"
- Wednesday evening Adel Al-Jubeir,
Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United
States announced that Saudi Arabia had
commenced military operations against the
Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement
in Yemen. The Saudi intervention was not
unexpected. Over the last few weeks there
were signs that the U.S. and the Saudi’s
were preparing the ground for direct
military intervention in Yemen in response
to the Houthi’s seizing state power in
January.The appearance of a previously
unknown ISIS element that was supposedly
responsible for the massive bomb attack that
killed over 130 people on Friday and the
withdraw of U.S. personnel on Saturday were
the clear signals that direct intervention
by the Saudi’s was imminent.
And this week with the fall of al-Anad
military base, the base where the U.S.
military and CIA conducted its drone warfare
in Yemen, to Ansarullah fighters and the
capture of the port city of Aden where
disposed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi
had fled, it was almost certain that the
U.S. would the green light for its client
states to intervene.
The Saudi Ambassador cloaked the role of
Saudi Arabia within the fictitious context
of another grand coalition, this time led by
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the
corrupt collection of authoritarian
monarchies allied with the U.S. and the
other Western colonial powers.
Ambassador Al-Jubeir announced that
before launching operations in Yemen all of
its allies were consulted. The meaning of
that statement is that the U.S. was fully
involved in the operation. Even though the
Ambassador stressed that the U.S. was not
directly involved in the military component
of the assault, CNN reported that an
interagency U.S. coordination team was in
Saudi Arabia and that a U.S. official
confirmed that the U.S. would be providing
logistical and intelligence support for the
operation.
And what was the justification for
launching a military operation not sanction
by the United Nations Security Council?
According to the Saudi’s they have
legitimate regional security concerns in
Yemen. Their argument was that since they
share a border with Yemen, the chaos that
erupted over the last few months that
culminated in what they characterize as a
coup by the Houthi insurgency, forced them
to intervene to establish order and defend
by “all efforts” the legitimate government
of President Hadi.
But this is becoming an old and tired
justification for criminality in support of
hegemony.
The intervention by the Saudi’s and the
GCC continues the international lawlessness
that the U.S. precipitated with its War on
Terror over the last decade and a half.
Violations of the UN Charter and
international law modeled by the powerful
states of the West has now become normalized
resulting in an overall diminution of
international law and morality over the last
15 years.
The double standard and hypocrisy of U.S.
support for the Saudi intervention in Yemen
and Western and U.S. condemnations of
Russia’s regional security concerns in
response to the right-wing coup in Ukraine
will not be missed by most people.
And so the conflagration in the Middle
East continues.
U.S. and Saudi geo-strategic interest in
containing the influence of Iran has trumped
international law and any concerns about the
lives of the people of Yemen, Syria, Iraq,
Lebanon and Bahrain. Militarism and war as
first options has now become commonplace as
instruments of statecraft in an
international order in which power trumps
morality and law is only applied to the
powerless.
Ajamu Baraka is a human rights
activist, organizer and geo-political
analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at
the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in
Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing
columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is
a contributor to “Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence”
(Counterpunch Books, 2014). He can be
reached at info.abaraka@gmail.com and www.AjamuBaraka.com
Source
Counterpunch