08/24/16 – Andrew Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay, introducing our good friend, Andrew Coburn.
Yes, Patrick's brother.
And he writes for harpers.org most of the time.
He's the author of the great book, Kill Chain, all about the drone wars.
And this is called Acceptable Losses, Aiding and Abetting the Saudi Slaughter in Yemen.
Welcome back to the show, Andrew.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
Great to be with you.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you back on the show here.
And so, you know, one thing I really like about this article is, and you always do this, you go way back and give me some better context than anybody else about, you talk about the first time that the Saudis really, well, the first time, I don't know, within the last, you know, half a century, I guess, that the Saudis went and really intervened in Houthistan, I guess, up there, where the Zaydis live in northern Yemen, and how they helped radicalize and create the Houthi political movement in reaction to their intervention in the first place here.
Is that right?
Sometime in the early 70s, you say?
No, well, yeah, 79.
Oh, late 70s.
Yeah, quickly, what happened, you know, the Saudi, it's a Saudi policy, it seems to be, to when they feel they have a, you know, problem with extremists, with, you know, radicals, fundamentalists, or people even more fundamental than them, than the ruling regime, they export it, they go and make it someone else's problem.
So there was this guy who'd led a very bloody takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca with the aim of overthrowing the Saudi royal family, being killed, the revolt was put down, lots of people killed, lots of people beheaded, this guy had survived.
So the Saudis say, okay, the Saudi rulers say, okay, we'll let you out of jail, you go down to Yemen, and there are all these Zaydis in northern Yemen, who we don't like, because they're not, you know, not our brand of Islam.
And so you go down and you set up a school there, and, you know, teach people to think right.
And so that's what happened.
This school then becomes a magnet for like, proto al Qaeda types, you know, preaching Wahhabi or, you know, extremism.
As you said, the Houthis, anyway, the locals react, turn a bit to Iran, not not in a hard way, but just apply for teachers and, you know, textbooks and so forth.
And we're off to the races.
So now, you know, the Saudis say, oh, there's this Iranian outpost.
And fast forward to, you know, a couple years ago, the Saudis say, we can't stand this any longer.
The Iranians are on our southern border, we have to take action.
And with American endorsement, they start bombing this poor country, you know, into the Stone Age.
Right now, how much and you talk about this in your article, what percentage of what's going on here is all just about domestic politics inside Saudi Arabia, as opposed to, you know, the implementation of any sensical policy in terms of even limiting the power of the Houthis?
Well, very good question.
I mean, a lot of it is to do, as you know, you know, we've had this transfer of power in in, in Saudi Arabia, two years ago, the two years ago, the the old king of Abdullah been around for a while died, succeeded by his brother, who was younger was a mere 79.
When he took the throne, but how has the past the problem of dementia?
I mean, he just doesn't really know who he is or where he is most of the time.
He has a favorite son, young Prince Mohammed, who he's basically given total power to has taken total power, which is unusual in Saudi Arabia.
Usually the old gents, you know, sit around and come to decisions fairly by consensus, which means they don't do anything too extreme.
This guy's in charge, but he's got rivals, including his cousin, I won't sort of spatter you with names, because they're nearly all called Mohammed, who, you know, could be his rival is the crown prince.
So the way he can deal with it is by taking action by, you know, launching a war, which actually screws up the other guy's job, which is counterintelligence, because this war has been a big boost for al Qaeda.
So it's it's been, you know, like most wars.
And I'm very glad you asked this.
It's really a lot.
I can't give you a percentage, but a huge proportion of it is to do with domestic politics.
And now, I guess it makes sense if you're a defense minister that, hey, here's an enemy and I want to destroy him.
So I'm going to bomb him.
And yet, that sure hasn't been working over the last what, 18 months now?
Certainly not.
I mean, it's they always fall into this.
I mean, not just the Saudis, I mean, the US to the Israelis, everyone, everyone who has a force likes to use it.
And, you know, likes to use the toys, because they're all very exciting, and they cost a lot of money.
And, you know, you might as well justified.
And the, you know, they always seem to believe the BS, you know, that this with this new super duper, high tech precision bomb, we can, you know, absolutely do what bombing has always failed to do so far, which is hit the right enemy at the right time.
And needless to say, or certainly, as I explained in the piece, Saudi Arabia has been neck deep in American arms salesman for decades.
You know, including a big chunk of, you know, our military sits there permanently, basically, as a permanent sales force has gotten them to buy, you know, a huge, huge arsenal of the very latest, you know, whiz bang precision weapons.
So and so they were eager to use it, I think they probably believed it that this was somehow going to do the trick.
And yet, as you mentioned, for 18 months, they've been bombing away, bombing, just anything and everything down to donkey carts, you know, bridges, donkey carts, power plants, whatever, you name it markets for women and children in the middle of the afternoon.
Exactly women and children middle of the afternoon wedding parties.
You know, anytime it's a crowd of Yemenis, basically, they've been bombing Yemenis wherever they could find them.
1000 year old buildings.
It's done them no good.
Well, it's had a big one big effect, two big effects, which is it's reduced this poor country to an even greater state of humanitarian disaster.
And it means that any Yemeni who may be thought of accommodation with the with the Saudis before now really hates the Saudis, and also really hates the United States, because they not dumb and they know what who makes all this possible, which is, you know, us sending them selling them selling them, you know, all the guns, bombs and missiles.
Yeah, man.
And, you know, of course, a big part of how the Houthis got too big for their bridges in the first place that the Saudis felt so threatened by him was just because America kept paying solid the previous dictator to fight al Qaeda, but he just kept using all the money and guns to fight the Houthis.
And every time he picked a fight with him, he lost and made him stronger to the point and now he went then when America overthrew Salah, he went took some, I guess, most of the army divisions with him and when made an alliance with the Houthis.
So that's what really doubled their power there.
Exactly.
I mean, it's that you've got it in one that that's what's happened.
And it's somehow big.
It's amazing.
You know, we shouldn't be amazed by now that how bad us intelligence is they didn't, you could have seen this coming.
And they just didn't.
The other point, you know, thing about this whole disgusting spectacle, I'd like to point out is just how sort of casual about it when I talked to I talked to a lot of people in the administration about this very, very senior people.
They just went up and they pretended to be upset and bothered by but you could tell they just weren't.
They just didn't care.
You know, they'll get all hot and bothered about Syria because that's not big power confrontation must be the Russians and so forth.
They you know, hey, it's convenient.
The Saudis, you know, we basically the Saudis asked us we'll do them a favor.
They wanted to destroy this miserable country.
Sure.
No, not a big problem.
We know we're sorry they're doing it, but we're not going to do anything to stop it.
I suppose them to me the most horrifying and cruel aspect of it all.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, yeah, they felt no shame apparently whatsoever telling the New York Times that yeah, well, you know, we needed to placate the Saudis because of the Iran deal.
And that was it.
They didn't even pretend one other excuse about America's national interest here whatsoever.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, I, I told you know, Congressman Ted Lou's a very decent guy from California, who's one of he's been making a fuss about this or trying to from fairly early on.
And you know, he went, he got all sorts of classified briefings, you know, dogs and pony shows at the Pentagon, you know, to try and find out why we were doing this.
And I asked him, I said, Well, you know, what did you get?
What's the explanation?
He said, Well, I think it's because the Saudis asked us just that.
No, not like we need to do this because or, you know, some big important reason to go out and kill a bunch of women and children.
No, just say the Saudis asked us a favor.
Why not?
And then, isn't it the case?
Can you report Andrew that the Saudi military is a giant joke?
It's all run completely run by foreigners and especially American contractors.
And the only role that actual Saudis playing any of it is flying the fighter jets because that's a prestigious position for a princeling.
Exactly.
And by the way, I was told that they'd like to fly the fighter jets.
But then it's the guy in the backseat who does all the sort of tricky technical stuff and, you know, naming the bombs and everything like that.
And that's kind of boring.
You can't impress your girlfriend with like that.
So that's often, not always, but that's often like Pakistani mercenaries who get that job.
You know what?
Let me stop you right there for a second, because I talked with former ambassador Dan Simpson, and I forget who he was the ambassador to or what, but he's a newspaper man now.
And he told me that he had heard, I forgot if he had written this in his article, but he told me on the show that he had heard that there were Americans flying in the backseat of those F-15s.
Well, that doesn't surprise me.
I mean, I have heard that.
I wasn't able to nail that down.
But you had heard that as well, though.
I'd heard it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's double the rumor audience.
So take that for what it's worth.
Man, we really need to find out whether that's true.
I mean, I'm a little bit skeptical, because they'd be the Americans would be, well, it could be America wouldn't be serving American Air Force people.
It would be contractor mercenaries.
It could be true.
I mean, they'd be kind of terrified that one of them gets shot down and turns up on a booty propaganda film.
But Eugene, I guess anything's possible these days.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And of course, I mean, it makes sense.
I mean, if we got to refuel them, we got to pick their targets for him, like the LA Times says that, you know, our guys are doing all the work for him.
Why not hold their hands literally all the way to the targets?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, you know, if you look at there are all these job sites, you know, on the go online.
And if you just Google, you know, Saudi Arabia at 15 maintenance, you get, you know, page after page, offering good money for Americans to go out and maintain the planes that are doing all you know, doing the doing the bombing, so that it couldn't work.
The bottom line is, this is our war.
It could not be happening without us.
So we are part of the alliance.
It's pretty disgusting.
Well, you know, Marcy Wheeler was pointing out there was a PR bit that ran earlier this week about how all Americans, the Americans are pulling out of Saudi and sort of implying that this was in reaction to recent atrocities in Yemen, and that Obama was mad about it or something.
But then Marcy pointed out, no, this is report, if you read all the way through the article, they're saying that they pulled some of the advisors out in June, and it wasn't in protest over anything.
It was just a reshuffling of something, nothing.
But they're trying to make it sound like, oh, America finally, you know, decided that morality counted for something when it comes to killing Yemenis.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You know, as I point out in the article, and other people have to America has, apart from all the role, you know, supplying the weapons and maintaining the planes, and maybe even helping fly the planes.
The other important thing they've done, they provided total diplomatic cover all the way through.
So when anyone tries to say anything at the UN or anything like that, the Americans sit on, you know, stop it.
I mean, I, you know, I asked, you know, I was talking to the senior official, and the official interview at the State Department, and I said, well, why do you do you know, why do why did you do that is when they stopped one proposed investigation, he said, Well, because the Yemenis asked us to meaning that the puppet, Saudi puppet president who doesn't really represent anyone.
And I said, Well, do you usually do what he's what he says?
And he sort of smirked.
He said, Well, when we agree with him, yes.
It's a, it's a very, it's, it's a very sorry, disgusting episode.
And there's like a little flutter now, in the press, but because the administration isn't, you know, it's compare the rhetoric on Yemen with the rhetoric on Syria, and it's night and day, right?
They don't care.
They don't care.
Yeah, they don't talk.
I hadn't been mentioned in the presidential campaign whatsoever.
And right, therefore, it doesn't matter at all, because that's the only thing that matters this year, you know?
Right, right, right.
Yeah, Donald Trump was smart, he would, which is not really, he right, he would point out, but, you know, that, hey, what, what do you, you know, why are we, you know, it'd be a good, good point for him, but he's too thick to notice that.
Yeah, he ain't the only one either.
And now, okay, I'm sorry, I know you have to go.
But let me ask you one more thing.
This war is really backfiring in the sense that the Houthis now have invaded Saudi Arabia, right?
I mean, how, and there's this, there's a city, I don't know the name, right on the other side of the Saudi border there, where the Yemenis are firing down from the cliffside.
And I don't know, maybe they'll, they'll even take that city.
Well, right.
Well, they basically, they've driven most of the people out.
I mean, it's, you know, this is hugely embarrassing for the Saudis.
I mean, this, that they can't even, and it's backfiring, you know, on the ruler, on the young prince who's running things, because he can't even, he started this war, and now he's losing Saudi territory.
The other thing is, this war is proving, you know, they've got huge amounts of money, as we know, but this war is having a serious effect on the Saudi Treasury.
But I got to, before I go, I got to mention one other thing that's just happened, which is people should know, which is, all the way through the war, the one institution in Yemen that's sort of remained neutral is the Central Bank, which has basically kept the economy functioning.
And so they've been able to import food, you know, to the Houthi areas.
And it's, it's the one thing that's sort of still kept working.
The Saudi puppet, Saudis have just got their puppet, this president, President Hardy, to declare that he's going to sort of, you know, because he's the legal ruler, international ruler, to, you know, to cut off the Central Bank and say it doesn't represent Yemen, which will mean the Central Bank will be out of business for issuing letters of credit and so forth for importing food.
This is going to starve millions of people.
And it's just happened.
And if the United States doesn't, you know, get off its, gets off his ass and do something about this, then, you know, it's an even further disgrace.
Just thought I'd throw that in.
Yeah, no, I'm really glad you did talk about Barry in the lead, really, that brand new kind of breaking news there.
And, you know, we've been wondering, because people said, hey, this is the poorest country in the Middle East, we're bombing, we're blockading them.
Everyone, you know, more than a year ago, all the NGOs were warning that these people are on the brink of famine and starvation.
And I thought maybe we'd have had hundreds of thousands.
And in fact, maybe we have had hundreds of thousands die of deprivation.
I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but I see what you mean that there's been one saving grace in there and one kind of workaround around the blockade in terms of international trade and food here.
And now that is even being cut off.
I mean, that is just it's genocide.
This is war crimes like what the Nazis did is what Barack Obama is doing right now to these people.
Don't you think?
Yeah, I agree.
Unbelievable.
But oh, well, at least he's a Democrat.
So it's not that bad.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Lesser evil, you know, lesser evil.
All right.
Hey, man, you did great work.
Thank you so much, Andrew.
Thank you, Scott.
Always a pleasure.
All right.
So that is the great Andrew Coburn.
He wrote the book Kill Chain.
You got to read that.
And this is at Harper's acceptable losses, aiding and abetting the Saudi slaughter in Yemen.
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