Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/21/22 Hassan El-Tayyab on the Yemen Ceasefire, Biden’s Saudi Trip and a Second War Powers Resolution

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Hassan El-Tayyab is back with a big update on the effort to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen. There are now War Powers Resolutions in each chamber of Congress, and momentum is building. El-Tayyab points to some concerning developments concerning the fragile ceasefire and Biden’s trip to the Middle East that underscore the importance of getting this done in Congress.  Discussed on the show: Libertarian National Twitter account FCNL.org  Concerned Veterans for America Yemen Relief & Reconstruction Foundation 1833stopwar.com 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

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 Scott Horton.4. 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, you guys, introducing Hassan L. Tayev from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. That's fcnl.org, a great anti-war activist organization, the Quaker lobby.

in the national interest, if you ask me. Welcome back to the show, Hassan. How are you doing, sir? I'm well. Thanks, Scott. Good, good. Happy to have you here. Hey, man. So, we have so much to talk about in terms of, well, I'll just say real quick. We've got a House and a Senate version now introduced in the Congress,

the War Powers Resolution, to try to end the war in Yemen or American support for it, of course. But first of all, can you give us an update? I know there's a lot of news out of Yemen and where things stand. stand with the ceasefire, and especially now with Biden, having gone to kiss the ring of his royal highness, Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince Bonesaw over there and the rest of this stuff, man, take it away. Thank you so much. So maybe I can just start off by talking about the Yemen truce itself and then show how

the war powers effort that Senator Sanders and Pramila Jayapal and a whole bunch of others are doing, is just such an important effort that will help bolster the truce and hopefully extend it. So, unfortunately, there are real signs that this whole thing could fall apart and not get extended past the August 2nd deadline. The Houthis have indicated that they won't accept an extension of the truce without significant improvements. They've really criticized that, you know, the blockade still in place. you know, there have been, you know, obvious, you know, welcome things that have happened since, you know, there has been a, you know, a cessation of airstrikes and drone attacks. But again, the parties are accusing each other of violating the agreement. President Biden did go to Saudi Arabia. I think there were definitely some missed opportunities there, you know, didn't really consult directly with the Houthis about extending the truth. So there was a missed opportunity there. Also, the head of Yemen's newly appointed presidential leadership council was not invited to the U.S. Saudi security discussions, and that just really goes to show, I think, the major power imbalance that's at play here.

The U.S. invoked U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216 that we've talked about, which basically would, you know, anytime you hear that invoked, basically the Saudi saying that they want the who's, Houthis to immediately and unconditionally withdraw their forces. So again, these folks aren't really, you know, things are not going in the direction that we really need it to to actually resolve this crisis. That's why I think, you know, it's just so critical that the U.S. use our existing leverage. We can't unilaterally do everything, but we can make sure that the Saudis don't restart airstrikes. And that's why the Sanders effort is just so critical. now so when Biden went to Saudi Arabia obviously they talked about they're still working on I guess this new kind of deeper alliance along the lines of the Abraham Accords of Israel with the Arab states

and of course Biden was begging the Saudis to increase production of oil to try to drive the price down a little bit this kind of thing but do we know is there much reporting about what they discussed about the war in Yemen at all? Yeah, so great question. They did discuss it. The president, you know, thanked Muhammad bin Salman and King Salman, the heads of Saudi Arabia. They thanked them for their efforts to, you know, secure the truce agreement and the progress that's been made. And, you know, they want to, you know, they made a promise to keep working together. I think what is interesting in that is that it didn't seem like the president asked Saudi Arabia to do anything. There was no demand to like, you know, fully open up the airport, fully open up the Red Sea port to fuel ships, make sure medicine can get in, you know, basically saying that we're not prepared to support a resumption of airstrikes.

So I think those were some major missed opportunities. and, you know, again, points back to why, you know, Congress needs to step in here. Yeah. All right. So talk a bit about, I guess, first of all, the effort in the House. It was introduced this War Powers Resolution, what, back at the very end of May, beginning of June. And so what's the progress there? How many co-sponsors? How much momentum, that kind of thing. Yeah, we've got incredible momentum, Scott. And I think in large, part because of this bipartisan coalition that we have, you know, led by folks like the Libertarian Party, who's doing so much work. But we've also got, you know, progressives, faith groups,

activated veterans groups. You know, I like to say that this is a coalition that spans, you know, Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, you know you're on the right track when you're doing stuff like that. We've got 110 co-sponsors on the House side. You know, there's a whole bunch of folks. I think we've got about 10 or 11 Republicans on board, Biggs, Massey, Gates, a whole bunch of others. On the Senate side, S.J. Res. 56 is the bill number over there that was introduced by Sanders, Warren Leahy. We just added a whole bunch of other folks. Durbin, Wyden are both on, Baldwin, Markey, and a bunch of others.

So we've got a lot of work to do And you know Still hoping that we get Mike Lee and Rand Paul They haven't added their names yet There's indications that they're certainly supportive But you know So any any uh nudge there would be wonderful Yeah

I mean Mike Lee has always been you know Out front on this in the last Two or three times that they tried this Bernie Yeah so I think You know if I can't speak for the office. I know that they're not on the bill yet. They, you know, they might have questions about, you know, the trip. But I will say that, you know, there have been conversations with that

office, both offices, and, you know, getting warm reception. But, you know, I think, you know, we just got to, you know, keep engaging. Because I think ideologically, they're completely aligned. Yeah. Well, I know that man has at least had a chance to read enough already because I handed it to him. Freedom Fest back a year ago. So there's a good chapter on Yemen in there. Good enough to make you mad enough to want to support a bill like this, I'd think. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of which, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows Rand Paul.

I'm going to try to say a little something and see if I can ask someone else to nudge and nudge further down the chain there for me and see if we can get a little bit. Because I got an idea. It's pretty simple. I'm not trying to take a lot of credit. It would just be to have Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders standing up there like, you know, the referee holds up the boxing

champ's hand. It's like, yeah, the champ. And have them stand there and have them just say, look, everybody knows that we disagree about everything. And Mr. as left as you can go in the Senate and Mr. supposedly very conservative senator, whatever, you don't want to frame it there with Rand Paul.

But look, we agree about this because it's so damn important. Look at what's going on here. And we have to put a stop to this, and then we can go back to disagreeing about things that are less important than this most important thing. The script writes itself, right? I mean, what's the problem? Yeah, I love it. So, yeah, we've got a lot of work to do. And I think, you know, I think it's a matter of when, not if, personally.

So, you know, they just need to keep hearing from people that care. And I think there's a lot of us out there. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited, you know, shifting a bit to the Democrats, really excited that we've got a few notable folks on there. I mean, Senator Durbin, he is basically the whip of Senate Democrats, and he is on the bill. I mean, that is huge. So the top of Democratic leadership is on. We've also got Senator Gary Peters. He's a senior senator from Michigan. You know, he's not up for re-election, but, you know, Michigan is a purple state. I mean, he's got a lot of conservatives in

his district, and he's taking a stand on Yemen war powers and reasserting congressional war authority. He's, you know, so I think that's another really important get. And I hope we just continue to expand it. I mean, we've just introduced this bill last week. So folks are probably just checking their inboxes now and in reading about the bill. So messages this week and next are huge. Right. Well, listen, so has the White House said anything about this at all? On the bill effort or Yemen? Both, yeah. Well, first of all, yeah, what's their take on Yemen lately? It's the broader question, but what about this bill, this effort to pass this war powers resolution? I mean, I think on the war powers, I mean, no president has ever said, we support Congress trying to reassert its war authority.

is just a long trend of presidents not supporting, you know. I think if we pass this thing, when we pass this thing, let's, you know, speak a little bit with confidence here. I think we have a really good shot. I think Biden would be in a really tough bind to not sign it into law. I mean, part of what this bill, I think it's worth explaining exactly what we're trying to stop. We're trying to stop mid-era fueling has already stopped, but we're trying to stop offensive intelligence sharing, you know, for the airstrikes, logistical support like spare parts maintenance transfers that, you know, putting the spare tires onto these warplanes that are flying over Yemen doing these operations. And, you know, any U.S. military participation of any kind in

these Saudi air strikes. So part of it, we're just saying, you know, actually Biden did a pretty good thing here by, you know, caught, you know, ending, you know, offensive intelligence sharing. And we're just trying to put some guardrails up to say, no one can start that up again. We're codifying that into law. And we're taking one small step further, I think,

that's going to have a huge impact, but stopping the DOD from being able to oversee spare parts and maintenance. And without that support, these planes could not fly and do these, you know, operations in Yemen. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, Enough Already, timed and the War on Terrorism, is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me.

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That's expanddesigns.com. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate.

And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Reese Erlich. That's listen and think.com. And now, is it really right that they stopped all the intelligence and logistics and all that? Because I guess when they announced they were halting all these things at the beginning of 2021, you know, that was taken as kind of a package deal. And it was, I think, the end of May a year ago that Admiral Kirby said, now, well, we're still, of course, giving them resupply and maintenance. But that was like two out of five things on the list.

So it made me, I guess, assume that they hadn't canceled any of it. And that, after all, they need American and British contractors to run all the air traffic control and the logistics and which bombs go under which wings and which pilots fly on which day and all of that kind of deal like that. The little princelings can't run that by themselves. Yeah, so all really fair points, you know, we don't know. The administrations have, you know, not told the truth in the past. So we have, you know, a lot of precedent.

You're right, though, that it's important for the narrative that, yeah, we just want to keep doing the right thing like we've been doing even better than before. Yeah, I mean, I think it would be huge. huge advance to actually, you know, permanently end, you know, offensive intel sharing, you know. And then every, every piece of this, I'm telling you, we've been doing this for years. Every time we make an inch, they come back, you know, it's just been this tug of war, but we're making ground. I mean, you know, we ended mid-air refueling for Saudi war planes.

The Trump administration folks might remember actually said, well, one, we're not doing anything. Okay, we are doing mid-air refueling, but we're not actually launching. launching the attacks. So this isn't the U.S. doing it. Congress said no, and then they cut that mid-era fueling off. And just like that, just like we got to have a consensus that that needed to stop, we're trying to build a new consensus to basically like, you know, get the, take the gains that we've made here under Biden, which obviously not everything we want, but there have been some. It's worth noting. And that offensive intelligence sharing, you know, that's what they said not what we said they said that they cut it off and we're just saying we need to codify that and to

one make sure it's actually happening and two make sure it can never restart yeah i'm always pedantic at the wrong time i'm with you man uh let me ask i i got you know it's a good question though i i really uh you know we we don't really know that's the thing yeah i i yeah and i presume the worst fairly i And now, so tell me, isn't it right that Muhammad bin Salman and his regime were signaling that they're trying to climb down and find a way out of this war that they clearly have not won and cannot win, and that is costing them more and more, not just in their expenditure in Yemen, but in terms of their targets getting hit inside Saudi, inside UAE. And so is there a way that, you know, I've been telling people when they call their, Democratic congressman they live in a Democratic district tell them support the president on this

the president and the Saudis are trying to climb down and find a way out of this war we need to help them do that by facing down the Republicans by supporting this because it's true that the leadership and the majority of the Republican Party are very bad on this issue

because it's the dreaded Shiite enemy of course so it's not to discourage the good America first who have their act together on this, but that's a way to frame it to the Democrats, right? But isn't that true, right? That, like, actually, that snake, Muhammad bin Salman, does need a hand. Yeah, I mean, I think you're making really good points, Scott, and I think, you know,

kind of we got to message it with, you know, who we're talking to and just be aware of what people care about. You know, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, they really care about this constitutional piece. Democrats really care about, you know, supporting the administration, you know, supporting the administration. Everyone will tell you that they care about resolving the humanitarian crisis. So I think as we're trying to build momentum on this, you know, we've got a big coalition with, you know, lots of different stakeholders that are coming to the table for different reasons. And, you know, we got to just make sure we're, you know, staying true to our principles, but also making sure that we're addressing, you know, the needs of the different parts of the

coalition. Yeah. And so talk about our coalition here, all the peace activists groups who've been working so hard on this because, you know, obviously us libertarians have been trying our best to, you know, recruit phone callers for the effort. But there are a lot of people who've been working very hard on this issue for a very long time, up to and including this day and this current effort. So can you, you know, give us some ideas and that way, you know, some people who are worthy of our listener's support and people that they can contact and network with and the rest. Yeah. Well, thank you. I love, this is my favorite part of our discussions and I love how you always pivot it back to what we can actually do about this.

And like we were talking about before, we have this really large coalition of organizations and members of Congress. I'd be remiss if I didn't give the Libertarian Twitter page a shout out. Some of the most activity I've seen on Yemen is actually coming from y'all. So fantastic work. So I would have people plug in to that campaign. FCNL.org is a good way to get plugged in. We've got advocacy teams all over the country working on this. The only ask that they are doing right now is to end the Yemen War and reassert congressional

war powers. So if you want to find a group near you, I mean, we've got folks in Utah, Kentucky. We've got folks, you know, all over the West Coast, East Coast, literally every state in the country, we've got a team. So that's a great way to get plugged in. Love what concerned vets are doing, common defense. These are great veterans organizations that are committed to anti-war. Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, they are doing incredible humanitarian aid work on the ground in Yemen.

You know, if you just want to do a quick call, the easiest way to do that is 1-833 stop war. That'll connect you right with your rep and two senators. And again, 1833 stop war. So that great website, I was wondering if you could hook me up with those guys, because I've been working on my rap. about, you know, what to tell people to tell their Democratic congressman or what to tell people to tell their Republican congressman when they call in in order, you know, frame it in a way that's acceptable. And on that website, it's a great little website, but it only has sort of like talking points like you would say to some Democrats, maybe. And I was wondering if maybe

you could connect me with those guys. And then I could propose to them, here's some talking points, you know, that people could use for dealing with Democrats and here are some that you could use for Republicans, including theirs that they already have. But just some more things that I've tried to come up with because, look, man, just like with everything, Hassan, right, it's all social psychology. So what are my incentives among my people and my prices if I do this or if I do that? Everybody's going to love it or I'm going to get myself in a bunch of trouble. I'm going to be a Democrat taking on my president and making myself very unpopular with the leadership, or I'm going to be doing the right thing to support his great effort to end

this war. Or, you know what I mean? Just however it is, it's got to be framed in a way. For the Republicans, this is a great way to embarrass Biden, to force him to end a war, say, you know, we're the America firsters now, and the Democrats are unreliable. If it was up to them, we'd stay at war in the Middle East forever. And frame it that way. November. coming up. People like it when you end wars. You know, I don't know, something. Be creative. I'm sure everybody listening here knows a better way than me to think about approaching it there. But just think about who you're talking to and talk to them in a way that they would say, yeah, you know what? In fact, here's a very important one for Republicans and Democrats, but especially

for Republicans is, hey, get it straight. Make sure you understand. This is not the war on terrorism I'm against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. No shit. Like, for real, this is a war for them against their worst enemies, the Houthis. And as Rand Paul said, if we won the war we're trying to win now, they could end up taking over the Capitol City. The AQAP terrorists we started out fighting against in the first place. And that ain't no lie.

You can look it up. That's really the reality. And that's the kind of thing that really opens people's eyes to this thing, that they might have lost track. but we switched sides in the war back in 15, and it's pretty bad. You know, I think those are great messaging tips. I really do. I mean, we have to think about who we're talking to.

We have to raise the urgency like we were talking about before. There's a lot of different stakeholders and different things are going to resonate with different folks. So, Scott, I can connect you offline with the folks at demand progress who run that number. Cool. And yeah, and it's the website. It's a great website. And what a great idea.

1833 stop ward.com. And then that way they have, you know, a little something for you to say if you need some help and, you know, some instructions, make it easy for you to pass on to your friends as a link in the form of a phone number there. There's a great idea there is to do it that way. And then you've got great communication skills. I like what you're saying. Yeah, well, and then I'm sorry if you said this and I'm being redundant, but just so people know that you call that number and you just put in. your zip code and the robot connects you to your congressman so that's it you know you don't have to sit there and go through a rigum a roll this is when we say 833 stop war that's a shortcut to your

guy that you need to influence yeah and i would just make one final point on that it gives you a prompt with some background but you can say what you need to say you know i think people sharing their stories like why this actually impacts them why they're concerned about war powers or the you know, the war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen and an ongoing U.S. complicity. So I think, you know, folks, you know, are also encouraged to get creative because there's a lot of smart people in this network. Yeah. And by the way, I think we had talked before about some people were having trouble with the Senate side. They call their House member and then it tries to connect them to the Senate, but maybe there was like a little malfunction there or something.

Do you know if that's straightened out, especially now that the Senate version has been introduced? Yeah, I believe they straightened that out. Thanks for flagging it. great and then so uh also i'm interested in the reaction that you've got from the staffers because i know on one of these um conference calls on zoom there someone said that the house staffers were saying more calls please and i wonder whether you're getting much of is it really a two-way response here do you hear much from them about how many calls are getting how much difference it makes uh yeah i mean i i think it makes a huge difference when when constituents are reaching out. I think, you know, if members are going to stick their neck out and support,

you know, any, any bill or piece of legislation, they want to know the people at home are going to support them. So, you know, another good thing to do is just thank your members if they do the right thing. I think, you know, a little gratitude actually goes a long way. Right. Yeah, that's a really great point. And I've had a few people on Twitter tell me that, in fact, one guy showed me his response from his congressman was, you're damn right. And here's what I think about it, and it was really good. You know, whatever his staffer had written there, whatever was pretty damn good. So that's a good point, too, that if your congressman is good on this, let them know that

you really appreciate it, because this matters to you. And that should be impressive, because I think everybody knows that TV doesn't talk about this. So if people in the neighborhood care about this, it must be really important to them for other real reasons, you know, so that's great. And I'm sorry, I've got to go. I'm late to my next thing, which sucks because I wanted to ask you more stuff. but thank you so much for all your great help on this issue and hopefully we'll have some real success soon you got it take care all right you guys that is hasan l taiab he is at the friends

committee on national legislation that's fc nl dot org fcnl dot org the scot horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot and libertarian institute.org