Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/21/22 Hassan El-Tayyab: Now Is the Time to End the War in Yemen

Episode Date: May 22, 2022

Hassan El-Tayyab of the Friends Committee on National Legislation joins Scott on Antiwar Radio to discuss the effort to end the war in Yemen. Both sides have agreed to a ceasefire which has brought the level of violence down and the access to food and commerce up. But the ceasefire is scheduled to end on June 2nd. Scott and El-Tayyab hope that when that day comes, the two sides will agree to continue the peace. However, the full withdrawal of U.S. support would go much further to bring this brutal conflict to an end. El-Tayyab details the effort of both Left and Right activists to pressure congress to end the war and explains how you can help. Discussed on the show: fcnl.org  1-833-STOPWAR every75seconds.org  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. 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; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. 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, May 22nd, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome to the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com. author of the book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism.

You can find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right. Now, I get it. Sunday morning. It's early.

Probably a little hungover. Maybe you're some rich Hollywood millionaire and you're over COVID in Ukraine and you're not quite into monkeypox yet and you need a cause for the week. We got one for you here today.

Joining me on the phone is Hassan L. Tayyab from the Friends Committee on National Legislation in D.C., and he is working hard, as he has been for years, on achieving an end to America's war in Yemen. And we have a real chance right now with your help. So welcome back to the show, Hassan. How are you doing, sir? Scott, thank you so much. doing well. I just got back from a trip to Palestine and Israel and ready to end this Yemen war. All right. Great. Well, that's a whole other interview. Well, maybe we can talk about that a little bit

toward the end here. But first things first is, I don't know how this works, but for some reason, Ramadan is for two months this year and they have a Ramadan ceasefire in the war between America, Saudi, UAE, and al-Qaeda on one side and the Houthi regime ruling the capital city of Sana'a in Yemen on the other side. And as you know, I regularly interview a man named Nasser Araby, a reporter out of Sana'a, have for the whole war along. And he says this is different and better and more meaningful than any previous ceasefire they've ever had. Air strikes have stopped. They're, you know, not 100 percent, but working very hard and honestly on reopening the port of Hodeda. I read the other day they finally got the

airport and Sana'a open. And so it's just a ceasefire. It's not even any kind of real truce, much less a peace deal. But obviously this is the biggest opportunity that we've had in seven years to bring this war to an end. So the question is, what are the American peace activists doing to put pressure on the president of the United States that he might pressure America's royal allies in the Gulf to finally call this thing off. Yeah, Scott, thank you so much for your continued engagement and attention on this important issue. There's a lot of bad things happening in the world. And this to me is one actual bright spot. You know, the recently announced nationwide truce between Yemen's warring

parties, you know, really does offer hope that we can finally end this war. Congress has to help prevent backsliding by Saudi Arabia. So that's what we're focused on. You know, and they've driven so much of this violence through their indiscriminate air strikes, their crippling blockade. This support, despite Biden's sort of like announcement at the beginning of his administration, has continued. He continued to provide, you know, spare parts, maintenance, logistical support. He supplied a lot of weaponry. So we think that, you know, passing a new Yemen War Powers resolution and blocking this U.S. military support for any renewed hostilities. Again, we are happy that the airstrikes have stopped and that there's this

partial lifting of the blockade, but we still think congressional pressure is critical to keep the warring parties at the bargaining table and off the battlefield. You know, like you said, this truce is ending in a few weeks. June 2nd is coming up very quickly. There are talks to extend the truce, but, you know, that needs more congressional support. And by reasserting its Article I war authority, you know, we think Congress can help extend the truce into a lasting peace that brings the humanitarian crisis to an end. And so tell us about this war powers resolution because this thing's almost mythological.

Isn't it, Hassan, that Congress passed this thing over the president's veto, and it probably gives the president too much warpower anyway, and yet, doesn't it just sit there dormant? Are you telling me there's a real chance for it to be used to limit the president's authority here? Yeah, so there's a couple things I wanted to address. One is the critical nature of U.S. support for the Saudi Air War. As Bruce Riddell has said a number of times, and we've chatted about this, you know, overnight, essentially, the U.S. could ground the entire Saudi air fleet if it wanted to just by stopping mid-air, sorry, spare parts and maintenance, you know, spare tires, all of the different technological components and support for these aircraft. So we have a ton of leverage here. and what we're saying is we need to end the airstrikes and the blockade,

finally get fuel into the country. I've heard of about 10 fuel ships that have gotten in so far, and only one flight to Jordan. I think they're going to start opening up more flights. I've heard that, you know, Egypt could be next on the list. So this is all good stuff. As far as this War Powers Act, you know, I'll just kind of take you a little bit on the timeline of what happened and why this.

is important. So, you know, we saw this really just devastating bus bombing in 2018 and August. That was under Trump. And Mike Pompeo came out and said, hey, you know, Saudi is doing everything it can to protect civilians. Congress got pissed. And then Muhammad bin Salman ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, which was just horrifying to so many people. And And, you know, all that momentum, you know, led to the passage through the Senate of S.J. Res. 54, which was that first Yemen WPR to pass, you know, basically one chamber since the, you know, 1973 War Powers Act was passed. So despite- That's a huge deal at the time. I mean, this is world historical stuff that the Congress would dare. I mean, really, their powers of the purse. And you could even call it a cop out in a way. I'll let you address that. They're real powers. to defund whatever they want to defund. But for them to invoke the war powers resolution,

essentially ordering President Trump to cease support for the war, that's going down in history. That's a huge thing. And it did already happen. So the precedent is set. The precedent is set. And there's another precedent that I think is important. So even though that wasn't signed into law at that time,

that pressure forced essentially Trump to end mid-air refueling. of these Saudi warplains. So that was one critical component. We're still, we're trying to go after the remainder of the support, but I just wanted to flag that we did end this critical part of the operations. And then later, the next year, Trump actually signed that into law. So that's a permanent end to mid-air refueling. So we kind of set this precedent. It actually de-escalated the situation. We saw the UAE drawdown significant military forces in the region, obviously still involved through their proxies. But, you know, we're heading in the right direction. And then once congressional negotiators actually pulled some other language out of the National Defense Authorization

Act to terminate this other support that we're going after now, we saw an escalation. And, you know, after Biden came in, he said he was going to end support for offensive operations, didn't define what that was. And we saw the airstrikes continue at the same levels under Trump. we saw the blockade actually get worse under Biden. So what can this effort do? I think it's pushing the conversation in the right direction. I think we have the votes. We just passed this, you know, same language for the NDAA in September 2021.

So we definitely have the votes in the House to get this done. Obviously, you know, constituents that are listening to this program, Sherman and Bass, two reps in the L.A. area are high. high, high targets on our list. So getting them on would be critical. But again, we have the support in the House. We need to build that momentum. And then I think pushing for more support in the Senate, I don't think they're going to trigger a vote while the truce is in place. But I think we build up that support. We build up our momentum for peace and ending U.S. participation that has been authorized in this war. And then that's a real incentive for Saudi to kind of get something

here. And I'll just say one last thing. So Hadi, the internationally recognized president for almost the entire war, has recently been pushed out of power by the Saudis. This is really critical. So the whole point of the Yemen war on the Saudi side was to reinstall Hadi to power. But now they've got this new presidential leadership council it's it's you know it's eight people now all the all the dudes with guns you know half of them are supported by the Saudis the other half are supported by the UAE and you know we don't really know right now are they consolidating to try to negotiate a peace with the Houthis or are they consolidating to try to keep fighting and if we take the air support off the table there's no way they're going to keep fighting yeah now did I hear you right before when did you say that

while there's a ceasefire that will kind of relieve the pressure to get this thing passed right now. You don't think it'll get past as long as there is a ceasefire, but it seems like that's the catch-22 here is we need it passed right now while there's a ceasefire in order

to say to Biden essentially, this is the American people because this is a grassroots bottom-up effort for sure. The American people through their Congress insisting that he take this chance to keep this piece that's already been one here and make sure that it stays and that the war stays

ended. So help me figure that out. I just think politically, you're not going to see Congress pull the trigger on the WPR. I don't even think that there is time under the expedited clock to pull it before June 2nd is what I'm saying. But after that, I think you could see a vote, and I think we have the votes to pass it, if that makes sense. Sorry if that was confusing. No, I got you. So unfortunately, we're not going to be able to pass it before the end, just because of scheduling and Congress, before the end of the scheduled ceasefire. Now, we can only hope that they prolong the ceasefire and then into the month of June, then maybe we can get it through. Yeah. And I think it's important to, you know, keep the pressure on and building up that, you know, so we have a goal of trying to get at least 100 co-sponsors. I'll just say that reps Jayapal and DeFazio. have done a great job, and there's this whole grassroots network around the country. The Quakers are at it.

Peace action is at it. We've got common defense, a ton of veterans, concerned vets for America, R Street, freedom works, defense priorities, bring our troops home. So a left-right coalition has really come together, and there's a lot of work being done. We've got over 30 bipartisan co-sponsors on board right now. we've got, you know, anywhere from like Rashida to leave and folks in the squad to rep Adam Schiff. So we're grateful to have his support. But we also got reps Mace, Massey, Buck, and a few other Republicans and a few others, hopefully, in the works. So we're trying to just build up as much support as possible to make sure that this blockade finally opens up and that these airstrikes stop.

And yes, we have to codify this into law so that Biden can't. backslide that any future president can't backslide and start supporting this uh you know this disastrous war yeah got that right and listen so for uh people calling their congressman about this first of all can you just address the question whether this even makes a difference at all what's one little phone call out of 300 million people in the world and all these congressmen are all just up there eating money they gain through corruption What do they care about me? Why should I bother?

Something like that. Yeah, you know, that's such a good question. And it's easy to feel that way. And, you know, and for a long time, I felt that way. But after I got to Capitol Hill, I, you know, I'm just saying it actually does work, surprisingly enough. In 2016, we forced to vote. We got 27 senators to block a weapon sale to Saudi.

That's not even close to what we need to pass. it. You know, 2018, we got, you know, 44 votes, you know, in March 2018. And then we got, you know, 56 votes after this bus bombing, you know, and then finally a majority in both chambers. And then when Biden came in, he did actually shift policy on Yemen. Now, it doesn't move fast. So you have to be kind of patient with this stuff, but patient yet determined. And I'll also just say anecdotally, You know, as I was walking around the halls of Capitol Hill talking to people, you know, just like banging down doors, I probably, you know, did 200 lobby visits. The whole narrative over time has really shifted. Everyone was telling me how this is the Saudis, you know, we have to support the Saudis.

There are allies. Iran is terrible. And over time, after all of this congressional pressure, you know, pressure from the grassroots on Congress enforcing votes, I can't stress enough how important to force. votes are, because then you have that accountability piece. They have to go on CNN or Fox News or MSNBC or even maybe the Scott Horton show and say why they voted for, you know, supporting the Saudi-led mass murder of Yemen. And that's a really difficult position. So when we do things in public, we tend to win on this issue, you know, but when it's private and we don't force votes, that's when, you know, Saudi gets away with all sorts of war crimes. Hang on. Just one second. Hey, y'all. They've got great deal.

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methods. Go to free rangefeeder.com slash Scott or use promo code Scott to get 15% off and get the free ebook. Subscribe to their newsletter to immediately receive your free copy of getting started with backyard chickens. That's free rangefeeder.com slash Scott. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, truth is on your side here. That's for sure. And so for people just tuning in, I'm Scott Horton, anti-war radio. I'm talking with Hassan L. Taiyeb. He's from the Friends Committee on National Legislation in D.C., that's fcnl.org, and that's the Quaker lobby. And they're just the most reliable peace knicks in America. What are you going to do? They work really hard on this. And even if you haven't heard, the war in Yemen is at least as bad

as Iraq War II or Obama's dirty war in Syria. It's just absolutely disgusting. And we have finally this huge opportunity here with this ceasefire to all make our voices heard at the same time and let them know in those congressional offices, in those Senate offices that, geez, people keep calling about this Yemen thing. I guess it really does matter. That's the only way to do it. You just have to make them feel that way by making it true. And so it's also really important, you know, you mentioned the progressive Democrats that represent the L.A. area. But, you know, this show is also heard on various Pacific stations around the country, you know, from time to time anyway. And, of course, it's podcasted out.

And there are people from all over the country listening to this or will be eventually. And so it's really important what you said about the bipartisan nature of the coalition against this war. And people can apply the Horton rule. Attack the left from the left and the right from the right. Don't talk them from the other side. Attack them from their own side. So if you're a liberal or a progressive or a leftist, when you call your Democratic Congressman, you say, hey, you know, we can't let these conservative Republicans be better than us on this. This is our issue, war and peace, man. Don't tell me we're going to, we're all hawks now because we're not and I won't support a hawk. Democrats mean peace, you know, that kind of thing. And then if you're a right winger or if you live in a right wing district, never mind where you're coming from, but if you have a Republican congressman, then you call up and you say, hey, Donald Trump, America first. We don't want George W. Bush's and Nancy Pelosi's foreign policy. We want to come home

America right now. We've got 20 years of losses. Enough of policing the world. And you just talk about peace on conservative terms to conservative representatives and let them know that they could also take an anti-war position from the right. Or right now, you know, as liberal Democrats, There's a lot of pressure for them to be hawks on not just Ukraine, but on everything else. But let them know that, no, there's left-wing pressure out there that says they better not. And that's not good for them. They want to stay in power. They're going to have to stick with their constituents and vote against this kind of interventionism.

And so, you know, it is just marginal, one phone call, but the margin is where all the action is. Everybody tell them, Hassan. I know, again, you're up there on Capitol Hill. You see this. time and and you're talking about consulting with these different congressional staffers and whoever but tell us what difference it makes if the phone

is ringing or not well the you know I had a chief of staff just call me and she's like hey I'm getting hammered on this Yemen stuff in district you know what do I need to know what do I need to do so it got

I'm getting hammered on this Yemen stuff he said yeah you see how important that is right because the opposite of that is he hadn't heard anything about it. Now he's hearing a lot about it. And now he needs your counsel, figure out what to do. Exactly. Exactly. So that is exactly what you want to hear.

It is like, hey, you know, we're hearing a lot about this. You know, it's never one call. It's, you know, so if you make a phone call, that's important. But, you know, get your friends and neighbors to chime in and know that it's actually part of this much, much larger network of people acting. So you're not alone. You'd be with a whole bunch of people. There are like tens of thousands of orgs and, you know, constituents around the country. We have about, you know, really close to 100 national organizations on board. I mentioned some of the Republican groups, but we also have move on, indivisible, you know, demand progress,

just foreign policy on board, several Yemeni groups. You know, is that. really interesting. I've been doing this for a while, but the Yemeni Merchants Association actually endorsed this bill. And I think that's actually kind of worth noting because for a long time, you know, the Yemeni diaspora has not agreed on what to do about Yemen. There are some people, and rightfully so that they're like, my God, these Houthis are, you know, we don't want them to control our country. And then others are saying, well, we need to end the Saudi air war. But finally, the folks that led this, you know, Yemen bodega protest in New York City have endorsed this resolution and endorse the idea that we should end support for the Saudi Air War. So I think that also, even just domestically here in the U.S., shows that, you know, people are fed up with this endless war in Yemen.

We've been fed up, and now we're really, really fed up. There's just too much death. You know, in Yemen today we've got 20.7 million people in need of humanitarian aid for survival with up to 19 million Yemenis acutely food insecure. That means you don't know where your next meal is coming from and that you're living with, you know, severe, you know, hunger, severe pain. We have 2.2 million children under the age of five expected to suffer from acute malnutrition over the course of 2022. and could actually die without urgent treatment. So, you know, we don't have time to wait here anymore. Like, the common phrase is Yemen can't wait.

Well, we've been waiting too long. It's time to finally end this. Yeah, you're absolutely right. All right. Again, anti-war radio talking with Hassan El-Tayeb. And, you know, if you think back to the start of this thing, I'm certainly not apologizing for him, but I'm saying it's a little bit easier to understand the mindset of the Obama guys

if they thought this was going to be really easy. Let me know when you heard that one before. And this was called, they called it Operation Decisive Storm. And this weak group, the Houthis came in and took power in Senah where they haven't had power in a very, very long time, the Zadis. And so we're just kicking them right back out again. But that was seven years ago. Yeah.

And this amounts to the most powerful nation in the history of the world picking on essentially the poorest, weakest people, not in the history of the world, but in the world. now who never attacked us at all, who never threatened us at all. People say they have an anti-American slogan, death to America, but they only adopted that to make fun of their own dictator for being George W. Bush's sock puppet when he invaded Iraq. They never attacked us. They never had anything to do with anti-American terrorism in any way whatsoever, the Houthi group. In fact, the real anti-American terrorists in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,

have attacked America repeatedly and we're fighting on their side right now in this one. And that's a whole other question we should talk more about because when this part of the war does end the war for terrorism. The war against terrorism in Yemen is going to pick right back up again where they left off. And AQAP

is now far more powerful than ever before and then that'll be a whole other war to oppose the war where we're helping the Houthis kill Al Qaeda again like it was at the beginning of 2000. 15 before Obama stabbed them in the back and took al-Qaeda's side against them. All right, so, and now you mentioned the humanitarian crisis there, and that really is the most important part of this, is that this is nothing like a theoretical exercise. This is an absolute emergency.

And so when you talk about those different peace groups who are working together on this, and now including some of the, some more of the humanitarian diaspora and so forth, can you please give us a rundown about that? because I was very lucky to join in Yale's conference call the other day, your Zoom call, where you guys have all this information, all these ways that not only individuals can sign up, but they can sign up their group and speak in the name of, you know, their voluntary association of friends and associates, professional associates, whatever it is. You have all these tool kits.

And I love this one, the target list for the most important congressman and congresswoman and senators to contact here and all of these things. So please give us the rundown on the activism here, how people can really take part in this themselves and, you know, grab a hold and run wild with it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Scott. That's always my favorite part is, you know, you got to get back to, you know, you got to get down to action here. And there's not, you know, if we all do just small things, we can actually make a huge difference, especially now that everyone's fired up and working on this. we set up a 1833 stop war number so it's got a call script in there you dial that number you can direct you right to your member of congress and you can kind of give them the spiel and say you know

I want you to support the Yemen war powers resolution to you know bring you know devastating U.S. complicity in the war in Yemen to an end so it's real easy 1833 stop war you can find out more information about all of this stuff see the coalition letters and some FAQs that we've set up at FCNL.org, go to the Middle East page. Again, FCNL.org, and you can even contact me through there. So we want to help you all, you know, with your activism. Again, L.A. area, Brad Sherman and Karen Bass are two people high, high on our target list. But Adam Smith and Washington State, Chairman Meeks, we still need to get their support but everybody needs to get on on this bill and I think with your help we can make it

happen yeah that's really great and you know by the way one more talking point here for people calling their congressman I mean you're just going to be talking to a staff or something but there are enough people who are good on this on your side who your congressman is allied with that you can invoke them and you could say hey yeah no your buddy is voting good on this because there are enough if you know if you look through the resources and check the voting records and who's promised to vote good on this kind of thing and that does go for Republicans

and part of that is partisanship but that's fine too you know what I mean yeah it was anti-obama spirit helped animate the anti-seria war movement of 2013 that helped stop a full-fledged war to replace the CIA covert war that was going on there at that time so

we'll take some where we can get them and that's really important to do I like the Scott Horton rule. It's an important one. I didn't name it that, but you attack, or convince, persuade, the left from the left and the right from the right. Meet them where they're at and just insist that they stay good or get even better. Insist on a little consistency. So, FCNL, that's the Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL.org. And then can you, is there a short way for people to find the

sign-up sheets for themselves and their groups for the petitions and for to get all this activist info, the target list and the toolkit and all of that. Yeah, we've got a lot of that on the FCNL.org site. So if you go out there and search our Yemen page, you know, a lot of that's going to be up. And we also have set up every 75 seconds.org. So that's a one-stop shop for. for all of this information. So every 75 seconds.org. Great. Every 75 seconds.org. And that, yeah, every 75 seconds refers to the fact that the UN World Food Program says that a child dies in Yemen every 75 seconds.

So it's a devastating statistic, but, you know, it's something that we're trying to work to end. And I think this war power's resolution is the way that the U.S. can help. Yeah, absolutely. All right, listen, man, I have to tell you, you already know it. That's why you're doing it. It's the most important work in the world, and I appreciate that. Hassan L. Tayab, everybody, from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, F-C-N-L.org. Thank you.

Thanks, Scott. And that's Anti-War Radio for this morning. Find the full interview archive at Scotthorton.org and YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on K-PFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.