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.
I think Pat’s article is about a quarter of the whole story, and he misses a number of points.
The change in oil pricing over the past six years has changed the perspective of the Saudis, and challenged their long-term survival.
The leadership today? Heavily focused on issues which weren’t apparent back in the 2010 era. Financially, they need oil prices back at $80 to $100 a barrel, today? It’s resting at $55 to $65.
The reality of corruption, money-laundering, and sponsorship of ISIS by private Saudis? It threatens the very core of Saudi stability. The Iranians? By the US getting this nation back up and giving them an open window to the world economy? It’s invented a massive problem for the Saudis in the long-run.
The Saudis need Yemen’s little war to conclude, but no one can say for sure how the end would be achieved, or recognized.
The relationship with the Russians? Growing day by day. Some are shocked that some relationship now exists with the Israeli government and business interests.
If ISIS now shows up to start a civil war within Saudi Arabia? They don’t have the manpower to put it down and would have to approach Trump (with money) and get US assistance. Trump might say no, and then the Russians enter to say they’d do the dirty-work for the right sum of money.
All of this is just begging for a massive market correction in 2018.
War is very ugly business. The civilian population is a valid target in war as the farmer, the baker, the mechanics etc. are an integral part of the war machine. Without the civilian population that supports the war machine the war machine would grind to a halt due to lack of supplies.
I do not know if the war between Saudi and Yemen is justifiable by the Saudis. . I do know that war must be brutal in he extreme to win.
Buchanan is correct in his analysis of post World War I. Our actions set in motion World War II.
If you are not willing to kill your enemy and all that stand with him, surrender, for you have already lost.
>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.
Well, they’re lying, it came from Iran. Yemen’s a Sunni vs Shia proxy war between KSA and Iran. We’d do best to let those 2 sides deal with it on their own.
Hitler was an assuagement to their battered dignity, but at a terrible cost to humanity.
Both sides can easily lose in a war.
I agree
And anyhow, perhaps all the wars of the 20th century, more and more about politics and territory, contributed to the spiritual slide of the West. People saw themselves being pulled by governments into drawn out conflicts that didn’t seem to make sense.
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.
I guess the moral would be that if you MUST wage a war, don’t do it as trying to inflict a death of a thousand cuts. Smack as hard as you possibly can and then when a surrender comes, accept it graciously.
And frankly... if the US gets petitioned to participate in a war that’s not going to be along those lines, it should decline.
I’m a little confused. Is Pat saying it’s better to have open warfare than to use starvation as a tool/weapon to get the enemy to submit?
I ask because I’m thinking if we ever have a civil war again in America most of the left will flock TO the cities whereas most the freedom loving right will flock away from them if they are at all prepared. The fastest and most direct way to end the conflict will be to cut all supply routes into the cities to starve them into surrendering. Would bombing or other open warfare be more preferable according to Mr. Buchanan? It seems to me far less damage and loss of life would happen from the starvation method when given two bad choices.
Actually Pat would be right if that’s what he means.
Conquer or get out of there. Anything less is about pride.
If they don’t like starving they can always ask for terms.
I’d be concerned about terms before God.
If what he said is true about starvation four months after Germany laid down her arms, then I’m going to put Britain in with France, whose insistence on the draconian Versailles Treaty guaranteed WWII, as a country who deserved what they got from Nazi Germany.
I guess so if you don’t care about preserving buildings, bridges, roads, airports, and other infrastructure.
Remember; in the civil war scenario we would also be living in the same places (somewhat) we just destroyed afterward. I just can’t see us destroying the tall buildings in NYC or other cities if we had another way to win; albeit taking longer but with less loss of life.
Maybe I’m dreaming but let’s say the right won; would those who fought for the left have to concede or leave? What if the left won? Would we have to concede or leave?
Well actually I’d rather lose that stuff than sell my soul.
And what you’re proposing wouldn’t shrink the left. It would grow it, including among places where “we” thought we were prevailing.
They would need to concede (surrender and agree to our terms) or leave. If they didn’t then they would be exiled.
I’m thinking a couple of weeks of no new food supplies and turning off their water supply would be enough to get their attention. Maybe just one week if we stopped the water. If that didn’t work then we can always do it the conventional way.
As much as I don’t consider leftists American; they consider themselves American.
I dunno; in a perfect world we could snap our fingers and all the leftists would either disappear or be re-located to a communist or socialist hell hole of their choosing.
Yemen is a failed state and a major security threat to Saudi Arabia and the region because it is a source of endemic human trafficking, smuggling, terrorism, and maritime piracy. If a blockade is prohibited, just what security measures does Pat recommend to Saudi Arabia, the US, and our other regional allies? Kinetic measures like dropping bombs would cause more civilian casualties and suffering than a blockade does. Moreover, when the source of the problem is a hostile and obdurate civilian populace, they can legitimately be targeted as they are the adversarial center of gravity. And it is worth noting that, like Muslim government, conflicts among Muslims tend to have brutal rules that harken back to the savagery of ancient times. My guess is that most Muslims in the region think that the Yemenis deserve far worse than a blockade.
There is so much awfulness about Churchill that we are never taught.
BS.... The Saudis are NOW taking on responibilitys.......they are being squeezed
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