We Never Talk About This, But Holy Hell…

Posted on January 17, 2012 at 11:26 am by Bob Cesca

In Yemen:

Al-Qaida militants seized full control of a town south of the Yemeni capital on Monday, overrunning army positions, storming the local prison and freeing at least 150 inmates, security officials said.

Um. What now?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/rycarson Ryan Carson

    Jeez, you can’t trust anyone to run your proxy-counterinsurgency.

  • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

    Oh crap….hopefully the country’s appetite for war is blunted by our recent “jaunts” and will be able to stop the neocons from going in there.

  • i_a_c

    Good question–I don’t know either. Yemen lacks a government strong enough to prevent insurgents from doing stuff like this, thus the drone strike that killed al-Awlaki and others. Seems to me that al Qaeda sees Yemen as a safe haven of sorts, like Afghanistan was. Yemen is an exceedingly poor country (like Afghanistan) with a weak government (like Afghanistan). It’s hard to see the next step for the US, but whatever it is, it’s not going to be pretty. More drone strikes? Possibly. Hope it doesn’t escalate beyond that.

    • Bob McIntosh

      I also hope it doesn’t escalate beyond that; but, IF AQAP poses a threat to us, we should do everything in our power to eliminate that threat. I don’t know if that would be more aid to Yemen, more drone strikes, covert military or intelligence action, or perhaps other methods; but we must defeat or disrupt any threat to the U.S.

      • gescove

        Maybe this represents an escalation of threat, maybe not. Despite millions in US aid, military and otherwise, over the years, Yemen is hardly warm to our interests.

        The perpetual “war on terror” is Orwell’s dystopia made manifest. We are fools to believe that, somehow, war is peace. The acceptance of that belief, bolstered by a domestic military-industrial complex that devours $700 billion annually, insures the growth of a police state at home and continued opposition abroad.

        Dr. King said “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

  • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

    They’re getting desperate.

  • http://www.osborneink.com OsborneInk

    “Do something! But not too much! In fact, don’t do anything at all! but do something, right now!” We have been here before. Yemen was always like this, though. Well into the 1990s, Yemenis used Austrian gold coins instead of the official currencies, went about armed to the teeth, and otherwise lived in a kind of libertarian-paradise anarchy. A strong central government has never been popular in Yemen. This one has become extremely unpopular, but I am at least encouraged by the fact so many Yemenis wave flags at protests. A sense of national identity is actually a GOOD development there. When I was learning Arabic there were actually two Yemens, and they had already fought more than one war.

    So here’s my prediction: Yemen’s regime sends a goddamn army, we send the drones, and al-Qaeda eats fire.

    • mrbrink

      There’s still two Yemens on the inside, really, with the southern movement fighting right now for the ouster of Ali Saleh, who with less than an elementary school education over the course of his 30 year reign has seen guns outnumber people by 3-1, water and sanitation and education pretty much turned over to the IMF and World Bank, while supporting everyone from Saddam Hussein to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. But you’re absolutely right about the very real possibility of a unified Yemen being a good development.

      But you have to wonder why Ali Saleh, leader of one of the poorest countries in the Arab world gets to shake hands with people like Bush, Cheney, and Putin. I think for them, “fighting terrorism” was a bit of a red herring for opening up that market to multinational corporations looking at gaining a foothold over remaining natural resources and using Yemen’s ports for a strategic foothold in the region. China’s interested in expanding its influence over the global energy routes and supply and Iran’s interested primarily because Saleh is Shia, which makes Yemen a sort of brothel for geopolitical Johns looking for an oil skank to bang, or a power fetish to realize. Al Qaeda? Sure! C’mon in!

      But with all the human rights violations inflicted by Saleh, the violence against those seeking a better life, better opportunities, better protections from government security forces, fairer distribution of oil receipts, freedom of the press, all that, I hate to say this for fear of exposing what little I think I know, I think Ali Saleh, aided by the international community of bankers, oil corporations, and war profiteers that the fighting in Yemen, and elsewhere, has a lot to do with suppressing Leftist uprisings to appease the Corporatists.

      I also think supplying Saleh’s government with military weapons is akin to disclosing to the world that some things are more important than a country governed by consent of its people.

      • http://www.osborneink.com OsborneInk

        They had lots of reasons to want good relations with Saleh. Yemen has been a strategic crossroads since ancient times. There was profit in getting to know Saleh. Now the country is racked by jihad and watch, he’ll try to tie the political unrest to al-Qaeda’s “win” here.

        As for that win: drones and Yemenis, and that’s all I have to say about it.

  • mrbrink

    And now, a word on Yemen.

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!