Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites 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 us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright, you guys, introducing Bill Hartung.
He is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of the book, Prophets of War, Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
And he writes a lot of great stuff all the time and we run it all the time at antiwar.com.
Or, you know, link to it and what have you.
This one is at Lobe Log, the great Jim Lobe's blog, Lobe Log.
Congress can help end the suffering in Yemen.
Welcome back to the show, Bill.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
How are you?
I'm doing really good.
And you know, I completely quit my bad Twitter habit, cold turkey.
And so now I'm getting a lot of books knocked out.
And I'm finally reading Treacherous Alliance by Trita Parsi.
Very soon on the list is your Lockheed book.
I have it here.
I meant to read it for years now, at least a few, two or three.
Can't wait to get my hands on that thing soon.
So we'll have to do a whole big interview all about that.
Oh, yeah.
Well, the story's continuing, so it should be good.
Absolutely.
Well, I think you would say that's why you made the book this way.
This is the most important of all the military-industrial complex firms in America, right?
Yeah, in terms of money and, well, I mean, bad dealings.
It's a tough call, but certainly they show how the complex works.
Yeah.
All right.
Great.
So, well, for example, let's talk about killing Yemenis for money.
You wrote this great article here.
And since then, the news came out in this article in The Wall Street Journal.
They say based on a report, an actual document, as well as a background, that the decision that Pompeo made that you criticized in your article here was motivated directly by one particular, I would say, pretty small-scale arms sale to the Saudis.
What do you think?
Well, this kind of thing happens, but this is particularly blatant.
There's a pending $2 billion in sales of bombs to the Saudis and the UAE.
And as you suggested, under Obama, we offered the Saudis $115 billion in armaments.
So this is 2% or less of what U.S. companies have been getting.
So I think it just indicates how beholden they are to the industry.
And The Intercept has a piece out, I think it's just today, that the head of legislative affairs who pushed Pompeo to keep going with the bombing despite the civilian casualties was a former lobbyist for Raytheon, and his firm was a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.
So, you know, there's a revolving door.
There's military-industrial complex lobbying.
But it seems like the Trump administration has raised it to a new level.
Yeah.
Well, and so much for if only Congress was in charge of foreign policy, they'd be more doves and take more responsibility and that kind of thing.
I'm not so sure.
Basically, it's the congressional influence on the State Department that helps to push this through.
Although, you know, I don't know.
It's the policy from the White House.
So what was Pompeo really going to do about it anyway?
Well, he would have had to stand up to Trump, who's best buddies with the Saudi crown prince, because they flattered his ego when he visited them.
So, yeah, he would have to have the kind of courage that he has now exhibited in his career.
Yeah.
That's one of the few things that is, you know, actually valuable in the new Woodward book is about, you know, the narrative that old Barack Obama was so soft on Iran, and now it's Derek Harvey, David Petraeus' man.
Derek Harvey was one of the ones telling Obama, now, Trump, you've got to go over there and put your hands on that orb and solidify American power behind the Saudi-led Sunni coalition against Iran over there.
No ifs, ands, or buts or wiggle room.
And so, and they just went for it because, hey, money.
But yeah, were you surprised when you saw that subhead $2.2 billion or whatever it was?
That sounds like a pretty cheap price to buy off such a big policy.
Or, you know, one big statement, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, I think what it is is that they won't buck the arms lobby on anything.
And the Saudis, you know, scream bloody murder when Obama suspended a similar sale late in his term, finally, you know, giving into pressure from human rights groups and others.
He said, well, you know, now that you mention it, the Saudis are indiscriminately killing civilians, and so we're going to hold up this deal until we see that they can do otherwise.
And then Trump immediately lifted that suspension when he came into office.
So this is yet another and even bigger deal for bombs.
But, you know, I think part of it is they want to keep the Saudi relationship from being ruffled.
They want to keep the contractors happy.
And although by the Pentagon's and these companies' standards, it's not a huge amount of money.
I think they just, they want to go full speed ahead on their policy.
And so it's partly money and it's partly a very twisted view of the world.
Yeah.
Well, I like how in the Wall Street Journal article, they don't even bring up to dismiss the question of what the hell are we doing anyway?
What's the goal?
Are we putting Hadi back on the throne in Sana?
Are we going to run the Houthis back up to their strongholds in the north and regain the old status quo from 2011?
Or what?
Because Operation Decisive Storm is three and a half years old now.
And so why is this even happening?
What does anyone expect to be a win, if not a victory, a success, as they like to call it, if not a victory?
They don't even mention it.
It's not even in here.
It's not even part of the story.
Well, you know how we do.
We just drop bombs on people, whatever the excuse is.
Yeah.
The Trump reasons are pretty slim at this point.
You know, one is help our Saudi allies.
But if they're committing war crimes, we shouldn't be helping them.
Even if you thought somehow this war would reign in the Houthi and somehow send a message to Iran, the war's not ending.
Even with all this bombing and blockade of the country, the Houthi and its allies are hanging in there.
And the only way this is going to end is with some sort of negotiations.
There were supposed to be some earlier this month, and the Houthi and the Saudi sides are kind of maneuvering for position.
That round of talks did not happen.
But otherwise, it's just people are going to keep being slaughtered, many of them civilians, many of them children.
And as you said, there's no goal.
I mean, do they think they're sending a signal to Iran that, hey, we can abet war crimes, watch out for us?
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
Yeah.
Well, and if anything – and I don't know, I guess I should let you comment on what you think your best information is on the amount of Iranian influence there.
But to go ahead and prejudice your response, I'll go ahead and say, it sure seems to me like their biggest gains there are mostly in the words of the Americans.
And characterizing all of this as a defense against Iran and their power, that's really the single most helpful thing for Iranian power in the whole situation.
Whereas we're supposed to believe what?
Like they're selling how many weapons and somehow getting past the American blockade there that – you know what I mean?
We know that there's Quds Force on the ground in Iraq and in Syria and stuff like that.
Nobody's even claiming that about the Houthis in Yemen.
Yeah, it's pretty minimal.
There is some evidence of Iran providing weapons to the Houthi, but it pales in comparison to what U.S., U.K., and others have supplied the Saudis.
And the Houthis are by no means these puppets of Iran just doing what they want.
They've got – they're stubbornly independent.
They've been fighting a series of wars in Yemen for decades.
And the reason that they overthrew the Salih government during the Arab Spring was partly corruption.
They were cut out of the benefits of the economy, partly lack of political input.
And they fought any number of wars before Iran began to help them in a modest way.
And as you mentioned, there's a system of monitoring.
And the biggest port that's still bringing in stuff, which is Hodeidah, the UN inspects cargo, and they have not found weapons coming in through that port.
So whatever it is that they might be supplying, it's a secondary factor in this war.
I mean the Trump people seem to want to make you think, oh, yeah, this is the hand of Iran behind this.
It's not.
It's the hand of the Saudis, and they've got blood on their hands.
Well, and you know what?
So let me ask you this.
I mean assuming all things being equal and the prerogatives of the American empire over there and all of that, what if the Houthis had just taken over Sana'a and we hadn't launched this war?
What would that have really cost American influence, Saudi influence in Yemen?
How bad would it have really been for them to be the new government of Yemen for a while at least?
Well, I think eventually you would want a broader government.
Compared to what's going on now, Houthi control at the outset would not have been a strategic disaster.
I mean, for example, they were fighting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and they've been not able to do much of that since the Saudis started fighting them.
So some accounts, including from the State Department, suggest that AQAP is actually getting stronger because they've got room to maneuver while this war is going on.
So, you know, and the U.S. has dealt with regimes of all sorts without holding its nose.
I mean, the Houthi may not be raging Democrats, but they could have come to arrangements with them that wouldn't have been any worse than what existed before the war.
Yeah.
Hey, how much do you think domestic politics in Saudi Arabia had to do with the launch of this war since MBS had just become the deputy crown prince and defense minister and was trying to look all macho coming in?
He was only 29 years old and all that.
I haven't seen sort of internal evidence or so forth, but it makes sense.
I mean, you know, first of all, he seemed to believe it was going to be a quick war.
It would burnish his image and it would distract attention from their internal repression, which is a time tested tactic.
But now that it's, you know, three and a half going on four years in, it's not clear that it's serving that purpose for him because there's been international condemnation.
Not enough, but there has been.
And I can't believe people in Saudi Arabia, those of whom we can get information, could be happy about their government, you know, losing blood and treasure over this conflict.
So I think, you know, whatever the intention might have been initially, it's backfiring on bin Salman.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and that's the thing too, right, is it's been more or less the same stalemate all this time.
The lines on the ground where the UAE forces are there with the factions in the south around Aden and all this and that, al-Qaeda and the land that they've taken.
I mean, we're pretty much, the map is more or less where it has been since 2015, right?
Pretty much.
And, you know, the UAE has diverged from the Saudis and the Saudi-backed government on a number of instances.
There were some UAE-backed militias that were fighting the Hadi people.
The UAE has been supporting some of the separatists.
There's been reports of al-Qaeda members coming in behind the UAE and Saudi war effort.
The UAE has been running secret prisons that have been torturing people.
So, I mean, they're kind of just fostering and exacerbating the pre-existing divisions in the country, in addition to the fact that it's not a winnable war.
Yeah.
Now, speaking of which, the torture, I mean, from what the AP is saying, and this is, it's the kind of thing that I wouldn't believe if it was about America's designated enemies, but in this case, it seems more like an admission that, well, these are our friends that we're working with now, that, as you said, they're making deals with al-Qaeda and using them to fight the Houthis on the ground and advancing al-Qaeda's goals there.
And then they're committing, supposedly, horrific war crimes, burning people to death on barbecue spits, which sounds just enough like Saddam's human shredder that I almost doubt it, but I don't know.
They said they had really solid sources on that.
And then, but massive rape as torture in these prisons and all this kind of thing.
But so that, to me, also, I mean, assuming the AP's reporting is right on both of those things, which seemed pretty solid.
What does that say about the pro-UAE forces in Yemen, I mean, the actual Yemenis who side with them?
Are they, I know they have PR firms in DC, but I don't know if they really exist or not.
Are they, are those simply UAE sock puppets?
Are there separate factions on the ground in the South who would really rather die than submit to a Houthi government?
I think there are pre-existing divisions that, you know, predate this UAE intervention.
But the UAE is making it much worse.
And there's no question that a lot of the folks, the militias, are doing it because the UAE is paying them a lot of money.
You know, so I think the money and influence factor is very large.
I mean, the thing about the UAE is they've gotten somewhat of a free ride.
The Saudis have gotten most of the criticism.
But the UAE's activities have been just as damaging.
They have sort of slicker PR and they're sort of viewed as, oh, they're the good Gulf state because, you know, conferences there.
And they let universities build campuses and who knows what.
But if you look underneath all that, you know, their policy is just as bad, just as devastating for the people of Yemen as the Saudi bombings.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder about, so who could be siding with them now if they're torturing people and stuff?
I guess the people on the other side of those factions, nobody can keep track of how many different factions there are in that country in the first place, right?
There are many.
And there are people who hate the Houthis because of historic differences.
And also, you know, they're not choir boys either.
They've been bombing, shelling civilian areas and using child soldiers and so forth.
And sometimes, you know, those abuses are sort of used to somehow justify what the Saudis are doing.
But obviously, the thing we need to do is stop the war.
I mean, you know, the Saudis bombing a wedding, a funeral, a school bus with 40 kids in it is not weakening the Houthi or Iran or anybody else.
They're just killing people.
Yeah.
All right.
So there's this article.
I'm sure you saw it this week at TomDispatch.com by Rajan Menon, Yemen's descent into hell.
And I wanted to mention this.
It was important enough, I think, to bring it up here.
He linked to this really interesting study, I guess you call it, article from back in 2015, right at the time that the war started.
And it's called The Failure of the Transitional Process in Yemen.
It's a PDF file, but anybody can find it there.
It's by Marik Transfeld.
The Failure of the Transitional Process in Yemen.
He really goes through a very meticulous play-by-play of the Arab Spring and the installation of Hadi and the Muslim Brotherhood faction, the Al-Qaeda factions and the Houthis and all of that in really great detail there.
I learned a lot.
I think I'm actually going to read it again, even for people who already know the story.
It's a pretty good one there.
But so now the heart of your essay is about the U.S. Congress, because ultimately this is their responsibility.
And they have the power to turn the thing off just as easy as the commander in chief does with their power of the purse.
Ain't that right?
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I mean, the interesting thing is this, since the Saudis are so rich, of course, there's not a lot of traditional military aid, but the U.S. is refueling their planes.
And people like Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, have been saying, you know, look, basically, you know, this is a war we're participating in and hasn't been authorized by Congress.
Therefore, we need to stop.
And Sanders and Lee got 44 votes in the Senate.
And the House is going to be a tough sell.
But they've got people like Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on Armed Services, you know, on the bill.
So there's been progress in Congress, which in this Congress is no easy matter.
But it's because groups like Oxfam and Women Without War and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty raising the issues about human rights abuses and, you know, many others in coalition have, you know, raised the profile in Congress.
And it's, you know, it's such an outrage.
It's such a catastrophe.
You know, you've got Republicans on board in small numbers.
So it's possible that this round we could actually get Congress to do something, you know, either block an arms deal or say that the war is not authorized.
And one of the reasons that it might happen is because some of the more moderate members, you know, last time around said, well, let's not cut off aid altogether.
Let's give them a chance, you know, give them till September and let the State Department certify whether they're taking care to, you know, not harm civilians and so forth.
And so, you know, as soon as the day came in a heartbeat, Pompeo said, oh, yeah, they are really trying not to hurt civilians.
And this came right after the bombing of the school bus and so forth.
And then we find out, you know, as we said before, that his decision was influenced by this guy who used to be a lobbyist for Raytheon.
So a lot of the members who were sort of in the give them a chance school, I think, are going to think twice and might actually support some of these firmer measures.
So it's Washington.
So you don't want to hold your breath.
But I think there's a possibility that we can get something done in Congress either now or hopefully not having to wait for the new Congress.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the whole thing about it is you got to hope that some of these guys take it personally, that, for example, they were lied to last time about special operations forces on the ground, not just against Al-Qaeda, but against the Houthis, too, on the Saudi side of the border there.
Green Berets, I believe it was, that they asked specifically about that and were told a lie.
The senators were.
And so I don't know.
Hopefully somebody's still personally, emotionally offended about that and it'll cause them to vote right.
That's the best we can hope for, right?
Yeah, I think there is a notion of like, look, I'm a senator.
You have to at least tell me the truth or, you know, not lie this blatantly.
And so I think some members that may affect their decisions.
And you know what, too?
I mean, there's been it's not just the bus, right, is ever since then, they've been killing civilians on a regular basis there.
They bombed the entire fish market there at the port at Hodeidah.
And then they bombed some fishermen out at sea the other day.
Yeah, they just keep going.
And at least part of the solution is relatively simple, which is stop the U.S. and U.K. arming them, stop helping them run bombing runs, stop helping them with targeting, get U.S. troops out of there.
And, you know, I think that would much diminish the Saudis' ability to do damage and it would make peace talks more likely.
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Well, you know, just like the UAE, as you mentioned earlier, the U.K. really gets away with murder on this story, right?
Nobody ever complains about the U.K.'s role in this, hardly.
Well, there's been some opposition within the U.K., including a lawsuit that was blown off on sort of specious grounds.
So I would say, you know, there's some concerned citizens who are, you know, rising to the occasion.
But I think globally, certainly the U.K. hasn't suffered the same reputational issues as the U.S. or the Saudis themselves.
And they're important players.
And of course, they also have a long history of bribery, going back to the 80s, a huge scandal in Saudi Arabia.
So, you know, their fingerprints are all over this thing.
All right.
Now, I don't know.
There probably is already a special term for this in journalism when you have basically a single source rumor from three different people, right?
Three different sources who have one source each.
But I've heard three different people say that they've heard, but none of them could confirm, that American pilots were riding along in the back seats of these F-15s with the Saudi princes, holding their hands all the way to their targets here to commit these war crimes ever since then, or at least back then, I guess I should say.
And that comes from Andrew Coburn, the great Andrew Coburn, the journalist.
Dan Simpson, who was a former ambassador who came on the show to talk about this a couple years ago.
And then I'm sorry, I can't remember who the third one was, but I know there was three now.
It was recently.
But anyway, so I wonder if you've ever heard that, or are you close enough to any congressman that you could suggest to them or their staff that, hey, you know, it would be a good question to ask and see if they could follow up on that, because that could maybe advance the story forward a little bit more, too.
And that to me rings really true, that these princes, they like all the prestige and everything, but can they really handle an F-15 Eagle or whatever all by themselves?
Maybe not.
Yeah, I haven't heard that.
If so, you know, it went through my admittedly limited memory.
But, you know, I think it's worth asking.
I mean, I don't know if they'd be that blatant, but you know, you don't know until you ask.
And I mean, I would say that the support that they're already supplying is quite substantial because they're refueling.
And there's people in the targeting, you know, areas, you know, the rooms, who allegedly are trying to help them pick targets more carefully.
But the results just don't bear that out.
I mean, if you're hitting weddings and funerals and marketplaces and water treatment plants, it's got to be intentional.
I mean, you can't possibly make mistakes that often and on that scale.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, can you talk for a minute about UN efforts?
You mentioned in your article about this guy Griffiths and the recently canceled talks in Kuwait.
Well, it appears that Griffiths has more trust on both sides.
And so there was some hope that he could actually get these talks off the ground.
The Houthis were concerned that they might not be allowed back into the country if they came out to do the talks.
I think they should have possibly taken that risk or just upfront said, look, we're not talking until we've got guarantees.
But anyway, so that round fell apart.
But Griffiths seems to be working in good faith.
And, you know, but if the U.S. and other countries are backing the Saudis to the hilt, what's their incentive to really negotiate?
You know, I think that's the biggest problem.
And then, you know, the existing UN resolution is kind of a nonstarter because it says that the Houthis should, you know, evacuate major areas they control and get rid of their heavy weapons as a condition for serious negotiations.
And they're not going to do that, you know, especially given what the Saudis have been doing already.
So there's got to be some new basis for discussions.
And I'm not privy to exactly how Griffiths is going at it, but he seems to be operating in good faith and somehow building enough trust on each side that maybe he could bring things together.
But it's not helpful when Saudis are getting the green light from their allies and, you know, bringing them to the table.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the thing is, too, is the Saudis have to settle for a real loss to stop here, or the Houthis would have to agree to withdraw from the capital city, which sure doesn't seem like it's in the cards bill, right?
So these are two very hard positions without much gray area in between, not much place to compromise.
I mean, I think, you know, for me, stopping the bombing, even if peace talks are not around the corner, would save so many lives, you know, and I think some of the arguments about back in the Saudis are like, well, it's a complex war and, you know, they have interests at stake and so forth.
But, you know, the bombing of civilians in its own right is a horrible thing.
And if that were to be stopped, even if the parties on the ground were still fighting it out in some way, that would be worth it.
Yeah.
He tried to stab the Houthis in the back by secretly making a deal with the Saudis.
So then the Houthis killed him.
So there goes our compromise, you know, position, which could have, you know, maybe been a thing.
And by the way, don't get me wrong, I just meant, you know, not about what's right or wrong, but just what the Saudis would be willing to give into.
Because to stop the bombing basically means to call off the war, to admit defeat, and that the Houthis are the government of Yemen now.
And that everything's downhill from here, right?
That next comes withdrawal and the Houthi conquering of the south again, or compromise with the south or whatever it is, and the Saudi position destroyed.
Yeah, I think the only way forward, if there is a way forward, is all the factions in Yemen, including the people who don't have guns in their hands, would need to be included in the process.
But certainly, the Houthi would have to feel like they had a strong role in whatever coalition government came out of that.
So they'd have to feel like, you know, an end to the fighting was worth it for them in the long run.
Even if they had to compromise somewhat politically.
But, you know, I don't have a good feeling.
I know that's a difficult lift.
I don't know how much progress he's made in trying to go up against all those factors.
But, you know, maybe optimist isn't the right word.
I'm stubborn.
And so I, you know, I feel like we got to keep trying to resolve these things, and as difficult as they may be, and do whatever we can to limit the US role in expanding people's suffering.
And certainly Yemen has been devastated in a horrific way.
Yeah.
Well, maybe it's a matter of we got to smuggle this view onto Fox News somehow.
We got to get this going and get it on the Tucker show or something and just go straight to the president.
Somebody tweet at him enough times.
Remember one time he issued a memo where he said he wanted the Saudis to lighten up on the blockade on the Hodeidah port when they, you know, clamped down double against even the humanitarian aid and all that.
That seemed to be an example of a time when his daughter or somebody went around the usual apparatus to get something to him to say that this was a bridge too far and that they needed to scale back.
Maybe that's just the way I'm reading it.
Maybe it was Jim Mattis that told him that, but it seemed more like it was, you know, the message went straight out from the White House or something.
I don't know if it was, I think he tweeted it too.
But anyway.
I mean, they'd be okay with the Saudis backing off, but they're not going to lift a finger.
It doesn't seem like to make them do it.
So it's almost like the Saudis are calling the shots here.
You know, Obama, there was a split in the administration about whether to support them, which is why he ultimately suspended that one bomb deal.
But it seemed like part of it was, you know, he's making this nuclear deal with Iran.
And then Obama had this meeting at Camp David where he's trying to bring the Gulf states on board.
He said, oh, we've got your back.
You know, we'll support you with security assistance and you don't have to worry about Iran and so forth.
And I think that was part of the reason that he let the Saudis drag the US into this war, as it was supposed to be evidence that we weren't going to abandon them until it's Iran.
So there was a high cost for sure.
And the only difference with Trump is there doesn't seem to be any ambivalence on the inside, other than, you know, maybe Mattis realizes on some level that, you know, this is bad for the US reputation and ability to work in the Arab world and so forth.
But, you know, his voice is diminished.
And they're even talking about whether he's going to survive.
So, and you know, you're in bad shape when the moderate's nickname is Mad Dog, you know.
Yeah, exactly.
He's the reasonable one.
Well, you know, I'm doing my part to make sure that it goes down in history, which, hey, it's the New York Times.
I just, you know, work here.
But where Obama, and this was not a scoop, right?
It was official press release from the Obama team, where they said, well, we knew the war would be long, bloody, and indeterminate.
But we had to placate the Saudis after the Iran nuclear deal, just as you're saying there, to let them know we're not tilting back toward Iran.
We still are with you guys.
Long, bloody, and indeterminate.
Indeterminate.
I mean, that should be the most infamous statement of an American president ever.
That, well, you know, well, we figured, why not?
Even though they knew why not?
Yeah, no, I mean, the policy has been off from the beginning, and Trump has made it worse.
And in some of these areas, you wonder, you know, can things get worse?
And sadly, they do, you know.
By the way, could you talk a little bit about what kind of gains al-Qaeda has made on the ground there since the war broke out three and a half years ago?
Well, you know, evidence coming out is limited, circumscribed.
There was a point when they controlled one of the major ports in Mukalla, but the UAE and its militias drove them out.
But apparently, part of the deal was, they let them leave with their weapons.
It was kind of a faux battle.
And since then, individual members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have integrated into some of these UAE-backed militias and into the fight against the Houthis.
So, you know, it's given them some room for maneuver to control territory, but it's also, they're now infiltrated into one faction in the war.
So it's just further complicated the situation.
And, you know, the Trump administration is saying, oh, well, there's two things, you know, we're doing drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and then we're backing the Saudis against the Houthis, and never the twain shall meet.
But as you suggested, that's kind of a difficult line to draw, and it's not clear it's been respected.
Yeah.
Well, you know, Michael Horton, who's no relation to me, but he's the Yemen expert who writes, he's at the Jamestown Foundation, actually, pretty hawkish group overall, I think.
Used to be anyway.
But regular writer for the American Conservative Magazine.
He told Mark Perry back when the war first started in 2015, he said, you know, John McCain complains that we're Iran's air force in Iraq, which is true.
And of course, it's all McCain's fault anyway, right?
But we're al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen.
And so it was pretty clear right off the bat there, as to whose side we're on, and what was happening.
And then at that time, they were like taking over towns and taking over military bases and seizing all the guns.
And who knows what AQAP is going to be at the end of this thing, when this phase of the war stops.
Well, it's created a pool of people who have deep resentment in the United States.
And so AQAP will have the ability to tap some of those people to strengthen itself.
I mean, this whole war makes no sense in the sense of even if you were kind of a intelligent imperialist, why would you want to do this?
It's a stalemate.
It's creating huge repercussions.
Reputational problems.
It's probably undermining in the long term, the Saudi regime, because oil prices are down.
They're bogged down in this war.
You know, so there's no real benefit other than, you know, kind of placating the Saudis and the arms companies, which really is not a justification for letting all these people get killed.
Yeah.
Hey, that's an interesting point.
And a good way to spin it for, you know, the average sock puppet congressman up there, that, hey, this is a little bit of tough love for the Saudis, that they kind of got themselves into this mess, and it's time for us to help them get out of it, or something like that, you know?
Yeah.
One member told me, kind of off the record, but he said, you know, look, I believe that we should work with the Sunni coalition, but they got to cut this out.
You know, this is too far.
This is too much.
So I think that that factor may play in in the next round as well.
People who, as you said, they're not going to break ties with the Saudis, but they think this is so outrageous that they've got to exert leverage to stop it.
Stop the slaughter.
Okay.
One last thing.
Go back again to tell me which congressmen and senators are working on this and what kind of action people can take, who to support, which phones to call?
Yeah, well, Senator Menendez has put a hold on this arms sale, and people like Senator Murphy from Connecticut, Bernie Sanders' office, and others have, you know, sort of led the charge to try to block the arms deal, which is a little bit in suspension as to when it's going to come into Congress.
Then there's this new move in the House to say it's an unauthorized war we have to pull out.
That's people like Ro Khanna from California, Mark Pocan, who's co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Adam Smith, who's ranking Democrat in Armed Services.
So I think the best way to track it is either groups like Win Without War, which puts out regular email blasts on this stuff, or groups like Friends Command National Legislation, which are very active on the Hill and kind of know the nuances of when pressure will be most helpful.
And so, you know, that's what I would recommend is, you know, go to FCNL.org or look up Win Without War, and then people would have like a regular kind of update on the status of what is a very complicated, fast-moving situation.
Right.
Okay, great.
That's Bill Hartung, everybody.
He is at the Center for International Policy, and he's the author of the book Prophets of War.
Get it with the double entendre there.
Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Thanks again.
Yes, thank you.
Oh, and I forgot to say, of course, the article at LowBlock is Congress can help end the suffering 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.
