Posted on 11/23/2017 10:42:55 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Our aim is to "starve the whole population -- men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound -- into submission," said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.
He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.
Yet when we went to war in 1917, a U.S. admiral told British Prime Minister Lloyd George, "You will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are."
After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.
As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, "We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation."
So grave were conditions in Germany that Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer protested to Lloyd George in Paris that morale among his troops on the Rhine was sinking from seeing "hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments."
The starvation blockade was a war crime and a crime against humanity. But the horrors of the Second World War made people forget this milestone on the Western road to barbarism.
A comparable crime is being committed today against the poorest people in the Arab world -- and with the complicity of the United States. Saudi Arabia, which attacked and invaded Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels dumped over a pro-Saudi regime in Sanaa and overran much of the country, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade, after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh this month that was shot down.
The Saudis say it was an Iranian missile, fired with the aid of Hezbollah, and an "act of war" against the kingdom. The Houthis admit to firing the missile, but all three deny Iran and Hezbollah had any role.
Whatever the facts of the attack, what the Saudis, with U.S. support, are doing today with this total blockade of that impoverished country appears to be both inhumane and indefensible.
Almost 90 percent of Yemen's food, fuel and medicine is imported, and these imports are being cut off. The largest cities under Houthi control, the port of Hodaida and Sanaa, the capital, have lost access to drinking water because the fuel needed to purify the water is not there.
Thousands have died of cholera. Hundreds of thousands are at risk. Children are in danger from a diphtheria epidemic. Critical drugs and medicines have stopped coming in, a death sentence for diabetics and cancer patients.
If airfields and ports under Houthi control are not allowed to open and the necessities of life and humanitarian aid are not allowed to flow in, the Yemenis face famine and starvation.
What did these people do to deserve this? What did they do to us that we would assist the Saudis in doing this to them?
The Houthis are not al-Qaida or ISIS. Those are Sunni terrorist groups, and the Houthis detest them.
Is this now the American way of war? Are we Americans, this Thanksgiving and Christmas, prepared to collude in a human rights catastrophe that will engender a hatred of us among generations of Yemeni and stain the name of our country?
Saudis argue that the specter of starvation will turn the Yemeni people against the rebels and force the Houthi to submit. But what if the policy fails. What if the Houthis, who have held the northern half of the country for more than two years, do not yield? What then?
Are we willing to play passive observer as thousands and then tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- the old, sick, weak, and infants and toddlers first -- die from a starvation blockade supported by the mighty United States of America?
Without U.S. targeting and refueling, Saudi planes could not attack the Houthis effectively and Riyadh could not win this war. But when did Congress authorize this war on a nation that never attacked us?
President Obama first approved U.S. support for the Saudi war effort. President Trump has continued the Obama policy, and the war in Yemen has now become his war, and his human rights catastrophe.
Yemen today is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, and America's role in it is undeniable and indispensable.
If the United States were to tell Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that we were no longer going to support his war in Yemen, the Saudis would have to accept the reality that they have lost this war.
Indeed, given Riyadh's failure in the Syria civil war, its failure to discipline rebellious Qatar, its stalemated war and human rights disaster in Yemen, Trump might take a hard second look at the Sunni monarchy that is the pillar of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.
Name three such items.
I’ll point out that Churchill had the then-recent U.S. precedent of the Union blockade of Southern seaports and Sherman’s March.
I’ve said numerous times here that Churchill’s The River War and With the Malakand Field Force should have been required reading in the wake of 9/11 for the entire NSC and staff, the entire armed forces general staff, everyone NCO and up in the Army and Marines, and anyone in the State Department having anything to do with the Middle East. I’m generally a fan.
“Perhaps the conquest of Japan was the cleanest war of all those waged in the 20th century. Two atom bombs and that saved the rest of Japan, as well as the morals of the West. Broad population wars are very demoralizing.”
The firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than either atom bomb; the American high command had figured out the perfect mix of high explosive bombs to reduce buildings to kindling followed by incendiary bombs to set it all alight. Planes flying over the burning city were lifted by the heat of the firestorm below. By the time we dropped the atom bombs there was almost 0 chance the bombers would be shot down; we killed plenty of Japanese civilians in bombing raids that spanned three years. I’m not criticizing the policy, but it wasn’t “clean” by any stretch.
“Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.”
The US respected the British blockade of Germany while trading with Britain - including arms - while feigning neutrality. This is nonsense.
War is hell Bump...PC wars do not *settle* anything or solve problems.
If the left won, they’d establish “re-education” centers, from which very few conservatives would ever return. Take that to the bank.
I don’t think it’s that sudden. Buchanan’s been manifesting that risible, detestable, insufferable thing -— conscience -— for awhile now.
May God bless this good man.
False. The work they are engaged in is blameless. And they didn't choose to be subjects of these regimes.
The farmer farms. The mother mothers. The just man, as Hopkins says, justices.
“If a blockade is prohibited, just what security measures does Pat recommend to Saudi Arabia, the US, and our other regional allies?”
I think the author is recommending that the whole thing just stop and everybody get along.
We have left behind the old era where wars were actually won and then civilization moved on. It’s just not nice to win wars as you have to hurt people to do it.
Why not? What's wrong with all their men? Then why don't they just hire some rag-head savages from elsewhere in the region to do their fighting? They've got the money, "freedom isn't free".
and would have to approach Trump (with money) and get US assistance. Trump might say no...
Hell to the no!
Take the oil! and blow up the bad-guys whenever and wherever needed from the air. Confiscate the Soddie money and food-bomb the starving masses with bundles clearly marked "A gift from the American People".
When has an urging by remote outsiders to “just stop and everybody get along” actually resolved a conflict? And, as one of those irreducible facts of life, “winning a war requires hurting people.”
“When has an urging by remote outsiders to “just stop and everybody get along” actually resolved a conflict? “
The Quran says to treat the enemy in the most horrible manner you can imagine as it is kinder in the long run to inflict maximum terror. This forces the e the enemy to submit sooner, and thus saves lives.
If the Houthis have no rice, let them eat Myrrh
Oh yes, I forgot. Pat is a 1930’s isolationist antiwar Republican
I think you are lying. Citation, please?
Quotes and citations down the left side of the page.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/does-islam-teach-violence
The fact that they are holding the 30-odd princes in a facility guarded by the western contractors they brought in...means they don’t trust their own ‘raghead’ army or the internal Saudi militia that does exist.
As these stories of the interrogation and torture get out...I think these will make the remaining insiders question the authority of the King, and where things will go. Maybe there’s a year of this speculation period...holding of the princes...etc. I also don’t think bin Alal will probably never see his release. They will have to pick someone to be executed and be the blunt part of their demonstration of power. He’s the likely guy.
I’ll also make this comment. A number of these folks hold insider info on money-laundering and it might actually lead back to a number of Americans (perhaps even bigwigs attached to the GOP donor machine), and the King will have a listing of their names and the money within the Saudi machine. Presently, those folks with money in the Saudi laundry system have a lot to worry about. They might not ever be able to get their money back.
So it’s not just the money of the princes at stake here....it’s the outsiders who were using the system as well.
You are wrong. They need prices at $55-65, because otherwise, many massive deposits in the US that are slightly more expensive to extract suddenly become worthwhile to start pumping once again. Several areas of the US would enjoy another boom, as they did previously when oil prices went that high. The Saudis would not benefit nearly as much, as they would lose a significant amount of market share. The last thing they want is the US as a major competitor for customers... especially with a pro-energy and pro-economic-growth president.
Can’t disagree. Leftists actually believe they are smarter, more enlightened, and right about everything including normalizing perversion and transexuals plus removing Christianity and the morals it teaches. I don’t care how much of their re-education they put me through; I would never agree with them on what they are trying to do.
The odd thing is this isn’t the same leftist dems from just 20+ years ago. This new militant, racist minority, LGBT dem party isn’t much more than a big ball of hate.
How the heck did that happen? Is it possible the professors and teachers did it all? Obviously obama accelerated this devious insidious thinking in the dem party but how did it get to this level of pure hate? Even for the dems; this is a hard left in their thinking.
He wrote in a book that you can read at his website that we should not have entered into WW2 against the Germans.....
His thinking was we would use the Germans against the Russians. He forgot about (did not care) about the many other free countries that the nazi’s overran.
The Brits enforced their blockade, stopping ships and searching for contraband (and contraband had a pretty broad definition...).
The Germans started and stopped unrestricted submarine warfare at least twice.
The object of a war is to win. The only effect these stupid ‘humanitarian’ rules have had is make it impossible to win a war and to extend the duration and suffering of the war.
IF you can no longer feed your civilians, YOU HAVE LOST THE WAR. Ask for terms.
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