of kind of got Afghanistan, right?
But yeah, I mean, I'm making that up as far as the deal that he made.
But it's pretty obvious he was, you know, he voted right on Yemen, but he refused to lead on it during Trump.
And then but now what's the hold up?
And this is a guy who during Obama, I couldn't find this.
I wanted to cite it and quote it in my book, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the Internet.
But I know I saw with my eyeballs.
And that was Rand on Neil Cavuto's show.
And Cavuto for a Fox News host is a guy who reads at night, doesn't just watch other TV shows and stuff, you know?
And Rand says to him, listen, here's the thing about it, Neil.
If we succeed in driving this group, the Houthis, out of power in Sanaa, we could put Al Qaeda in there instead, okay?
That's a danger we're messing with right now.
We're fighting on the side of AQAP against these other guys.
And Neil Cavuto goes, Oh, Mike, he understood.
There is a difference between the shirts and the skins in this conflict.
And you're telling me we're on the shirt side?
That didn't sound right to me.
And just he just got it immediately.
So in other words, Rand has it within him to be extremely persuasive about this.
He's not just he knows about it.
He knows enough to beat down any comer.
But then where's his leadership?
Where in the hell is he?
Great question.
I mean, I think you and your listeners, we need to get active here.
And you know, FCNL has been pushing that office for a while to kind of be vocal on this.
They were good on blocking weapons to the UAE.
I'll give them credit there.
They voted against, you know, weapon sales to Saudi as well.
But we need them vocal on the blockade and ongoing U.S. complicity.
And we need answers from the Biden administration.
And I know they do value bipartisanship.
They've been saying that from the beginning.
So people like Rand Paul have an outsized role here, in my opinion, right now, and especially in the Senate, where we don't really have any other Republicans that are, you know, that I think would be as likely to speak out on this situation.
So you're asking the right questions.
I wish I had a better answer for you, because, you know, we have been working really closely with that office in the past.
And you know, and they do have good staff.
You know, I got to say, Rand Paul has some good staff in that office.
But I just don't know where they are in this one.
Yeah.
Well, all right.
Some phone calls will make the difference on the margin.
I mean, we're talking about Ron Paul's boy.
He's got to be reachable on this.
And he's been good on it in the past.
And frankly, the Rand Paul in the Senate right now, relatively speaking, is the best one we've had, the best version of him in the last decade up there.
And so, you know, it ain't hopeless.
And he shouldn't just be condemned.
He needs to be encouraged with a lot of positivity to re-engage on this and do the right thing on this.
It's got to be done.
And it's it's got to be doable.
Well, go ahead.
I was just going to say a quick thing people could do is go to EndTheBlockade.com and that's going to generate an email to, you know, your member of Congress in the Senate and both your senators.
And that's a good way to just kind of keep the drumbeat going here.
I think, you know, steady barrage of emails and phone calls and op eds and letters to the editor and and even the occasional rally or protest, I think, would be really useful right now in ending our complicity in this war and blockade.
Absolutely.
You know, I got a letter back from my Republican congressman saying, hey, listen, I know this is really serious.
It was a form letter, but it was we're definitely taking both sides of this issue, not just the hawk side.
We promise was essentially what it said, which just goes to show that at least they know that they better not just be hawks.
They better say, well, we're trying hard to decide what's the right thing to do without committing to doing anything right, of course.
But it's a minor point.
But just they know that the heat from the public is against this thing.
And so we just need to make that message, you know, more prominent again.
And by the way, this is where we should have really started this and I think you alluded to it.
There's been a massive air campaign recently in Sanaa, correct?
And then also in there's this huge battle going on for the city of Marib in, I guess, relatively eastern Yemen here compared to Sanaa out there.
And this is really, you know, the problem, right?
Isn't this the problem?
The Houthis are winning still.
And the Americans and Saudis won't negotiate from a position of weakness.
But they can't get into a position of strength.
So they just continue on.
That.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I mean, Saudi has escalated in Marib.
There's been an offensive there by the Houthis for about a year now.
It's really picked up since the tightening of the blockade in January.
And it's kind of an endgame scenario.
This is the last government that the the Hadi Hadi has any support in.
Granted, he's working through proxies.
Basically he's working through the Muslim Brotherhood who are occupying Marib, which is a point that not a lot of people know or bring up.
It's the Islam faction there, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, Saudi calls them terrorists, but they're willing to work with Islam to fight off the Houthis.
So, again, this is just a really, you know, a simple yet calm.
You know, it's a simple situation.
We need to end our support for the war and leverage, you know, get Saudi to end what they're doing.
But there's a lot of factions, a lot of moving parts.
And, you know, this is the problem with trying to get involved in regime change wars.
It just gets so convoluted at a certain point.
That's why it stay out.
I mean, seriously, when you're talking about your allies, the Saudis back the Muslim Brotherhood while your allies, the UAE back Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in this war against the Houthis, that at least for a short time, Lloyd Austin, the head of Central Command, our current secretary of defense, then the general was supporting or at least providing intelligence to use to target a QAP.
This whole thing is insane.
Can you imagine someone explain with a straight face who's on whose side and who's Zooming who in this war on the news hour at night or something?
I do that to members of Congress and their staff all day.
It's confusing.
But but I think the point you made is right, that there is a feeling in Congress right now that this is wrong and that we need to do something about this.
It's just we need that extra push from the public here to make it happen, because, you know, I just think Democrats like they have a lot of domestic priorities that they're concerned about and they want to have a good relationship with Biden.
But, you know, if they're hearing from constituents at home, that's going to make all the difference right now.
And I think we can get this done.
Yeah.
And it's made the difference this whole time.
This is all because of grassroots work from activists in the country that's made this even an issue whatsoever.
So last thing real quick, and I'll let you go, is when is the next one big day of action where everybody is on the State Department, the Defense Department, the White House's case about this?
You said you were stopping support for the war and now you admitted you were lying then if you're telling the truth now.
And we demand that you go back to ceasing all support for this offensive war.
Yeah, good question.
Another big global day of action is in the works.
We haven't solidified a date.
We're thinking either in August on the anniversary of the bus bombing.
No, sooner, man.
Sooner.
Sooner.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, like in June.
June the 10th.
I just made that up.
Get on it.
Sounds good, man.
Yeah.
I'll do what I can.
OK.
Hey, you're the best, man.
I'm just out here cheering for you.
Thank you so much, Hassan.
You got it.
Thank you so much, Scott.
All right, you guys.
That is Hassan El-Tayeb, and he is at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
It's, of course, FCNL.org and EndTheBlockAid.com.
And listen, I'm not a big believer in the process and democracy and electoral politics, and neither are you guys.
Nobody's naive here.
But you have to admit, on the margin, it makes a difference if their phones are ringing, if their emails are flooded, if their staffers are telling the senators, jeez, they keep bugging us about this Yemen thing.
That's different than if they're not, OK?
Their imagination of, do the people in the world out there, do they really care?
The American people, do they care or do they not care?
And the message has to be that we care.
So pick up the phone and call a staffer and bugger for five minutes, OK?
Come on.
Thank you.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, Antiwar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.
