Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/8/22 Hassan El-Tayyab and Marcy Winograd on Yemen and Ukraine

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

This week on Antiwar Radio, Scott talks with Hassan El-Tayyab about the vote next week to end support for the Saudi war in Yemen. The two give a brief background on the war to explain how we got here before explaining next week’s vote. Next Scott talks with Marcy Winograd of CODEPINK. She recently published a letter to the Left, urging leftists to commit to their principles and call for negotiations to bring about peace in Ukraine.   Discussed on the show: 1833stopwar.com  “Letter to the Left on Ukraine” (CODEPINK) Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Wales Summit in 2014 Peace in Ukraine Coalition Hassan El-Tayyab is a musician and peace activist, who works as the lead lobbyist on Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Marcy Winograd is the Coordinator of CODEPINK Congress and a steering committee member of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition. The coalition calls for a ceasefire, peace negotiations and investments in climate, housing, healthcare and jobs, not endless war in Ukraine. To join the coalition, visit peaceinukraine.org This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: 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

For Pacifica Radio, December the 8th, 2022. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton, at my new time here, 2.30 on Thursday afternoons. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com,

an editor of the new book, Hotter than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at scotthornton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show.

And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. Okay, our first guest today is the great Hassan Al-Tayeb from the Friends Committee on national legislation. That's fcnl.org, the great Quaker lobby in the national interest there in Washington, D.C. Welcome back to the show. Hassan. How are you doing? Thanks, Scott. Doing well. All right. Really appreciate you joining us today. And man, do you have some big news to tell us about the war powers resolutions on Yemen? Go ahead. Okay. Well, yeah, thanks again for having me. So the big news here

is that Senator Bernie Sanders is moving towards a vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution, hopefully next week. I've heard Tuesday at the earliest, and this bill is aimed at blocking U.S. military participation in the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen that has pushed millions and millions of Yemenis to the edge of famine, and I could not be more thrilled that we have a chance to finally, you know, hopefully pass this bill and U.S. involvement in this point. brutal conflict and get Yemen back on the long road to peace. All right.

So first things first real quick, and we can get back to this. But there was a drone war as people, I think most famously, Barack Obama's drone war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from 2009 through 15. But then in 2015, he switched sides in the war. And this fight continues, although as you've been reporting, we've had a ceasefire since last April, at least sort of. And so this absolute catastrophe of a war, it is kind of winding down, I guess, on its own accord. The different sides are trying to sue for peace and trying to find a way out of the thing. It's just we need Anthony Blinken, Joe Biden and the American World Empire to

play their correct role in the peace negotiations and the tying up of this thing, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I look at it. We've got two wars going. You've got the war against AQAP or the Arabian Al-Qaeda, Arabian Peninsula, and that's a drone war. It's been going on for a long time, and that's obviously devastating. We want to end that, too. But there's this other war, you know, Yemen's political instability that led to the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen.

I mean, that started, you know, Yemen's been going through turmoil for decades, but, you know, this most recent issue started in 2015, the Saudi-led coalition formed with the goal of restoring Hadi to power. Saudi joined forces with the United Arab Emirates and formed a coalition, and that was backed by the United States, the UK, France, Canada, and they had the goal of ousting the Houthis from Sana'an and reinstalling Hadi. And so much has happened in between then and now, But the Saudi-led coalition has conducted airstrikes, punishing civilians, a naval blockade that has caused a massive humanitarian crisis. The Houthis aren't Boy Scouts either. They've committed, you know, horrible atrocities.

But as U.S. citizens, as U.S. taxpayers, I think our first responsibility is to make sure that we end our military complicity. And yes, there is a brief, a temporary, you know, pause in violence. There was a truce agreed to in April of this year where the Saudis said we're not going to do airstrikes. The Houthis said that they're not going to do cross-border attacks into Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. And the Saudis also agreed to ease some of the restrictions on the ports of entry, which has lessened the humanitarian crisis, but there's still a blockade in place. And you don't have the free flow of humanitarian and commercial goods into the country, into the country, as it should. This is very fragile. The truth actually broke down in October of this year, and violence is starting to escalate. So that's what we're trying to do, is before the 117th Congress

ends, is that we just completely take off the table any more military support for Saudi airstrikes. And just so the audience knows, since Biden came into office, he's approved over a billion dollars of weapons sales to the Saudi-led coalition. And while he's made some pivot from where Trump was during his administration, we still provide critical things like logistical support, spare parts, maintenance for Saudi warplains. And let's be clear, the Saudi-led coalition and these Saudi warplains really couldn't fly without the daily transfers and spare parts and equipment repair that has. happens, you know, at the behest of the U.S. government. So we're trying to take that off the

table. You know, Senator Sanders says he, you know, he has the votes to get this done. You know, again, early next week, you know, 100 national organizations already, you know, already said that they wanted to see this pass in the lame duck. So we've got that going for us. The bill in the House and Senate now enjoys the support of 130 co-sponsors. Now, this is, you know, I like to joke around like what is aOC uh rep omar the coke institute and ran paul all have in common uh well they all want to end u.s support for the Saudi led war in Yemen so let's get it done absolutely all right I'm Scott Horton it's anti-war radio talking with the great Hassan al-Tayeb from the friends committee on national legislation that's the great quaker lobby for peace in dc and so yes premise one

this war is absolutely terrible premise two we've got a sort of kind of ceasefire now it ain't perfect but it's definitely better than the worst and then three we you and me the american people have a chance to force an end to a war we have real no fooling active war powers resolutions in both houses of congress right now here's what you do you go to 833 stop war dot com 833 stop war dot com. And Hassan and I have helped a little bit too in writing up some bullet points at the top about the war and some talking points for you to use when you speak to your senators and your congressman. And tell them more about the bill, Hassan. Yeah, thank you so much. I think that's

absolutely right. The 1833 stop war. You can just even dial that on your phone. You don't even need to go to the website if you don't want to. So we've got that all set up. So lawmakers in D.C., they need to pass this bipartisan bill to end U.S. military involvement in the Saudi-led war coalition in the lame duck session. And by removing the possibility of more U.S. support for these airstrikes, I think Congress can play a constructive role to keep pressure on the Saudis to negotiate an extension of the truce. It's very simple. The bill just talks about Saudi operations in Yemen. We're not saying we can't, you know, Saudi Arabia can't defend itself. We're not implicating any other. conflict in the world, you know, Ukraine or anything else. We're just talking about Saudi bombing Yemen.

That's all we're talking about. We're trying to take that off the table and we're talking about the U.S. military footprint. This is, you know, the spare parts, the maintenance, the logistical activities. And, you know, I think this is really huge. Now, there have been a whole bunch of, you know, outrage at Saudi Arabia for a whole bunch of different reasons, whether it be their war in Yemen. whether it be the murdering of Jamal Khashoggi, whether it be their OPEC-plus decision to slash oil production and side with Putin in the war on Ukraine. But this bill has the best chance of passing for a lot of reasons. First, it only needs a simple majority in the House and Senate to pass, and other legislation needs a 60-vote majority in the Senate to defeat a filibuster. So that's key. A lot of people can, you know, and I applaud all of these different efforts. I think messaging bills are great. But this has the ability to pass. Also, thanks to expedited procedures in the War Powers Act of 1973, it can be brought to the floor without delay. And if passed, it would go straight to the president's desk. So again, we've got to pass it in the Senate first. I hope everyone, you know, floods the congressional switchboard.

using the 1833 stop war number. That's fantastic. But we also have to get it through the House. The session, the 118th Congress closes for business on December 23rd. So we don't have a lot of time, but we do have enough time to get this done. But we need the political support. We need activists around the country. Again, this is really a safe bet. I would argue it's the, you know, the smallest action you can do with the biggest bang for your book. This could potentially, you know, help bring Yemen back on the road to peace. And 30 million people are kind of depending on us to, you know, end our complicity in the war and hopefully, you know, stop more Saudi bombings of Yemen and prevent that from happening again. And look, guys, this campaign has been going on for months and months

when Hassan says there's 130 co-sponsors in the house, that's because of you. That's because of the people of this country calling and complaining. There is no Yemen lobby. They're not friends with the Israelis. They have no juice on Capitol Hill whatsoever. The only reason this is happening at all is because of people like Hassan al-Tayeb and because of people like you who listen to him and pick up the cudgel and do your part. And here we are in the daytime on the radio in Los Angeles.

There's got to be some famous and important people listening, people with a couple of million Twitter and Facebook followers, Instagram followers, who could help get that phone ringing at 833 stopwar.com, which the phone number, 833 Stop War, just put you right through to Congress. The website is just some good talking points for you. So what would you say to Mark Ruffalo and what would you say to the girl from who's the boss? What would you say to some of those other more important liberal and leftist activists in Hollywood right now, Hassan? Well, one, I would say thank you to Mark Ruffalo, you know, one for being a great actor and, you know, being one of my favorite characters in Marvel as the Hulk. But I would also thank him for his efforts on Yemen in the past.

He has been one of the, you know, leading voices in Hollywood, calling for an end to U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led war and block. So I would say that. And then I would say, now we need you more than ever. This is our chance. You know, the politics right now are right for us. People are frustrated with Saudi. We have this narrow window in the 117th Congress to get it done. We've got live bills that are coming to the floor any day now.

And now is the time to get your voice heard, not just Mark Ruffalo, but everybody, really. You know, get your friends, get your neighbors involved, post on social media, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you need. Share the 1833 stopwar.com website. And, you know, together, I think we can get this done. And briefly, I'd like to just shine a bit of a light if you would, Scott. Allow me the moment to talk about the humanitarian situation in Yemen. There's a reason why people are fired up about this. It's because this is one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

We have almost half a million people that have died, almost half a million civilians that have died as a result of this war. And we've got millions of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition and they're going to have lifelong cognitive impairment. And they need emergency medical support. We've got blockade on the ports of entry, not allowing humanitarian assistance. medical equipment, commercial goods, hospitals can't function. The Saudi-led coalition in this war has bombed hospitals. They've bombed funerals. They've bombed agricultural infrastructure.

They've bombed the ports. They've bombed bridges. They've done everything they can to cripple this country, but they cannot do it without ongoing U.S. military participation. We right now sustain 75% of the Saudi air fleet. the UK does the other, you know, the other 25%. We are definitely complicit, you know, in horrible atrocities. And now we have a chance to actually cut that off.

So we all got to pitch in here. We've got a couple, we've got a week or so. And I think we can get it done, but we need support. Yeah. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Hassan al-Tayeb from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL.org. And I know that it's awkward to tell people,

listen, I need you to care a lot about Yemen. When people don't even know the first thing about it, there's no cable TV news hosts that's made this their issue. People really are coming into it cold, eight years into the war, and people don't really know anything about it. And then you and I are coming to them with this big ask, which is we need you to care about this thing the most. But here's why I think that's reasonable,

because one, what you just said about the humanitarian crisis, this really is the worst war in the world. It's as bad as Iraq War II or the dirty war in Syria. It's just sick. It's an absolute atrocity. And then second two, we just need you for a week, everybody, for a week. You can go right back to whatever it is that's your issue, whatever it is going on in your life. We just need you for a week before this Congress is gone.

We have a real opportunity to get this war power's resolution passed through both houses right now. but we need everybody to get involved. It's 833 stopwar.com for your bullet points on the war and your talking points for your representatives and senators. And of course, then that's the number, 833 stopwar.com. And they'll connect you right to Capitol Hill. And we got to go, I'm out of time. But thank you so much for your time again and all your great effort on this issue, Hassan.

Thank you so much, Scott. And, yeah, we'll talk again. All right, you guys. that is the great Hassan al-Tayeb at the Friends Committee on national legislation. That's fcnl.org. Help him end the war on Yemen. 833 stop war.com. 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 sites for the show and 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 Woodses' Liberty Classroom, real history, real economics, real education. All right, you guys, our next guest is Marcy Winnegrad. She is co-founder of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party and a blogger at L.A. Progressive. welcome the show marcy how are you doing well i'm doing great thank you so much for having me scott and for uh bringing antivore dot com to our consciousness what a terrific website so much information

important information yeah boy it's a bummer of a front page today in quite a few ways but uh thank you for that and and happy to have you here and you know this letter to the left on ukraine it could also be called maybe a letter from the left to the democrats to the liberals and the more centrist moderate types. And it seems like that is one of the most important things in politics right now is the leftists who are more principled than partisan, who have stayed anti-imperialist, have got to really focus on pressuring the liberal Democrats because, boy, will they flip-flop around and turn into Warhawks at just a moment's notice sometimes, huh? Well, I think that before we can convince Democrats, in Congress to stop funding the escalation of the war in Ukraine, we do have to reach our own

people. Those who are in organizations, left organizations, organizations that we would expect to be explicitly anti-war are at times divided over this war in Ukraine. And so my intention was to speak to those voices within the left who are couching this as a fight for self-determination in Ukraine, a fight for sovereignty, and for that reason, the United States, the left and the United States should back NATO, which we know has been a criminal enterprise for a long time with all sorts of military interventions, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Libya, that has left, you know, a trail of blood. So my response is, yes, absolutely. We need to get not only to Democrats in Congress, but every member of Congress, but yeah, we also need to get to people that we would

normally expect to be with us. The reason why I wrote this was because I wanted to refute, Scott, some of the charges or some of the points raised by those on the left about why we should fund what, $20 billion, $30 billion worth of weapons, military aid training. And so by the time that this year is out, we are expected to spend overall the entire package, $100 billion on Ukraine, right? While people in the United States are food insecure, 10%. A hundred million. are facing medical debt. We see the numbers that are houseless living on our streets. So all of this, I think, begs for a strong rebuttal from the left to those positions of

those who say, look, it's not about NATO expansion because NATO expansion, for all intents and purposes, ended in 2004, for the most part, not totally, but for the most part. That was, you know, with the additions of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, into NATO. And so I looked at that and I thought, hmm, I'm going to look a little bit deeper. And in my research, I found that yes, well, most, you know, we're added in 2004. The bottom line is that NATO has all sorts of categories for countries that they want under their umbrella. and the ones that they considered the favored wannabes are called enhanced opportunity partners. Then Ukraine is one of them and was made one of them in 2020.

What this means is that Ukraine's military, their whole operation is integrated into NATO. And that means that they are going to be part of any kind of rapid response team, you know, that they're being trained already by NATO. So these gradations of whether you're in NATO or you're not officially, in NATO tend to blur. And you can understand why a country like Russia, and I'm not in any way, condoning the invasion of Ukraine. But you can understand why there would be some concern about an armed camp on their border that is backed by 30 countries in NATO, that five of which have nuclear weapons installed in these countries. So this is one of the reasons why I started to look a little deeper. I wanted to address this issue of NATO and Ukraine's relationship with NATO. And so I looked at

these two documents, Scott, that have gotten very little attention. On September 1st, 2021, a joint statement between the United States and Ukraine was signed. It's called a joint statement on the U.S. Ukraine's strategic partnership. And then on November 1st, a similar statement, really just a formalization of the first, the U.S. Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, that's a mouthful. This was signed November 10th, 2021. And this was, these documents were signed between, you know, Biden and Blinken and their counterparts in Ukraine. And what did these say? Basically, these say, Ukraine has every right to join NATO. We support Ukraine joining NATO, which of course is a red line, right, for Russia. They say beyond that, they say, we respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which sounds

reasonable, right. But what they're saying, and they say it more explicitly later on in the document, is that they want to put the full force of our government behind territorial integrity. That means the retaking of Crimea, right? Crimea was part of Russia for nearly 200 years. It's the site of Russia's naval fleet. They're not going to give it up. You know, it was handed over to Ukraine's administrative control in 1954 by Krischoff. And, you know, I've done the research.

Nobody really knows why he did that, except perhaps he wanted. to make amends for Stalin's torturous reign. He, Khrushchev himself, had been married to a Ukrainian. He had worked in the mines in Ukraine. So there was never a vote of the people of Crimea as to whether or not they wanted to be returned to Ukraine. So when people talk about the right to self-determination, we can't really overlook that. The bottom line is the United States was committing itself and encouraging Ukraine to

confront Russia through all sorts of means. military. We're going to give lots of weapons, sanctions to restore the, quote, territorial integrity. All right. It's anti-war radio, and I'm Scott Horton talking with Marcy Winograd about this important piece, Letter to the Left on Ukraine. And so we're talking about really the provocation here, and people seriously get this straight, and it doesn't go without saying, we have to say this. This is all descriptive, not normative. In fact, as you're. describing here, and as you described so well in this piece, Marcy, they were making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, and they were refusing to negotiate on any reasonable lines with Russia

on the issue. If you go back one year, December of 2021, Putin had his demands, no more NATO expansion, especially in Ukraine, and move your military back to behind the 1997 lines like Bill Clinton promised then and these kinds of things. and they refused to negotiate on those terms whatsoever. And they knew that it was going to provoke a war. And they did that anyway. And they made it clear that they're not trying to negotiate an end of the war either. They want to weaken Russia.

That's the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense himself and all the anonymous officials to the New York Times. The policy is to prolong the war. So again, none of this is to absolve the Russian side of the war. But we have to be honest about the role of the American. American world empire. Yes, and I think, you know, when we have conversations, Scott, with people who support sending more weapons to Ukraine, and we're looking at Congress approving another package for Ukraine,

$37 billion, $22 billion of which will be for military training, ammunition, drones, and so forth, what we have to ask people is, where is this going? You know, what is the objective? The objective is to weaken Russia, to what end, for how long, at what cost? the cost of war. And we have to also ask people, do you think that Ukraine can beat Russia militarily without devastating consequences? I mean, we're already seeing this. People were championing the fact that Ukraine drove the Russian troops out of Kersen. Well, what did we read next? That Russia retaliated with missile strikes on Kersen's electrical grid on their power. So people

are freezing in sub-zero winter temperatures in Kersen, in a sense. city that's uninhabitable. How is this winning? There is no winning militarily in Ukraine. We, on the left, all of us, libertarians, Republicans, anyone really who cares about the future of humanity, because that's what we're talking about when you have a proxy war between two of the most powerful nuclear nations on Earth, the U.S. and Russia, we have to ask ourselves, where is this going to end, and how does it end? It cannot end militarily without, you know, risking all of us. Scott, you know, people who push back on that will say, well, we can't let a country with

nuclear weapons threaten us. We can't let them extort us. Well, wait a minute. You know, it's not like the United States has not done the exact same thing. I mean, we have a long history, which I have documented of threatening more explicitly to use nuclear weapons. Well, and who provoked who is very important here, too, because we're not talking about Russia just blackmailing the world and saying that.

They want to take over whatever territories they want because they have nukes, and so no one can stop them. We're talking about a war that the U.S. played a great part in provoking in the first place. And so it's different than just blackmail. There's an aspect of defense on their side that the American people at least have to get our head around and understand. Exactly. And also, I mean, in terms of this threat of use of nuclear weapons, you know, during this period, the Biden administration released, the nuclear posture review, and when Biden campaigned, he promised that he would support the no first use of nuclear weapons. That is not in the nuclear posture review. In fact,

this document released by the Biden administration says that the United States reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if the interests of our allies are threatened. Yeah. And they don't even mean treaty allies. They mean whoever they feel like. Yeah. It's funny. They call it the nuclear umbrella. Like you're supposed to picture this magic umbrella. made of nuclear fire that keeps incoming nukes out. But that's not how it works. It's just a war guarantee. That's all it is. And it means that a country like Latvia could get us into a nuclear war. And, you know, we might have noticed there's a few mouses roaring over there in Eastern Europe right now. I think the foreign minister of Latvia was saying the other day, we shouldn't be

squeamish and hesitant about attacking sites inside Russia. Oh, really? Who's going to win that war? Latvia is going to win that war for us? Or we're supposed to win it for them? and at what cost? And now we see missile strikes into Russia and officials inside NATO whispering about GPS technology that the U.S. NATO provided that helped with those strikes. We don't know what happened,

but we know this is a very risky game. So, Scott, I just want to invite your listeners to join our peace in Ukraine Coalition. So this is a coalition, Code Pink, launched following the February invasion, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We include several organizations, well, a whole long list, actually. But the principal organizations, I'd say, are Veterans for Peace, DSA International, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Massachusetts, Peace Action, World Beyond War, Roots Action.

Those are some of the main anti-war organizations involved in the coalition. And how do we get involved there? You go to peacein-Ukraine.org. That's it. Peace in Ukraine.org. Scroll down, click on the button and fill out the forum. and join us for our bimonthly phone calls in which we strategize and plan actions.

So we're going to be supporting Answers demonstration in New York City on January 14th in Times Square against further weaponizing this war. Oh, great. There's an anti-war protest in D.C. on the 14th as well. Yeah, I think they're going to have a few, and we want to support those.

We've had our own weeks of action, and we'll have more the weeks of January 13th through the 27th. We want to get people in front of Congress members' offices saying, stop the war funding. Because at the end of the road, that's what we're talking about, right? All right, I'm sorry, we're so out of time here, Marcy, but I appreciate your efforts here and this great article. It's Marcy Winnegrad, letter to the left on Ukraine at marcy winograd. com.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Scott. All right, John, that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. and find the full interview archive. That's 5,800 interviews, going back to 2003 for you at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.

And I'm here every Thursday at 2.30 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.