A VIew From The Left -NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

SAUDI ARABIA:

Worst Country in the World?  Or Just the Worst in the Middle East?

If you ask people what country is the oldest and closest US ally in the Middle East most would likely reply Israel.  But in fact the US alliance with the repressive and absolute Saudi monarchy goes back to the days of Franklin Roosevelt, long before the state of Israel even existed.  In modern times, Saudi kings together with the burgeoning numbers of parasitic princes around them and bolstered by a violently fundamentalist version of Islam have floated on a sea of petroleum under US military protection. The US never depended to a large degree directly on the consumption of Saudi oil but control of it was the source of strategic power and enormous profits. The Saudi state now nominally owns the oil under its sands, but Saudi petroleum is still the source of major income for US oil companies and arms manufacturers.

Recent clucking in Washington over the apparent murder of royal dissenter Jamal Kashoggi focuses narrowly on the crime and papers over the long-term corruption and violence of the Saudi regime itself.  The aim is to preserve the US-Saudi alliance and maintain the flow of Saudi petro-dollars to US corporations, never mind the atrocities long committed by the corrupt Saudi state at home, in Yemen and around the world.  Even the Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks could not shake this alliance, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. 

No doubt every effort will be made in Washington and Ankara to bury the wider implications of this latest crime, likely in exchange for an extra flow of Saudi $billions – though the current de-facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Sultan (“MBS” to his Western friends) may have to take the fall, despite being lauded recently as a promising “young reformer.”  Every effort will be made to preserve the US-Saudi relationship – and its growing alliance with Apartheid Israel.  The critical Washington op-eds – often penned by prominentpro-Israel apologists – and the mostly tepid be-partisan response in Congress -- seem to be mainly concerned with damage control in focusing on individual malefactors rather than on the Audi regime itself.

HAS SAUDI ARABIA FINALLY GONE TOO FAR?

In the context of that history, it seems unlikely that the fate of one individual could cause a serious breach in the alliance, especially because of President Trump’s warm feelings about Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  But something feels different now, in the case of Jamal Khashoggi. If it turns out to be true, as officials in Turkey have alleged, that Saudi agents killed and dismembered him at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and smuggled the body parts out of the country, it is hard to imagine a quick return to business as usual after an act of such brazen barbarity. Khashoggi has frequently criticized the Saudi government, but his visit to the consulate had nothing to do with politics. He was there to secure paperwork that would allow him to marry a Turkish woman. Already some members of Congress have called for recalibrating the relationship if the story of his killing turns out to be true… The Pentagon and the National Security Council would be reluctant to jeopardize that relationship over the fate of one private citizen, especially if he turns out to be alive. President Trump has said he is “concerned” about Khashoggi’s fate but has not committed himself to any course of action. It is possible, however, that this affair could prompt Congress to hold back on arms sales or curtail U.S. logistical support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.   More

Saudi Women Who Fought for the Right to Drive Are Disappearing and Going Into Exile

Beginning on May 15, 2018, just weeks before the end of the ban on female drivers, the government began a series of arrests targeting prominent activists. Al-Hathloul was among the first to disappear into custody, along with Eman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Yousef, fellow advocates for human rights and reform. Simultaneously, photographs of the women began to circulate on local media and online, accompanied by state accusations of treason and collusion with foreign governments…  The arrests were the latest example of a new and expanding tactic in Saudi Arabia of the state using anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent. “In the past few years, there has been an increasing trend of using nationalist rhetoric and accusations of terrorism to squelch anyone who might question the state,” said Zayadin. Such allegations allow for the authorities to hold people for months without trial and prosecute them in the so-called Specialized Criminal Court, where they could face heavy sentences for nonviolent crimes.  More

ELIZABETH WARREN and RO KHANNA:

End US complicity in Yemen's humanitarian disaster

There is a growing push in Washington to seek an end to this civil war. In this year's defense authorization bill, Congress threatened to cut off US support for the Saudi-led coalition's operations in Yemen until the Trump administration certified the coalition was making "an urgent and good faith effort" to reduce civilian casualties, alleviate the humanitarian crisis, and negotiate an end to the civil war.

But rather than using this opportunity as leverage to hold our partners accountable, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rubber-stamped the Saudi-led coalition's actions. Secretary of Defense James Mattis asserted that the coalition was making "every effort"to prevent civilian casualties -- even as the United Nations reported that the coalition was responsible for the majority of the children killed in Yemen last year…  The framers of our Constitution believed that the decision to involve ourselves in a conflict like the one in Yemen requires the consent of the people, expressed through their elected representatives. But Congress has never authorized our involvement in this conflict. That's why we have supported bicameral, bipartisan efforts to end the US involvement in Yemen's civil war unless Congress specifically authorizes it.   More

H.Con.Res.138 – Invoking the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress -- so far cosponsored by McGovern, Capuano, Kennedy(!)

Call on Congress to take action today to end the U.S. supported attack on Yemen and prevent war with Iran.

STARVATION AS A STRATEGY IN THE YEMEN WAR

If one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war, there is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanʿaʾ. As described above, from the autumn of 2016, economic war has compounded physical destruction to create a mass failure in basic livelihoods. Deliberate destruction of family farming and artisanal fishing is a war crime.   More

KHASHOGGI AND ISRAEL

As Eran Lerman, the vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies and a former deputy national security council head, said: “It is certainly not in our interests to see the status of the Saudi government diminished in Washington.” … As Dore Gold, the head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former Foreign Ministry director-general, said: “This problem could be used by the Iranians to drive a wedge between the West and Saudi Arabia.”  That is bad for Israel, he added, because “anything that strengthens Iran’s posturing in the Middle East is bad for Israel,” and in the Mideast balance of power, a weakened Saudi Arabia means a strengthened Iran…  Israel’s major concern – the number one issue on its agenda – is Iran, and not the Palestinians. And a Saudi Arabia that does not have the same cachet in Washington is bad for Israel because “the Saudis, even more so than us in some ways, have turned around the American position on Iran. This is central and uppermost in our list of priorities, and so to have a Saudi government held in high regard in Washington is very much in our interest,” Lerman said.  More

Is the US forgetting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Ten years ago in “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and I predicted — controversially — that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost far more than anyone expected. Fast forward to today. The total bill has spiraled to over$5 trillion, most of it paid for on the national “credit card.” Nearly 7,000 American troops and a similar number of contractors have given up their lives. With no political end game in sight, more than 15,000 troops remain on the ground. And yet Congress pays almost no attention to the wars — even though the cost continues to run at more than $70 billion a year.  In the 17 years since we first set foot in Afghanistan, we have also poured $126 billion (20 percent more in real terms than we spent on the Marshall Plan after World War II) into trying to “reconstruct” portions of Afghanistan. But the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstructionfinds not only widespread fraud and waste, but also that “the large sums of stabilization dollars the United States devoted to Afghanistan in search of quick gains often exacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption, and bolstered support for insurgents.”

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

FOSSIL FUELS ARE A THREAT TO CIVILIZATION, NEW U.N. REPORT CONCLUDES

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a daunting report, suggesting that we are currently on track for around 3 degrees Celsius of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC authors promise that we will see coastal cities swallowed by the sea, global food shortages, and $54 trillion in climate-associated costs as soon as 2040.  That fast-approaching catastrophe is the motivation for the demands of Global South residents and their allies, for whom rising tides and superstorms are already a reality…  Yet many of the policymaking conversations around curbing greenhouse gas emissions revolve around how to incentivize fossil fuel producers to gradually wean off their bread and butter through pricing mechanisms, rather than the kind of breakneck regulatory phase-out that would pre-empt economic and environmental ruin. Oil companies — eager to paint themselves as allies in the climate fight — welcome the approach.   More

Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Rule of Pampered Princelings

The Times investigation… shows in lavish detail that Trump’s creation myth is and always has been a work of fiction… What makes the Times revelations more important is that they are a rare window into an even larger story about the growing political and economic role of inherited money in the United States — the culmination of decades in which a handful sons and daughters of bequeathed wealth waged a fierce and relentless battle of ideas against the very concept of equality and majority rule, all based on the same corrupting belief in their own inherent superiority…  It was their project that created a fake consensus about the need for the radical deregulating of markets and dismantling of environmental protections, for lowering corporate taxes and eliminating the “death tax” — and paying for it all by dismantling so-called entitlements.   More

America's new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone

Let’s remember that in less than two decades, America has experienced the Iraq war, the financial crisis, intensifying economic stratification, an opioid plague, persistent gender and racial inequality and now seemingly unending climate change-intensified disasters. While the victims have been ravaged by these crime sprees, crises and calamities, the perpetrators have largely avoided arrest, inquisition, incarceration, resignation, public shaming and ruined careers…  After all, if there are no social or professional consequences for those who lied a country into a trillion-dollar war that amassed hundreds of thousands of casualties – if that war’s architects can remain in good standing and in high-prestige jobs – what will deter any politician or pundit from supporting a similar military conflict when it is politically opportune?  If there are no legal consequences for profiteers who defrauded the global economy into a collapse, what will deter those profiteers from doing that again?   More

Hating Muslims (but loving Arab Autocrats) in the Age of Trump

While the president oscillates between abusing and fawning over the elites of the Muslim world, his true opprobrium is reserved for the poor and helpless. His hatred of refugees uprooted by the horrific Syrian civil war, for instance, stems from his conviction that this population (predominantly women and children, as well as some men fleeing the fighting) might actually be adherents of the so-called Islamic State group (also known as ISIL, ISIS, or Daesh) and so part of the building of a secretive paramilitary force in the West. He’s even speculated that “this could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army, maybe.”  …Having helped spread extremism and set in motion massive population displacements, Western elites then developed a profound fear of the millions of refugees they had helped chase out of the Middle East.   More