Skip to main content

Pursuing a dangerous policy in Yemen

One might have thought - perhaps hoped is the operative word - that the US has learnt something over the years about becoming involved with foreign States, or their leaders, or actually taking on attacking them in one form or other. Even more troubling has been the propensity of Administration after Administration to ignore informed advice from those in the know - with almost inevitable disasterous results and consquences. Now,Yemen is in America's sights And, again, informed opionion warns of going down that path and that it is downright dangerous to do so. From CommonDreams
A panel discussion organised by the National Council on US-Arab Relations on Tuesday  gathered experts to discuss the US-Yemen relationship. The message from experts, according to reporting by Inter Press Service, was that current US policy is not only short-sighted, but extremely dangerous.
A singular focus on defeating Al Qaede in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was not only counter-productive, experts contend, but also another war in which victory will likely be impossible to claim.  Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, and suffering from severe drought, a food crisis, and internal conflict should be the focus of development aid and conflict resolution, was the argument, not a destination for further destabilizing military campaigns.
IPS writes that the US "security-focused approach to Yemen has been epitomised by the Obama administration’s ratcheting-up of drone strikes in Yemen over the past four months," but noted that many participating in the discussion argue that such strikes were simply making matters worse in Yemen.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...