Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, has become a battlefield for the Mideast’s most vicious rivalries. That’s bad for Yemenis, bad for the region and bad for us.
Over the weekend an American destroyer, the USS Mason, came under missile fire in the Red Sea. The Mason was there to beef up the US military presence in the region after a United Arab Emirates ship was destroyed off Yemen’s shores. US officials say the Houthis are responsible for both incidents.
The Houthis belong to the Zaidi sect, an offshoot of Islam close to Shia. Although the Houthis are an indigenous Yemeni force, Shiite Iran supports them with money, weapons and training. They now control much of the country, including the capital, Sana.
Enter the Saudis. Fearing Iran’s rise — not to mention Houthi incursions into its own territory next door — Riyadh gathered a coalition of Sunni states from nearby in the Persian Gulf and as far away as Egypt and Morocco. They launched a ferocious war on the Houthis that has already killed 4,000 civilians.
This week, a Saudi air attack hit a funeral procession in Sana, killing 140 and raising an outcry around the world. Fingers were pointed not only at the Saudi-led coalition, which has committed several such atrocities in recent weeks, but also at America.
After the Iran nuclear deal raised anger at Washington across the Sunni Mideast, President Obama sought to appease the Saudis by selling them a new bundle of warplanes, tanks and other war toys. Now many in the region and beyond accuse us of complicity in war crimes in Yemen.
Meanwhile, not all is hunky-dory among Arab coalition members. Yes, on the surface an old enmity between the two top monarchies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, seems to have at least temporarily receded to the background. But that may not last.
As a well-connected diplomat tells me, the Qataris think any outcome in Yemen is a win for them: If the coalition loses out to the Houthis, the Saudi king, hated by the emir of Qatar, will be diminished. On the other hand, the only forces able to defeat the Houthis are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a leading anti-Western Sunni political force, backed by Qatar. A victory of Brotherhood-affiliated militias will widen Qatar’s influence in the region.
Happy either way, the Qataris therefore increasingly support the Saudi-led coalition.
But everyone else shouldn’t be so optimistic. The Egyptians, for one, may soon realize their help in Yemen elevates the Brotherhood, which was born in Egypt and is the top domestic enemy of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
As for America, do we really want anti-Western Sunni forces to emerge victorious? Remember, Yemen was home to the bin Laden family. It served as a base for prolific terrorist recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, who inspired bombers from Paris to Boston to Chelsea’s 23rd Street.
On the other hand, do we really want victory by an Iranian-backed gang, the Houthis, which, as the weekend incident demonstrates, are no friends of ours?
What about letting them fight each other to the death, while paying lip service to Yemeni casualties by denouncing atrocities on both sides? Regrettably, that cynical solution won’t do either.
The weekend incidents are a reminder, for one, that any of the factions fighting in Yemen may eventually use Bab al Mandeb (The Gate of Grief), a narrow strait at the bottom of the Red Sea, against us, blocking a crucial naval commercial passage connecting Africa and South Asia with the Mediterranean and Europe.
Two years ago, Obama presented Yemen as a success story in his mostly neglectful approach to the Mideast wars.
Shortly after, the Houthis captured Sana after allying with the ousted former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Any hope of success in the UN-led diplomacy behind Obama’s “Mission Accomplished”-like boast died.
Yemen, a microcosm of the current Mideast mess, can in part be chalked up to America’s policy in the last decade. We tried to divorce ourselves from a region that simply refuses to accept our pleas for separation.
Our withdrawal gave rise to the region’s most extremist elements and their anti-American backers.
Regrettably, the two presidential frontrunners signal they’ll mostly continue Obama’s attempt at ending America’s traditional global leadership, which sooner or later will come back to bite us, and America will likely be drawn into a much messier war.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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