U.S. Attacks Yemen, Spreading Its Wars in the Middle East

Dec 21, 2009

On December 17, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to launch cruise missile attacks against two different parts of Yemen, where U.S. authorities claim there are bases set up by al Qaeda terrorists, who had supposedly fled to Yemen from Saudi Arabia, and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. bombing raids were accompanied by coordinated attacks by the Yemen military. Afterwards, there were news reports that the Obama administration openly “congratulated” the President of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salih, for his tireless efforts against al Qaeda.

Yemen President Salih is another of those corrupt and brutal dictators the U.S. uses against populations around the world. He has held on to power for almost two decades by pitting the different ethnic and tribal groups against each other. But this hasn’t stopped the authority of his government from “crumbling,” as The New York Times recently wrote. Currently, there are at least three separate armed insurgencies in Yemen, and big parts of the country are outside the government’s control.

Under the guise of fighting against “terrorism” in Yemen, which is located on the far corner of the Arabian peninsula, thousands of miles from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is propping up another brutal and corrupt regime in an ever widening U.S. war in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The U.S. began this war more than eight years ago when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan. That war then served as the prelude to the bloody U.S. debacle in Iraq. Now, the U.S. is spreading those wars to Pakistan.

And that’s not the end of it!

In his December 1 speech at West Point announcing a big escalation in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Obama had already held out the possibility of also attacking Yemen ... and other countries. “Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold–whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere–they must be confronted,” said Obama.

In other words, the U.S. is ready to spread its wars, like wildfires, from one end to the other of the Middle East, Central Asia, and even into Africa!

Over the last eight years, the constant refrain from the U.S. authorities has been that the U.S. will not get bogged down in another quagmire, like it did in Viet Nam. In his December 1 speech, Obama even had the nerve to make the false assurance that the U.S. military intervention would be short and limited.

Of course, the length of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan are already beginning to approach the length of the U.S. war in Viet Nam, which lasted from about 1962 to 1973. And the U.S. has already inflicted casualties, death and destruction on the people of these countries at least as much as it did during the wars in Viet Nam and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Moreover, the current U.S. wars are potentially more dangerous and explosive than Viet Nam ever was. For the U.S. is now waging wars in regions that are more vital strategically, especially since they contain the richest resources of oil and gas in the world, and that are also much more riven by competition and rivalry for the U.S. superpower, as well as all the other competing lesser powers.

The working class in this country cannot let itself be lulled by the false promises and assurances from the Obama administration, any more than the Bush administration before it.

U.S.–out of Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and everywhere else!