As I read about the latest nightmare in Yemen, I am listening to Ambrose Musire’s Trapped in a dream. The wail of his trumpet seems to parallel the cry of grieving mothers, of fathers holding their drone-dismembered children. The discordant notes build to a kind of frenzied, angry crescendo before disintegrating like exploded ordinance.
“At least 10 Yemeni women and children have been killed in the first US military operation in the country authorised by President Donald Trump, medics and local media have said.”
Aljazeera, 30 January 2017
How many US citizens have been killed by Yemenis in America? None. And yet Trump’s regime demonizes refugees fleeing the very war, half way round the world, to which the US sends its killer drones. Trump’s collaboration with Saudi Arabia in the conflict creates another layer of criminality: the Saudi’s have an abysmal human rights record (and wasn’t 9/11 orchestrated by our Saudi friends?). If it were not so terribly tragic it would be laughable: a so-called christian nation in bed with devils.
But it’s okay, right – because we’re the good guys.
Imagine this conflict in reverse: Yemeni drones in the sky above Washington, killing American women and children. What would Trump’s reaction be? But it’s okay, right – because we’re the good guys.
“Trump called the operation a success”
Cluster Bombs
Amnesty International has revealed “the coalition’s use of UK, US and Brazilian-made cluster munitions in the conflict. Amnesty International and others gathered damning evidence of how these weapons were killing and maiming civilians, including children, in farming villages in northern Yemen following their use earlier this year.”
Andrew Smith, a spokesman for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, told The Guardian: “The use of UK cluster bombs by Saudi Arabia is characteristic of a brutal war and a brutal regime. If Saudi forces are prepared to use cluster bombs, then why is the UK continuing to arm and support the regime?
“Once a weapon has left these shores there’s little if any control over where and when it will be used and who it will be used against. The UK must act now to stop the arms sales and to end its complicity in the humanitarian catastrophe that has been unleashed on the Yemeni people.”*
References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_munition
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/saudi-arabia
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/03/drone-cia-secret-drone
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/americas_immoral_drone_war/
See also: war crimes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2015–present)
*https://www.google.co.za/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michael-fallon-confirms-british-made-cluster-bombs-have-been-used-by-saudis-in-yemen-conflict-a7485106.html%3Famp?client=ms-android-huawei
