Yemen: Donald Trump's Genocide

By and large, all American presidents are war criminals. It comes with the job like Air Force One and JFK's secret sex dungeon (you didn't here that one from me). In fact, most presidents are repeat offenders, committing scores of atrocities across a global scale over the span of four to eight years, and many get passed down from administration to administration like a blood-drenched hand-me-down. But every president has their signature sin. That one act of barbarism that defines an administration's specific modus operandi. The one act of international evil that they're going to burn in hell for.

For some presidents this crime comes to define their legacy- LBJ's Vietnam, Nixon's Cambodia, Dubya's Iraq- But for others, for one reason or another, their greatest crimes go largely ignored and forgotten- Jimmy Carter's Afghan Trap, Bill Clinton's Iraqi famine, Gerald Ford's East Timorese Genocide (more on that little gem later)- And it is with each passing day becoming painfully clear to Yours truly, dearest motherfuckers, that our current president's defining act of barbarism will be the raging holocaust in Yemen. What's even worse is that I can't seem to shake the ugly gnawing feeling that it's a crime that will go largely unpunished by recorded history thanks largely to America's current cross-partisan zeitgeist of icy indifference to the suffering of the Third World.

Donald Trump didn't create the deepening bloodbath in Yemen. That honor goes to Nobel Peace Laureate and amateur wind-surfer Barack Obama, who gave our good buddies in Saudi Arabia the go ahead to invade their impoverished southern neighbors when a rag-tag militia of largely secular minded Shiites called the Houthis had the nerve to overthrow America's latest Yemeni quisling despot, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, and demanded their nations independence from foreign rule.

Those smashing elites in the western media-government-conglomeration will have you believe a lot of nasty things about those dastardly Houthis and most of them are pure weapons-grade horseshit. They will tell you that they are Iranian agents when in reality not only do the Houthis have zero proven contact with Tehran but they are also members of a sect of Shiia Islam, Zaidism, which is largely viewed as heresy by the Twelvers back in Iran. They will tell you that the Houthis are Islamic extremists when in reality not only are they a decidedly syncretic movement that takes their ques from everyone from Hezbollah to the Bolivarian Revolution but they have seen more success fighting Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula than the last two Yankee approved Yemeni strongmen combined.

The real threat posed by the Houthis lies in the simple fact that they seek a truly independent Yemen, free from the stern grip of the United States and its royalist proxies in the Gulf. After decades of struggling to simply be left alone, Yemen's long abused Zaydi minority (40% of the overall population) came to the conclusion that the only way they would ever know peace is to take the fight to Sanaa, a conclusion reached by similar minded revolutionaries from the Minutemen to the Bolsheviks. The relative ease with which they overthrew the American backed dictatorship of Hadi was proof positive that they enjoyed broad support from more than just the Zaydis. Of course, this couldn't stand. Obama gave the Saudis the go ahead and offered them his support with drones and subsidized American firepower but it was Trump who would make this bloodbath his own and push it from war to all out genocide.

Trump made this grotesquely clear on week one of his presidency, when he sent a Navy Seal death squad to kill a fourth-grader and a couple dozen members of her family in what became known as the Yakla Raid. But this disgusting act of imperial cowardice in the first days of the Trump presidency was only the beginning. In the months proceeding it, the poorest country in the Middle East was treated to thousands of Yaklas, with American supplied and fueled Saudi bombers launching an unprecedented onslaught of heavy metal against Yemen's already bleak civilian infrastructure- Roadways, markets, mosques, hospitals, schools, sewage and sanitation plants, farms, slums and wedding parties- Over ten thousand lie dead already. What's even worse is the Saudis near total blockade of the tiny nation, plunging 7 to 8 million Yemenis to the brink of starvation and triggering a cholera outbreak affecting at least a million more and it only gets worse from here.

With the UN projecting 150,000 dead from starvation alone before the years end and international aid groups uncharacteristically blunt in their condemnation of  America's and the UK's direct involvement in the collective punishment of an entire race of people, President Trump and his English accomplice Theresa May have been making a big ado about condemning the Saudis for carrying out their orders. But they have both done jackshit to stop it. All America would have to do to end this nightmare is refuse to refuel Saudi Arabia's bombers. The war would grind to a screeching halt within days if not hours. But no. Nothing. Nothing but empty calls for mercy while the gas keeps flowing. Trump, the man who promised to put America first has not done one goddamn thing to remove American soldiers from the scene of his holocaust. Quite the contrary, he's promised to send more Navy Seal death squads to take the genocide to the cracked streets of Yemen's impoverished villages. Apparently more fourth-graders need to be shot in the throat.

Meanwhile, the Saudis are rapidly closing in on the port city of Hodeidah which supplies Yemen with 70% of their food. The results of this would be nothing short of catastrophic, creating a genocide the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the height of the American backed starvation of East Timor which left over 300,000 dead or 44% of that equally impoverished little nation's population. Like Yemen, East Timor's only crime was demanding their hard fought independence from foreign rule. And like Yemen, East Timor was crucified by a notoriously duplicitous American allie (Suharto's Indonesia) with the full approval of a dickless, do-nothing president (Gerald Ford). Thanks to Trump, Yemen has become the new East Timor. Maybe this is what he meant by Make America Great Again.

But few Americans have even heard of East Timor and even fewer seem to really give a shit about Yemen. This is a goddamn genocide for Christ's sake, with our Commander in Chief presiding over the dusty killing fields. And where is the goddamn outrage? Where is the sense of immediacy that should come with millions of lives hanging in the balance? Why isn't Black Lives Matter launching protests in support of their brown brothers and sisters being murdered by the very state that puts a permanent target between their own shoulders? Why isn't the "Resistance" calling for an impeachment trial for a crime there nemesis is actually fucking guilty of? Why isn't the NRA defending the rights of localist Zaydi militias exercising their right to defend their communities with small arms against the onslaught of big government. And why do Trumpian "isolationists" like Justin Raimondo continue to insist on defending a war criminal who is using their support as a mandate to murder thousands of men, women and children in cold blood. Am I really the only one who takes intersectionality seriously?

Where is the antiwar movement that came a cunt's hair away from overthrowing the government in the early Seventies over another malignant narcissist's genocidal policies?- Yippies, Panthers, Libertarians, veterans and queers standing united against tyranny both at home and abroad. When did the rest of the world stop mattering to everyday Americans? Donald Trump is financing Saudi Arabia's final solution to the Yemen problem to the tune of $110 billion and sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who fucking gives a shit.

Prove me wrong, dearest motherfuckers. Please, please, please, for the love of all that remains sacred on this hell-scorched earth, prove me wrong. This is one agoraphobic peacenik who can't fathom watching another American genocide play out from the safety of my frozen prison cell while the world looks the other way.



Peace, Love and Empathy- CH



Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.

* Go Home By Julien Baker
* Turtleneck By The National
* Linda Blair Was Born Innocent By The Mountain Goats
* Pillar Of Salt By The Thermals
* Holiday Song By The Pixies
* Watch The Corners By Dinosaur Jr.
* Edge Of Town By Middle Kids
* Burning Too By Fugazi
* Wicked Game By Chris Isaak
* Turn Out The Lights By Julien Baker