Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/21/22 Annelle Sheline: Mad at the Saudis? End the War in Yemen

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Scott talks with Quincy Institute research fellow Annelle Sheline about the recent anti-Saudi sentiment in the Democratic Party and the effort to end the war in Yemen. After some tension between the Biden Administration and OPEC+, many Democrats have been directing anger toward the Saudi Regime. Scott and Sheline discuss how this came about and why the energy should be directed toward ending the war in Yemen.  Discussed on the show: “Five ways Biden can ‘re-evaluate’ the Saudi relationship now” (Responsible Statecraft) 1833stopwar.com  Annelle Sheline is a Research Fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East and North Africa. Follow her on Twitter @AnnelleSheline. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right to you guys on the line i've got annel she-line she is a research fellow at the quincy institute and is an expert on especially the arabian peninsula all those american-backed sock puppet monarchies and the war in Yemen. Welcome back to the show. Anel, how are you doing? Doing well. Thanks for having me back.

Very happy to have you here. So I was late to the Zoom call yesterday, but I showed up in time to hear you say that, yeah, yeah, yeah, these Democrats talking about, oh, let's just break off our relations with Saudi Arabia. I know, let's pull all of our troops out. Oh, yeah, sure, they all read enough already and changed their mind entirely. Instead, what they're doing is they're blabbing about a bunch of nonsense that's never going to happen. When we have a reasonable ask on the table, end the war in Yemen, and by all means, of course, I'm forgetting our troops out of Saudi, but it's just that they don't mean it. But they're stomping their feet because they're mad that the Saudis won't cut gas prices or something. But so I guess, you know, your latest article here is from, oh, I guess not too long ago, a week or 10 days ago, five ways Biden can reevaluate the Saudi relationship now.

So in other words, we have all this pressure. Oh, it's with Trita, Trita Parsi. We have all this pressure now against Saudi Arabia, all this resentment toward them on the part of the Democrats because they're helping the Russians or whatever it is. So how do we channel that into focusing them on the thing that we really need, which is to get these war powers resolutions passed? Exactly, right. So, I mean, as you were saying, I do think a lot of this outrage that we're hearing from Democratic members of Congress, you know, legislative vehicles about supposedly pulling all troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, another one about pausing all weapon sales to Saudi Arabia for a year.

I think a lot of this is just hot air. You know, these forms of legislation would have to get past the filibuster, which is very unlikely to happen. And they also don't have privileged status. And so I think Democrats are using this moment to champion. a lot of this anger Americans are feeling about just inflation and high gas prices, which is then added, is made worse by this announcement about the 2 million barrels per day cut that OPEC plus is implementing at Saudi Arabia's behest.

And they're channeling just a lot of general frustration with Saudi Arabia, which is understandable. Americans for a long time have questioned why does the U.S. maintain such a close relationship, with this dictatorship. But as you and I have both said, I don't think this amounts to much of anything. I think Democrats are just using this opportunity to try to win some political points without actually being serious about trying to pass these measures. When what we do have is the Yemen War Powers Resolution, which is ready to be brought to the floor.

It does have privileged status, meaning it doesn't have to kind of go through the process of committee review, et cetera, it could just go right to a vote. And it only needs a majority. It does not need to bypass the filibuster, given the nature of a war powers resolution. And not only would this be crucial to ending U.S. support for everything, all the horrible actions Saudi Arabia is taking in Yemen, this would also be crucial in reasserting congressional authority over war powers, which is something that has been horribly eroded, especially since 9-11 and the war on terror. But before then, well. Congress has been unwilling to reassert the fact that the Constitution gives Congress war-making authority and instead lets the president and the executive branch take the lead

on deciding where our troops are going to be sent. So, you know, I think if you don't care about Yemen, I mean, hopefully people do care about Yemen, but if you're someone who's less interested in that, but is interested in Congress reasserting itself and in reigning in the executive branch, call your member of Congress and tell them to support this Yemen War Powers Resolution. Call your senators, and it has to pass both houses. This is something that does have a lot of support, which, again, is why it's pretty frustrating that even members of Congress who claim to support it are now introducing these other bills. When, again, as you said, The only thing that really has a likely path to passing and actually trying to impose some accountability on Saudi Arabia at this time is the Yemen War Powers Resolution.

The others are really just hot air. Yeah, they're just jerking our chain. It's just like when, you know, cops murder people and people say, we want fair trials and accountability for cops who murder people. And they go, yeah, what we'll do is we'll just defund the police. And then we just won't even have security forces at all anymore. We'll replace them with nothing. and that's our best idea. And then that goes absolutely nowhere

and no police are defunded anywhere despite what you hear in the propaganda. It's the poverty caused by the lockdowns that are causing the crime, not any defunding which never took place. But all anybody ever wanted was for a cop who murdered somebody to be held accountable for it.

That was the reasonable ask. Same thing here. We're trying to end war. Yeah, you're right. We should never talk to the Saudis again. Oh, come on. You're not going to do that. Just end the war. And it just goes to show how Republicans and Democrats are. This is how Congress is. I know what we'll do. We'll throw in these animal crackers and they'll eat that because they're stupid. That's how they think of us. And that's how they behave, you know? Well, you know, I think this recent revelations that came out from the program on government oversight and the Washington Post that detailed the numbers of former military officials that are in the payroll of these foreign. governments, especially places like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, you know, these are everyone

from kind of, you know, lower ranking service members up to four-star generals who know that they can get lucrative contracts working for these foreign governments after they're out of active service and that the Pentagon will just do a rubber stamp approval to this. I mean, ostensibly, this would violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, whereby public officials and the military cannot work for or receive money or gifts from foreign governments. However, Congress outsource that approval process to the Pentagon. And the Pentagon, you know, just is like, yep, 95% of the time they have approved these requests.

Many of the times people don't even necessarily ask for permission. It's just sort of seen as this is what it's possible to do after you're done with your military service. Go earn huge amounts of money working for someone. like Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. So again, it's just the nature and the scope of that relationship. Again, just reinforces the fact that the U.S.-S.-Saudi relationship is unlikely to change in any way. And really, again, the only way we're likely to see any sort of a change would be through the Yemen War Powers Resolution.

Or at least, let's start with this. I'm all forced severing the relationship entirely, but we got to, come on, first thing's first here, this horrible war. And by the way, I read a piece, I'm sorry, I don't remember the footnote, but I'm sure anybody could find it, where there was at least one American general who was helping to lead the Giants Brigade, the UAE's militia on the ground in Yemen, aka Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the guys that bombed the coal and try to blow up a plane over Detroit when the UAE was ordered by the Trump government to do something about al-Qaeda down there in Makala. they hired them all. They didn't wipe them out.

They renamed them the Giants Brigade. They got an American general leading them in battle. Well, from behind, I'm sure, as is our way here, America's way here. But, yeah, this stuff is completely out of control. But so now, well, on the politics real quick, it's H.J. Res. 87, and it's S.J. Res. 56 in the House and in the Senate. They are active war powers resolutions right now that would make it not just unconstitutional, which it is, but illegal right now to continue to support Saudi and UAE in this war. And when you say they have a lot of support, they really do. I read that the last time around when they got it passed through the House, they only had 96, I think, co-sponsors then, and we got more than 110.

Tell me what's the latest number and how much momentum we really have in the House. And in fact, if you've heard, do you know how much affect the public campaign for this legislation is having on this? Absolutely. So at the latest I'd heard was, I believe, 118 members of the House and about a dozen senators. And there are, you know, there are also some members of Congress and senators who've said things like, well, you know, if so-and-so supports this legislation, then I'd be willing to get on. You know, I think part of what's tricky about this is, you know, for Congress to reassert this congressional war authority, it is something that would, you know, the Democrats have to say to Biden, hey, you said you were going to end U.S. complicity in this war and you haven't done so. And we are going to come out publicly and criticize you. Unfortunately, there's a lot less willingness to do that these days. Hey, I got a narrative for you to recommend to them if you've got a channel to them, because I know that that obviously is very difficult to do, is just say, look, man, we've got to face down Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. And so in order it Biden does.

And so we need to do this to support Biden. Biden wants to end the war, but he's got to do it over the Republican war party's dead body. And so we got to bolster his position by essentially. just making it illegal for the government to continue supporting the war in support of the president's position. And then that way, they're not stabbing the president in the back. They're standing in front of him as his supporters. Right, exactly. And I think there's also, you know, that's the kind of messaging to aim at a member of the Democratic Party. And then there's also messaging to aim at Republicans, which would be, you know, call Biden out on this. He said this was something that

he was going to do and he hasn't done it. And now, you know, we saw him go to Saudi Arabia and humble himself do the infamous fist bump, you know, begging for MBS to increase production. And instead, now he turns around and decreases production of oil. And at a time when Americans are already really suffering. So this is a way from a Republican standpoint to hold Biden accountable for this failure to end the war in Yemen, as he promised to do. And for his his just really ill-advised policy towards Saudi Arabia, that he'd come in saying he was going to hold them accountable. Then he had to go sort of eat humble pie and apologize, you know, go to MBS and agree to sort of restart the relationship. You know, a crucial factor there, I think, is his Middle East

advisor, Brett McGurk, who's been a big proponent of Saudi Arabia and the UAE throughout his time in the White House. And he's served in the past several administrations, both Democrat and Republican. And, you know, this is a guy who, like, much of the political, the foreign policy establishment believes that it's important for the U.S. to maintain these relationships with Saudi and the UAE, even when doing so actually goes against U.S. interests, things like, you know, why do we continue to maintain such a huge troop presence in this part of the world when it really has almost no benefit for the United States? yeah absolutely and so obviously that's definitely the way to approach it in dealing with republicans too

it's just simply this is not an america's national interest it's just not and i've been kicking the can down the road because i'm so busy i got way too many jobs but i want to try to meet with my representative who's john carter who is i think very much just a bush republican uh from my county here in texas but i want to go and try to meet with him and just tell him look never mind the war against al-Qaeda this is the one for them and it was obama's worst decision out of so many well i don't know as bad as supporting al-kata in syria anyway tripling the afghan war okay there are a lot of obama decisions overthrowing the government in ukraine that are um up for uh you know ties for worst but anyway this was one of the very very bad things that he did and

there's no reason for a guy like carter to want to support what's essentially an obama a Biden policy and then just, never mind so much Trump's role in continuing the whole thing for four years. But it's certainly nothing that any America first proud American patriotic conservative Republicans should have to stand behind. What do you mean we're back in the guys that tried to blow up the plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009? That doesn't sound right. Right. Right, exactly. And I think there's just sort of a misperception about what's happening in Yemen there's this notion that like well we have to support the Saudis against Iran but you know there was a recent really good piece by Arwa Makdad who herself is Yemeni pointing out that it's just inaccurate to sort of portray the war in Yemen as just purely sectarian that you know sectarianism was not an issue in Yemen before the war made it an issue which is so often the case I mean this is similar to what happened in Iraq you know just just often conflict tends to exacerbate but debate existing divisions that previously were not salient and now, and now suddenly they

start to matter a whole lot more. So I'm thinking about Yemen, although Iran does send support to the Houthis, that that relationship is generally very overblown. And again, it's just minuscule compared to the massive role and funding of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in bankrolling these various militias. And it's not working. I mean, I think, again, there may be people who fear what is going to be the outcome in Yemen if the Saudis and the UAE totally pull out.

Does this mean, you know, then they wouldn't be on the hook for funds to help rebuild Yemen? And I think that's just getting it completely backwards. I mean, this notion that somehow keeping the Saudis and Emirates involved on the battlefield field or continuing to fund these militias is somehow going to make it more likely that they're going to then pay reparations later when the conflict ends? No. I mean, in general, the entire, you know, the U.S., France, the U.K., the Gulf countries, all of these countries have profited from the deaths of Yemenis, and all of these countries should be on the hook. But that's a question to figure out once the bombs have stopped falling and once the blockade is lifted. And so right now, I think

the most important thing and the thing that Americans can actually do something about is to call your member of Congress, tell them to support a Yemen War Powers Act. This will end U.S. support for what the Saudis and UAE are doing in Yemen. And this would return control of the conflict to Yemenis. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen. All of But now you can get the e-book All the War Lies by me for free. Just sign up the email list

at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Hey y'all, the audiobook of my book enough already.

Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most

competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sights for the show and the the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org.

Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom, Real history, real economics, real education. So people can go to 833 Stopwar.com, 833 Stopwar.com, and then, of course, that's the phone number. But you go to that website, it's a simple little page, has some bullet points on the war, has some talking points for dealing with Republicans, dealing with Democrats, even suggested praise for congressmen and senators who are already co-sponsoring the legislation to tell them how important it is to you and you wish they'd be even louder about it, et cetera. And then that's the number you call. They direct you to both your senators and then to your congressman. Just type in your zip code and the robot takes care of it. You don't have to, nobody tries to convert you to their religion or any

conflict of interest on the way to do it. It's just a direct connection. and, in fact, the group that sponsors and owns that website, 833 Stopwar.com, it's demand progress, which is a nonpartisan progressive little group there. They don't even have a link back to their front page on there, right? Like, there is no one has a conflict of interest here whatsoever. This is simply just peace activists, grassroots peace activists, doing everything they can to get the word out, to help build consensus, to try to make this thing into a new cycle, issue that, you know, how much longer can they ignore this when the obvious news stories right

here? More and more congressmen and senators are co-sponsoring this Yemen resolution. Look at this photo essay, The New York Times, finally did a couple of years back on all the babies starving to death there. And maybe there's something that we could do about this right now. Maybe this is an issue for the news cycle and public discussion beyond just the activists. You know, that's, all that's happening there is regular folks like us trying to push this into an important enough issue to make it pass. And you know what? Like, a lot of these congressmen and centers really do deserve credit because there's no real incentive for them to do this other than they really want to, you know? There's no Yemen lobby in America that's going to make sure and protect them from now on or anything like that, no real political interest.

They can all easily be demonized to somehow serving the Ayatoll or whatever if the FDD wants to go after them, you know. But they're willing to do this essentially when no TV star is demanding it. And that's a pretty big deal. You know, to me, that's, you know, even some of the, I won't name names, but some people who are really bad on a lot of things are good on this. So what the hell? Now, can you please help us understand? the current situation there, because I heard you give a great briefing about how the situation stands. And I talked to my buddy, Nasser Arby, a reporter out of Sanaah, who I've been talking to

the whole war long. And he's really optimistic. He's like, yeah, look, the ceasefire expired, but there's still no fighting. And my info is about a week out of date here. But he's saying everybody wants the war to end now. And the Houthis demands are completely reasonable demands. It's not like they're all of a sudden demanding the moon and, you know, poison pills for the negotiations or anything like that, that all they're saying is lift the blockade and open things up more, return us closer to normalcy sooner than later, but even still the negotiations are ongoing this kind of thing. So I was wondering if you can keep us up to date there on where the negotiations are. Can we get an official ceasefire again? Do we need one? What's the

state of all of that? And for that matter, what's the state of the siege on the ground, and then opening up of the highways, I guess the Houthis are laying siege to some former government-controlled city somewhere or something, I don't know. So go ahead. Yeah, so I think one thing for people to keep in mind, you know, part of, in my analysis, part of where we even got to a truce did have to do with the fact that we saw representative Jayapal and DeFazio announce that, that they were going to introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution, and this is part of the pressure

that then contributed to the Saudis being- Is that right? Oh, yeah. This was, you know, introduced, or they published this article earlier in the year. There were efforts to perhaps introduce the Yemen War Powers Resolution in the spring. Didn't happen yet, in part because I think the Saudis realized that they would be in the very embarrassing situation of losing the ability to fly their own aircraft without U.S. U.S. military support. And so they agreed to take part in this truce. And, you know, I think unfortunately the truce eventually did fall apart because we weren't seeing it working for people.

I mean, it was working to the extent that there were minor violations. Aid was able to get in. The economy was starting to move forward. You did have flights coming in and out of Sena, the capital of Yemen. You did have fuel and other goods coming in through the U.S. the port of Hodeida, which is controlled by the Houthis. So the blockade was loosened, but it was not lifted. And as you said, this is one of the demands of the Houthis, that the blockade must be fully lifted. In terms of the siege of Taiz, the Houthis do continue to besieged this city.

It's been closed for years. The roads remain closed. There is dire humanitarian need there, and the Houthis really do need to allow access to that city. But it's just become another bargaining chip, which again is, I think is true in general of the conflict. So the same way the Houthis are laying siege to that is the Saudis and Emirates and the U.S. continue to lay siege to the to the whole country of Yemen and not allow in just the free flow of goods and of people to be able to leave if they want to. One thing I did see, unfortunately. So as of yesterday, if you went to the

the Facebook page of Yemen Airways, Yemeniyah. You could see they still had one flight going from Sana to Amman, Jordan. And today that flight is no longer operating. I don't know if it might become operational again. I certainly hope so. But it does seem that at least right now, flights in and out of Sana have stopped, which is unfortunate. Because initially, you know, after the truce ended, Hans Grunberg, the UN Special Representative, was, was pretty He was saying, look, flights are continuing. We're still seeing fuel ships. The World Food Program just brought in a huge shipment of grain through Hodeda. And so this is part of why there was still some optimism that even though the truce had expired, it seemed like both

sides were still sort of willing to abide by some of the terms of the truce. And it does seem unfortunately that now some of that may be breaking down. And again, this is part of why it is so crucial that the U.S. maintain this pressure on Saudi Arabia in particular, also in the UAE, and pass this war powers resolution because the Saudis cannot fight this war without U.S. support. And Mohammed bin Salman has staked his reputation on winning this war. Clearly, it's not going super well, but, you know, he's not going to be willing to pull out unless he's really forced to do so by the United States.

You know, other things in terms of the demands from the Houthis, there's some of the disputes have to do with salaries, you know, salary, this is part of why starvation is so rampant in Yemen. It's not necessarily that there is no food at all. It's just that what food is available is so expensive and almost no public sector salaries have been paid in years. And so the Houthis were trying to get the government of Yemen to pay for salaries. And this is an ongoing point of dispute of just who exactly is on. the hook to pay these, you know, what at this point does amount to, to a lot of money to try to get people this money that they're owed. And again, I think the point here is that, you know, other countries that have profited from this war should be on the hook to help pay for all of the destruction that they have profited from. And things like pay public sector salaries, which... I'm sorry, we're so short on time. I really got to go, but can you answer this? Do you think that, I mean, well, I'll preface it this way that, you know, in the Arab Spring, when Sala was finally gone before Hillary Clinton intervened, it looked like they were going to have a power sharing deal with the Houthis, the Southern Transitional Council, and al-Isla, and whoever are all different factions. And then also when the Houthis and Sala allied together took over the capital city there at the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015, they were working on a peace deal then with the different factions, too.

In other words, they recognized that they couldn't just rule Aden with an iron fist or something like that. They needed to make a deal with these different factions. Same for Marib, which is, I guess, under the influence of Al-Isla, that kind of thing. And then America and Saudi started bombing them and scotched all that. So I don't want to be too optimistic or utopian or whatever about it. But it sounds like the Houthis at least then recognized that they couldn't just rule the place. they would have to share power with everybody. So I wonder then, my question is,

if America and Saudi and UAE, and for that matter, Iran and everybody else backed out of there, do you think that they could work something out, or we just have years of civil war now with al-Qaeda, the socialists, and the Houthis, and al-Isla and whoever's still fighting from now on or what? I mean, unfortunately, you know, as we know from civil wars, the longer wars go on,

the longer they're likely to go on. You know, kind of as I was saying about sectarianism, you know, some of these divisions that didn't use to be so salient are now suddenly becoming increasingly important. And so I do just worry that the longer the war drags on, the more society is going to fracture. And so while initially, as you said, the Houthis might have been willing or indicated their willingness to engage in a power sharing agreement, now, just the degree of sort of partisanship and just the breakdown between different sort of

essentially warlords that control various parts of Yemen, it is going to be very difficult to achieve an outcome in Yemen that just allows people to live in peace and live their lives. But, you know, we need to trust Yemenis here. Like Yemen has always been a, there have always been sort of different identities and and aspects of life in Yemen, it's a very diverse place, and has managed to, Yemenis have managed themselves to manage their own affairs successfully in the past. And I think we need, the most important thing now is to return control of Yemen to the Yemenis so they can work out what power sharing is going to look like in their country and get away from all this foreign intervention, whether it's

from Iran or the Saudis or the US. Yeah. All right, listen, I'm sorry we got to go, but thank you so much for your time on the show. I really appreciate it. It's one of the most important issues in the whole world, of course, and you're great on it. So thank you very much. Thanks so much for all of your work on it, Scott. It's so important. All right, you guys, that is Annel She-Line. She is Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute. And her last one is called Five Ways Biden can re-evaluate the Saudi relationship now. The Scott Horton Show, an anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. radio.com, anti-war.com,

scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.