TGIF: The Insidious Wiles of Foreign Influence: Trump, Bin Salman, and Netanyahu

Even if the Saudi monarchy or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular did not murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi, that regime is an especially evil one in both its domestic and international conduct.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

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Cable Noise Network: Mouthpiece for the War State

CNN and its Pentagon stenographer, Barbara Starr, are shameless mouthpieces for the war state. In an article touting the Pentagon's unverified claim that last month's special-ops raid in Yemen, greenlit by Donald Trump, has yielded actionable intel, we find this astounding sentence:

"AQAP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] is considered by many analysts to be al Qaeda's most capable affiliate, and the organization has been able to carve out a safe haven in Yemen amid the ongoing civil war there between government loyalists and Houthi rebels."

Missing from the story is the fact that it is Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies -- enabled by the U.S. military -- that are warring against the Houthis and "carv[ing] out a safe haven" for the disciples of Osama bin Laden. The merciless Saudi bombing campaign and naval blockade -- which could not be taking place without U.S. assistance -- threaten mass starvation in the Middle East's poorest country. The Obama administration joined the Saudi effort nearly two years ago apparently to placate the Gulf states, which were upset by the Iran nuclear deal. Donald Trump, who's obsessed with Iran, shows no sign of ending that war. The Houthis, who practice a form of Shi'ite Islam, are wrongly portrayed as Iranian agents.

So while Navy SEALs kill al-Qaeda operatives and others -- including unaffiliated tribesmen, women, and children -- the U.S. government also helps al-Qaeda because of its obsession with Iran and its alliance with the cradle of "radical Islamic terrorism": Saudi Arabia.

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Institute.

Bush, 9/11, and Iraq: Trump Gets It Right

Donald Trump, for all his obnoxious demagoguery, is adding value to the presidential campaign by calling former President George W. Bush to account for 9/11 and the Iraq war, which set in motion the growth and spread of al-Qaeda and the rise of the Islamic State. Former U.S. rulers rarely face consequences for the horrible things they do in office. Condemnation is considered impolite.

A Conspiracy of Fear-Mongers

Over the weekend CNN breathlessly reported as "Breaking News" -- it breathlessly reports everything as "Breaking News" -- a new poll indicating that people are increasingly frightened about terrorism. The accompanying web story stated, "Terrorism has eclipsed the economy as voters' top pick for the biggest issue facing America, a New York Times/CBS News poll has found. Last month only 4% of Americans said terrorism was the most important problem, according to the New York Times. Now nearly one in five -- 19% -- believe it is."

How the U.S. Inspires Anti-American Terrorism

From Stephen M. Walt:

Our reluctance to consider whether certain aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy inspire anti-American extremism began as early as the 9/11 Commission. As the late Ernest May, a distinguished historian who worked with the commission, later acknowledged: 

“[T]he report skirts the question of whether American policies and actions fed the anger that manifested itself on September 11…. [it] is weak in laying out evidence for the alternative argument that the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol might not have been targeted absent America’s identification with Israel, support for regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, and insensitivity to Muslims’ feelings about their holy places. The commissioners believed that American foreign policy was too controversial to be discussed except in recommendations written in the future tense. Here we compromised our commitment to set forth the full story.” 

Wow....

As I pointed out back in 2009, the United States is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims over the past three decades, a sum vastly greater than the number of Americans killed by Muslims. It would be remarkable indeed if our actions had not led a small fraction of their co-religionists to want to retaliate in some way.

Walt is of the realist school of foreign policy.

Foreign Policy Comes Back to Haunt Us

From the start, opponents of the American empire warned that the government could not violate the rights of foreigners without eventually violating the rights of Americans. An excellent example is William Graham Sumner's post-Spanish-American War classic "The Conquest of the United States by Spain." The anti-imperialists were spot-on, and the evidence for their case keeps piling up.

How to Respond to the Paris Attacks

Look, even authoritarian and totalitarian states can't prevent domestic terrorism. What hope do relatively open societies have? Open societies abound with "soft targets," that is, noncombatants going about their everyday lives. They are easy hits for those determined to inflict harm, especially if the assailants seek to die in the process.

TGIF: The Wickedness of Foreign Policy

If you want to see how inhumane people can be, just watch those who make and execute foreign policy. We could spend all day discussing the cruelties that politicians and bureaucrats commit against people who live inside the United States. Think how many are caged like wild animals because they manufacture, sell, or consume disapproved substances; gamble where government has forbade it; traded sexual services for money; possessed a gun they weren't "supposed" to possess; etc. ad infinitum. Naturally, America leads the world in locking up people.

Drone War Delusions

We are constantly told that US drones are surgically precise. But any weapon – especially a remote-controlled one – is only as accurate as the intelligence behind it. At least 38 people died before a CIA strike finally killed this man [al-Qaeda #2, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, in Yemen]. Who were the rest? How many lives did we take in the effort to assassinate al-Wuhayshi? How many have we driven into the arms of militants with the 38 others we killed? The secret drone war conceals a mountain of hidden costs, and the idea we can bomb our way out of the problem of terrorism is short-sighted and, ultimately, false.

--Cori Crider of Reprieve, quoted in The Guardian

Obama Wades Further into Yemen

“The U.S. Navy … has dispatched the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt toward the waters off Yemen to join other American ships prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the rebels, U.S. officials said,” the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday.

Thus does the Obama administration risk war with Iran while embracing the mischievous agendas of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

Iran has not been found shipping arms, but you won’t learn that from mainstream news accounts. Nor do the media ask why the United States and its allies -- but not Iran -- may intervene in Yemen.

The Tribune, like all mainstream news outlets, refers to “Iran-backed Shiite rebels,” that is, the autonomy-minded and long-burdened Houthis, who are portrayed without evidence as agents of the Islamic Republic. The media are mere conduits for Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab Gulf states, which have an interest in falsely portraying the turmoil in Yemen, long racked by civil war, as an instance of Iranian expansion. The Sunni Arab states don’t want Shiite Persians playing a prominent role in the region and becoming friendlier with the United States, while Israel uses Iran to take the world’s mind off the Jewish State’s brutality against the Palestinians. All this goes on while the United States negotiates curbs on a nonexistent Iranian nuclear-weapons program -- to Saudi and Israeli consternation.

While the media fill American minds with almost nonstop propaganda about Iran’s ambitions, the U.S. intelligence agencies have their doubts. Why don’t the media report this, considering that Obama has facilitated the Saudis’ naval blockade against Yemen and its off-again/on-again bombing campaign? As a result of this war, Yemen suffers a humanitarian catastrophe, complete with refugees, food shortages, and the slaughter of civilians.

Fortifying doubts about Iranian backing of the Houthis, the Huffington Post, citing “American officials familiar with intelligence around the insurgent takeover,” reports that “Iranian representatives discouraged Houthi rebels from taking the Yemeni capital of Sanaa last year” (emphasis added).

This conflicts with the popular belief that the Houthis, who practice a Shiite offshoot that differs significantly from Iranian Shiism, moved on the capital under orders from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“The newly disclosed information casts further doubt on claims that the rebels are a proxy group fighting on behalf of Iran,” continue the authors, Ali Watkins, Ryan Grim, and Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “suggesting that the link between Iran and the Yemeni Shiite group may not be as strong as congressional hawks and foreign powers urging U.S. intervention in Yemen have asserted.”

Do congressional hawks and foreign powers, that is, Israel and Saudi Arabia, care what the facts show? Facts have nothing to do with this. Iran is the bogeyman, so all troubles must be traced to its door. Nothing -- especially the truth -- can be allowed to stand in the way.

The article adds that “the revelation that the Houthis directly disobeyed Iran gives credibility to the White House's argument that Iran is not directing the rebels” (emphasis added). It quotes Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, who says, “It remains our assessment that Iran does not exert command and control over the Houthis in Yemen.”

To drive the point home, the authors quote a U.S. intelligence official: “It is wrong to think of the Houthis as a proxy force for Iran.”

So why does Obama help the Saudis murder Yemenis?

Directing the Houthis and aiding them are two different things, of course, but Iranian support in the face of long-standing Saudi and U.S. intervention hardly seems remarkable. Reuters reported in December 2014 that “exactly how much support Iran has given the Houthis … has never been clear.” Moreover, the ships “suspected” of carrying arms are probably part of Iran’s anti-piracy patrol. (See Gareth Porter's "Houthi arms bonanza came from Saleh, not Iran.")

And let’s face it: the U.S.-backed Saudi war creates opportunities for al-Qaeda in the Iraqi Peninsula (AQIP) and ISIS, which the Houthis oppose.

The United States risks unlimited war with Iran by interfering in a civil war on behalf of malign outsider objectives. (It’s been droning Yemen since 2001.) By seeing the conflict through the Saudi and Israeli lens, Obama magnifies the human catastrophe.

Sheldon Richman keeps the blog "Free Association" and is a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society.

What the Hell Are We Doing in Yemen?

The U.S. government has charged into another civil war in the Middle East. When you find yourself repeatedly asking, “Will they ever learn?” the answer may be that the decision-makers have no incentive to do things differently. What looks like failure may be the intended outcome. Quagmires have their benefits -- to the ruling elite -- if American casualties are minimized.

News Coverage Misleads American on the Bergdahl Swap

In national-security matters, the news media couldn’t do a better job misinforming the public if they tried. The latest example is their portrayal of the five Taliban officials traded for Bowe Bergdahl.

The media of course have an incentive to accentuate controversy. In the Bergdahl deal, this includes portraying the five Taliban prisoners as, in Sen. John McCain’s words, “hard-core jihadis responsible for 9/11.” McCain is wrong, but the major news outlets don’t care. Over and over, the five are identified as terrorists. Facts take a back seat to drama and conflict.

The full article is here.

Op-ed Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy

Each act of the empire provokes a response that serves as a pretext for further imperial action. The battlefield is the world, and the “war on terror” can go on forever. Except for the dead, the maimed, the malnourished, and the taxpayers, it’s a sweet deal all around.

The rest of my latest op-ed, "Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy," is here.