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The Cruel And Aimless War On Yemen
The situation for the people in Yemen is catastrophic. Doctors Without Borders, which has experience from many war zones, says it is the worst conflict they ever worked in.
The theocratic family dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, with U.S. support, is relentlessly bombing the country and blockading it from all urgently needed supply for the people. The declared aim of the war is to reinstate the Saudi/U.S. selected President Hadi. But no one in Yemen wants Hadi back. He now would not survive there even one day. The UN warns of the danger of mass starvation.
The Houthi supporters and forces aligned with former president Saleh failed to capture the southern harbor town Aden. Infiltrated special forces from the United Arab Emirates directed Saudi air attacks against Houthi positions. After the Saleh forces and the Houthi retreated UAE forces, which include many mercenaries from Pakistan, invaded the city via its airport and from the sea.
Landing ships have been supplying heavy vehicles. TV pictures show newly arrived French Leclerc main battle tanks, Russian build BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles and motorized heavy mortars. Additionally many armored and armed wheeled vehicles have been supplied. This is an invasion force of at least brigade size – some 4-5,000 soldiers. That this operation is so far very well planned and executed lets me believe that it is under direct U.S. supervision.
The newly arrived forces are supported by some local tribes and southern separatist groups. Today the invaders are trying to kick Saleh forces from the Al Anad air base near Aden. The invasion force wants to drive the Houthi not only from the south but also from power up north in the capitol Sanaa. The few planes with humanitarian aid that were allowed to fly into Sanaa are now ordered to land only in Aden. The north of Yemen is thereby completely isolated and cut off from all resources.
But look at this map of tribal areas within Yemen and around it.
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Will all those various tribes and local interests agree with a foreign imposed agenda? Will the starving but still well armed Yemenis let those rich troops just pass? Or will they rather fight and sabotage any foreign forces that try to move out of Aden?
Not bothered by the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen AlQaeda in the Arab Peninsula has practically taken over the comparably rich eastern Yemeni governate of Hadhramaut. The 23rd brigade of Yemeni forces holding the governate was, allegedly accidentally, bombed by Saudi jets. AlQaeda also captured the eastern port of AlMukallah and uses it to supply its area. No Saudi air strike hindered its recent expansion. There are rumors that AQAP will soon declare Hadhramaut a new Islamic Emirate under its rule.
Between 1962 and 1970 Egypt fought a war in Yemen against predominately Yemeni forces. Some 25,000 of its soldiers were killed in that war. I expect that the current U.S. supported invasion of Yemen, like the Egyptians, will get bogged down within a month or two.
Meanwhile many Yemeni civilians will silently die from lack of access to water, food and medicine.
Why Do We Lament A-Bombs and Not Fire-Bombs?
In March, 1945, the US Army Air Force bomber command under Gen. Curtis LeMay began carpet bombing Japan’s cities from bases in the Mariana Islands. American war planners sought to destroy Japan’s industries and will to resist. It’s from this period that LeMay’s famous quote came: ‘We’ll bomb’em back to the Stone Age.”
In the ensuing nine months of massive bombing, the US Army Air Force destroyed 40% of Japan’s cities and large towns. On 9/10 March, 1945, in a mass raid code-named “Meetinghouse,” 346 US B-29 heavy bombers showered Tokyo with bombs and incendiary devices made from jellied gasoline.
Most of Tokyo and other Japanese cities were made up of wooden structures. Intensive firestorms engulfed Tokyo, sucking up all the air and burning it. …
Bruce Comings, The Korean War, “CHAPTER SIX: THE MOST DISPROPORTIONATE RESULT”: THE AIR WAR
After much experimentation and scientific study by Germany, Britain, and the United States, by 1943 it became clear that
“a city was easier to burn down than to blow up.”
Combinations of incendiaries and conventional explosives, followed up by delayed-detonation bombs to keep firefighters at bay, could destroy large sections of a city, whereas conventional bombs had a much more limited impact. Magnesium-alloy thermite sticks, manufactured by the million and bundled together, did the trick; when supplemented by mixtures of benzol, rubber, resins, gels, and phosphorus, they formed unprecedentedly destructive blockbuster flaming bombs that could wipe out cities in a matter of minutes (seventeen in the case of the attack on Wurzburg, March 16, 1945). The creation of urban “annihilation zones” destroyed masses of civilian lives, an outcome accepted by all sides in the war – and
“by the people, parliaments, and armed forces.”
And with that, in Jörg Friedrich’s words,
“modernity gave itself up to a new, incalculable, and uncontrollable fate.”
Pretensions of precision targeting were put out for public consumption, while secret estimates showed that fewer than half the large bombs hit their targets. But in favorable atmospheric conditions these bombs ignited firestorms that razed Darmstadt, Heilbronn, Pforzheim, Wurzburg, and, of course, Hamburg (40,000 deaths), Dresden (12,000), and Tokyo (88,000). Or in Winston Churchill’s words,
“We will make Germany a desert, yes, a desert” …
… Top air force officers decided to repeat “the fire” in Korea, a wildly disproportionate scheme in that North Korea had no pretense or possibility of a similar city-busting capability. Whereas German fighter planes and antiaircraft batteries made these allied bombing runs harrowing, with high loss of life among British and American pilots and crew, American pilots had virtual free-fire zones … Curtis LeMay subsequently said that he had wanted to burn down North Korea’s big cities at the inception of the war, but the Pentagon refused – “it’s too horrible.” So over a period of three years, he went on,
“We burned down every [sic] town in North Korea and South Korea, too .… Now, over a period of three years this is palatable, but to kill a few people to stop this from happening – a lot of people can’t stomach it.”
To take just one example of these “limited” raids, on July 11, 1952, an “all-out assault” on Pyongyang involved 1,254 air sorties by day and 54 B-29 assaults by night, the prelude to bombing thirty other cities and industrial objectives under “operation PRESSURE PUMP.”
Highly concentrated incendiary bombs were followed up with delayed demolition explosives.
… and we remain now even more deeply imbedded in our now no longer new, incalculable, and uncontrollable fate. The history of the USA since 1941 has been one long war crime …
Bombs Over Cambodia
The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.
To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.
… an then came Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen … it’s been one long cruel and aimless war for nearly 3/4s of a century.
Posted by: jfl | Aug 10 2015 9:57 utc | 41
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