{"id":48367,"date":"2019-09-10T07:16:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T12:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48367"},"modified":"2019-09-10T07:16:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T12:16:24","slug":"how-the-u-s-shattered-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48367","title":{"rendered":"How the U.S. Shattered the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/how-the-u-s-shattered-the-middle-east\/\">How the U.S. Shattered the Middle East<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/ussporter-749x500.jpeg\" alt=\"How the U.S. Shattered the Middle East\"\/><figcaption>The guided missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations against a target in Syria while in the Mediterranean Sea in April 2017.&nbsp;(Petty Officer 3rd Class Ford Williams \/ U.S. Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yemen is a nightmare, a catastrophe, a mess\u2014and the United States is highly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/complicit-americas-non-war-crimes-yemen\/\">complicit in the whole disaster<\/a>. Refueling Saudi aircraft in-flight, providing targeting intelligence to the kingdom and selling the requisite bombs that have been dropped for years now on Yemeni civilians places the 100,000-plus deaths, millions of refugees, and (still) starving children squarely on the American conscience. If, that is, Washington can still claim to&nbsp;<em>have<\/em>&nbsp;a conscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The back story in Yemen, already the Arab world\u2019s poorest country, is relevant. Briefly, the cataclysm went something like this: Protests against the U.S.-backed dictator during the Arab Spring broke out in 2011. After a bit, an indecisive and hesitant President Obama called for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. A Saudi-backed transitional government took over but governed (surprise, surprise) poorly. Then, from 2014 to 2015, a vaguely Shiite militia from Yemen\u2019s north swarmed southward and seized the capital, along with half the country. At that point, rather than broker a peace, the U.S. quietly went along with, and militarily supported, a Saudi terror-bombing campaign, starvation blockade and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/28\/world\/africa\/saudi-sudan-yemen-child-fighters.html\">mercenary invasion<\/a>&nbsp;that mainly affected Yemeni civilians. At that point, Yemen had broken in two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, as the Saudi campaign has clearly faltered\u2014despite killing tens of thousands of civilians and starving at least 85,000 children to death along the way\u2014stalemate reigns. Until this past week, that is, when southern separatists (there was once, before 1990, a South and North Yemen) seized the major port city of Yemen, backed by the Saudis\u2019 ostensible partners in crime, the United Arab Emirates. So it was that there were then&nbsp;<em>three<\/em>Yemens, and ever more fracture. In the last few days, the Saudi-backed transitional government&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-08-28\/fighting-rages-in-aden-as-yemen-forces-seek-to-oust-separatists\">retook Aden<\/a>, but southern separatism seems stronger than ever in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the U.S. Shattered the Middle East Yemen is a nightmare, a catastrophe, a mess\u2014and the United States is highly&nbsp;complicit in the whole disaster. Refueling Saudi aircraft in-flight, providing targeting intelligence to the kingdom and selling the requisite bombs that have been dropped for years now on Yemeni civilians places the 100,000-plus deaths, millions of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3320,19532,522,701,8738,3217,827],"class_list":["post-48367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-arab-spring","tag-maj-danny-sjursen","tag-middle-east","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-truthdig","tag-uae","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48368,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48367\/revisions\/48368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}