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The USA and the UK are bombing Yemen. The timing is not coincidental.
Ignominiously chased out of Afghanistan, defeated in Syria, losing in Ukraine, tarred and feathered for their support for Israeli genocide in Gaza, the West now risks getting rinsed at the International Court of Justice at The Hague – for if Israel is found guilty of genocide then they will be too. The opening statements of South Africa’s legal team were devastating, as searing an indictment of Israeli genocide and western complicity as one can imagine.
In this attack on Yemen there is some semblance of an utterly cynical strategy.
This attack:
- Provides a handy smokescreen for Israel as its legal team tries to defend the indefensible at the ICJ
- Gives the western media the perfect excuse to look away from the endless litany of Israeli crimes being painstakingly read out at The Hague.
- Will be used by the West as a PR tactic, as they love manufacturing ‘threats’ and mashing them together to deflect context and moral scrutiny.
- Mendaciously attempts to re-establish the West’s role as the world’s moral police force
- Will be used to imply that they retain control of events when nothing could be further from the truth.
In trying to understand the foreign policy of the USA one must grasp that their actions are neither coherent nor unified, merely spasms of an internecine group process.
The mysterious illness of U.S. defence secretary Lloyd Austin bears extraordinary witness to the factional fighting within the US regime. Austin hid his illness, fearing his opponents would exploit his absence, leaving the media to break the story after the fact – not the White House press office.
The US government is run by squabbling, petulant children and the UK tags along like a cowed schoolboy, hanging out with the bullies to gather reflected machismo and to avoid being picked on next.
This attack on Yemen is one part cynicism and three parts impotent rage. Unable to restrain Israel, muzzle the ICJ, stop Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and increasingly irrelevant in the Middle East.. the US has predictably turned to bombing some civilians. Such murderous tantrums define much of US foreign policy these days.
Hardline neocons within The White House hope to widen the Middle East conflict and spark a war with Iran and Lebanon. The softer and more realist faction (within the Pentagon especially) are trying to de-escalate and avoid another war. So we see Anthony Blinken scuttling around the Middle East pleading for calm, while the US launches air strikes the very next day!
Rishi Sunak is an unelected and incompetent prime minister who heads a clown car government shuffling towards electoral oblivion. Perhaps he imagines that if he dons a flak jacket (oh yes that is coming!) that this will mirror the Falkland Islands moment that saved Thatcher. Fat chance.
The UK MOD is issuing the now standard platitudes about taking “particular care to minimise any risks to civilians” and if you believe that I would like buy your car for 500 English Zlotys.
Just when you think the actions of the usual suspects couldn’t possibly get anymore immoral, stupid or dangerous we wake up to yet another day of chaotic ignominy and shame. The people of Yemen are (once again) the victims of western weaponry and mendacious malice.
No-one can be surprised, after all one need only look at Gaza and listen in at The Hague to learn all about the ‘western values’ behind this latest outrage.
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