WORLD UPDATE
By Vincent Lyn
Yemen the country I was born, a brutal civil war has been raging there for the last seven years. Nearly 400,000 people have died, more than half of them from hunger and disease caused by all the fighting and destruction of its infrastructure. The war received widespread criticism and had a dramatic worsening effect on Yemen’s humanitarian situation, that reached the level of a humanitarian catastrophe. The question of whether or not the intervention is in compliance with Article 2(4) of the U.N Charter has been the matter of academic dispute. U.N Secretary General Antonio Guterres describes it as the single biggest humanitarian disaster on the planet.
Our ally, Saudi Arabia, has been conducting a scorched-earth war campaign in Yemen. Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of attacks by Saudis that qualify as war crimes. More than 17,000 civilians have died, and 20 million innocent people there are starving. That’s almost the entire population. The Saudi-led coalition has conducted more than 20,100 airstrikes on Yemen since the war began, an average of 12 attacks a day. The coalition has bombed hospitals, school buses, markets, mosques, farms, bridges, factories, and detention centers. That’s right, they’re bombing schools and hospitals. They’re doing it on purpose. America is funding it.
Even though President Joe Biden pledged to end American support for the Saudis in 2021, he actually approved more than a billion dollars in arms deals, calling them “defensive” weapons sales. Journalists have pointed out that these sales directly contradict his promises. Americans also continue to provide service and logistical support for the Saudi warplanes that are bombing innocent people, including women and children.
Human rights scholars say what the Saudis are doing amounts to genocide. Nonetheless, you don’t see Joe Biden tweeting about Yemen every day, and we haven’t heard him call for any war crimes tribunals. There’s a reason for that. We need their oil. We also need them to do our dirty work in the Middle East.
I didn’t vote for Joe Biden but then again I didn’t vote for Donald Trump either. Many thought that Joe Biden was the best choice and even I was hopeful that he would pull through and rise to the occasion but he’s shown himself to be weak and frail and like so many leaders who talk a good game it requires standing up for people and telling the truth, even when things don’t go your way. He’s not doing it. He leads with big promises. He talks about big action. Then his plan falls apart. He walks away. Joe Biden is being ‘mocked around the world’ … Along with dismal poll results and rising domestic political issues. Worst of all his presidency has made the U.S look weaker to President Putin.
Joe Biden has caved on the environment. Maybe you think we have another 20 years to save the planet. We don’t. Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of ending the expansion of big oil and transitioning us to clean energy. Now he’s backtracking on this promise, and opening public lands for oil and gas drilling. This is a gigantic mistake. For starters, these concessions won’t solve our immediate energy crisis like Biden claims. The oil we are drilling for now won’t hit markets until years in the future. Even before the war in Ukraine, Biden approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands. That’s 34 percent higher than Trump. The Biden administration also declined to defend Obama’s 2016 coal moratorium “on technical grounds.” Again, Biden isn’t standing up for the environment. He’s caving to pressure from Republicans and big oil. He’s leasing our future.
Right now, Biden is pouring more energy into the war on Ukraine than almost any of his other campaign promises. This, too, will be short lived. We’re already starting to see the cracks in his plan. Contrary to what he says about sanctions, Russia is finding ways around them. Countries are starting to diversify their holdings away from the euro and the dollar. European countries are even looking for ways to pay for Russian oil and gas in rubles now, “without running a foul” of sanctions. Biden’s sanctions are coming apart, and nobody in the U.S. wants to admit it yet, because it makes us look bad. Well, it’s too late for that.
As I discussed at the beginning, the rest of the world already sees what’s going on in Yemen. They see how Americans willingly back war crimes and genocide by an ally when it benefits them, and they see how we try to annihilate another country’s economy when we view them as an adversary. Biden’s sanctions reek of the worst hypocrisy.
The stock market is crashing hard right now, and a lot of it has to do with our sanctions finally blowing back on us. The world is getting off the dollar. Once our economy lies in ruins, Biden will be forced to abandon his hollow quest against fascism. He’ll move on to something else. Watch it happen.
WE CAN DO BETTER…
Vincent Lyn
CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children
International Human Rights Commission
Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization
Economic & Social Council at United Nations
Middle East Correspondent at Wall Street News Agency
Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts