Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, announced March 26 from Washington, D.C., that his country and a coalition of Arab nations had launched airstrikes against neighboring Yemen, which has been wracked by civil war.
Al-Jubeir said Operation Decisive Storm’s mission was “to defend and support the legitimate government of Yemen and prevent the radical Houthi movement from taking over the country.”
“Legitimate?”
Possibly by House of Saud standards, but certainly not by Yemenis who overthrew the president installed by the Saudis and US following the 2012 Arab Spring uprising, which overthrew the tyrant-in-chief who ruled the impoverished country for over 30 years.
Or was it – with the Saudis saying some 150,000 troops with wide support from its allied forces were ready to invade Yemen – a prelude to seize the country and occupy it, as Houthis claimed?
Another day, another war.
It has become perfectly acceptable for an ambassador of a foreign country to make an official announcement from America’s capital that his country had declared war against another nation. And, for America, where the business of the nation is war, it was perfectly acceptable for the White House to play its murderous role in the killing fields. Speaking from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, US Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center.”
Saudis good; Iran bad
To make the war easy for the American public to swallow, Washington sold it — and the propaganda-peddling media sold the indiscriminate bombing and slaughter of thousands of civilians — as a noble deed. “We’re assisting the Saudis … that’s good for the people of Yemen” proclaimed US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. The storyline was that Iran supported the Houthi rebellion — and hating Iran, a country Americans had learned to fear and hate since the fall of the US-installed Shah and the subsequent hostage crisis some 30 years ago, had become an American pastime.
An uninformed public bought what Washington was selling — despite Houthi and Iranian denials of collaboration. Despite UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond noting, “The Houthi are not Iranian proxies.” Despite former US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche saying, “the Houthis had rarely defined their struggle in Yemen in sectarian terms, and that their ties to Iran had been overstated by Gulf nations.”
Trend Forecast: The House of Saud is now a target for revenge from Yemenis whose lives and livelihood they have destroyed. What we forecast in 2009 in response to Saudi aggression against Houthis back then accurately states the outcome and implications of the attacks today. From the Trends Journal’s Top Trends of 2010: “A wildcard terror strike has the potential to cripple the global economy. It’s been scantily reported,” Celente adds, “but the cross-border fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni Houthi rebels is precisely the type of conflict that could destabilize world oil markets. Should the fighting intensify, the Saudis risk an attack upon their oil facilities, which could curtail supplies, drive prices higher and seriously damage the already imperiled world economy.”