There is no justification for war in Yemen.

[Stinky The Clown]

There was no justification for war in Iraq.

There was maybe some modicum of justification for the initial action in Afghanistan. That is now long past and there is no justification for the current escalation there.




The only weasel words in these statements is in regards to the initial action in Afghanistan. The rest are, for me, absolute statements.

[G_j]

1. & a five-year war against tribal rebels in the north

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5073006,00.html

Increased US military involvement in Yemen could boomerang

The Obama administration has in recent months stepped up its intelligence support and funding of Yemeni security forces in a bid to counter threats by al Qaeda to attack Western and Arab targets in the Gulf.

Yemeni officials say more than 30 operatives of al Qaeda's Yemeni offshoot, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), were killed and 29 others captured in raids in recent weeks that foiled attacks on the British embassy in the capital Sana'a and Yemeni oil facilities. Human rights activists and al Qaeda charge that scores of innocent civilians died in the attacks.

US support for the raids reflects concerns on both sides of the Atlantic that multiple conflicts in Yemen - including the fight against al Qaeda, a five-year war against tribal rebels in the north that has dragged neighboring Saudi Arabia into the hostilities, a secession movement in the south, rampant inflation and unemployment, dwindling oil revenues and an acute water shortage - could turn Yemen into the strategic region's next failed state alongside Somalia.

"We are already a failed state. We can no longer protect the rights of our citizens," said Yemeni opposition politician Abubakr Badeeb. "Al Qaeda is renewing itself and has sympathizers in the Yemeni security and intelligence forces," terrorism expert Said Ali Jemhi told Deutsche Welle.

Analysts say the US intelligence and military support kicked in since the Yemeni government recently bowed to US, European and Saudi pressure to focus more on battling al Qaeda rather than exclusively on squashing a tribal revolt in the north by Al-Houthi rebels and secession in the south. Yemeni officials complained as recently as October that the country's allies were ignoring problems that constituted as much a threat to Yemen's stability and territorial integrity as does al Qaeda.

..more..

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Let Saudi Arabia worry about it.

[StarfarerBill]

2. K&R

I opposed our intervention into the Afghan civil war, as well as President Obama's escalation. Our involvement there must end now, not when we've finally had enough.

So too Yemen, before we again become too deeply mired in yet another civil war.

[Goldstein1984]

4. I don't know about the President's Waterloo

But Afghanistan seems very likely to end up being his Vietnam.

I've been going back and reading the old Vietnam books, like Caputo's "A Rumor of War," and Robert S. McNamara's more recent "The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." While I'm already growing tired pointing out the parallels, they are unmistakable.

Yesterday, I read a post that contained the argument that Afghanistan was not like Vietnam because Vietnam, unlike Afghanistan, was a proxy war. First, I believe that Afghanistan probably is a proxy war, just with more diffuse interests opposed to U.S. hegemony supporting those we are fighting. Second, the nebulous mission statement is like Vietnam; the support of a corrupt government is like Vietnam; the conflict being scattered, or likely to be scattered, across borders is like Vietnam; the "war on terror" is hardly different from the Cold War in the way the government uses it to create a state of fear that justifies the losses of wealth, liberty and lives that goes with a perpetual state of war.

So, a response to crimes committed by a terror organization has become a war, and the war is spreading to every state where an organization without a state establishes a presence. The loss of innocent lives that results from the use of weapons of war for targeted assassinations of criminals hiding among civilians threatens not only our claims to being a nation built on self-evident truths, but compromises the truths themselves.

On edit: Fixeed typos

[stray cat]

5. Would it be legal to help Yeman arrest someone in their country?

or is it illegal for us to arrest a white supremicist leader on his compound if people have gotten help blowing up abortion providers or government buildings from him?

[Stinky The Clown]

6. War and police actions are very different.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Do you have a preference for which entities in Yemen win their civil war?

And do you advocate any kind of isolation of parts of it while you let them fight it out? Or should all the sides be treated as sovereign entities and people from their areas allowed to travel, trade with the US etc.?

[Stinky The Clown]

8. We deal with what we find when we find it

Look, I am a big believer in the fact that lots of people out there hate our guts. I also like to think I'm a realist.

We are not and can not be the world's police. We have no direct interests in Yemen. And we will have less when we get off oil.

Let the Saudi's figure it out. They're been shitting in their neighborhood for years and years.