U.S. To Ditch Yemeni President

Ever the helpful client, Yemen's president Ali Abduallah Saleh must be beside himself at Monday morning's New York Times front page leak story that the Obama administration has shifted from its resolute backing of the reigning dictator to now supporting his overthrow and a transitional authority to a, one surmises, democratic state.

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Weeks prior, while the administration has publicly backing democratic transitions in Tunisia and Egypt and openly scolding the antagonistic Iranian and Syrian regimes for their brutal suppression of peaceful protests, the administration remained silent about Saleh's own far more bloody crackdown against pro-democracy peaceful, mostly youth, Yemeni demonstrators. Even when Saleh's forces killed, using snipers et al, about 50 civilians in one day the United States still remained silent. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when asked about Yemen incredulously responded that the United States does not comment on internal affairs and one Pentagon official even when further and expressed support for Saleh and the hope that he would maintain power because he has loyally served U.S. interests. Of course, Saleh has been such a model client for the United States that U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks quote him as endorsing American air strikes in Yemen (directed against al Qaeda but often injuring misidentified innocents) and that he would lie to his own people and claim that Yemen's military is behind the attacks (as if the Yemen people don't know that their military has no drones) rather than openly admit that due to his own incompetence and failure to establish sovereign over the entire nation he had accepted that the United States launch an undeclared war in Yemen. The U.S. air strikes against al Qaeda are legit but the Yemen have the right to know what is taking place in their own country, but Saleh went along with the script because many Yemenis would have opposed U.S. strikes and because the Obama administration, akin to Saleh, did not want to inform the American people of such action lest silly constitutional matters arise of Congressional authorization and inquiry. You know, silly nonsense like that.

Anyway, Saleh has now been ditched by the Obama administration: "The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American and Yemeni officials."

What is so stupid about this NY Times article is that they so uncritical accept the administration's pretext, which is bogus. As if the Obama administration only now realized that a dictator for 32-years is incapable of reforms and that is why they want his demise...in the name of reform, whatever that means. But this is fallacious because the United States, as it made clear from the start of the Yemen revolution, that is does not clear about reforms or democracy in Yemen but only its interests which are judged as maintaining a subservient strongman who will indulge the Americans in undeclared war on Yemeni territory. The United States is not throwing Saleh off the bus, to borrow an American idiom, because of lack of faith in his reform zeal but solely because they have concluded he's done for and best get behind a new order which they hope to partially bring about and thus can secure future leverage for their own objectives. The NY Times gets more honest later when it states: "While American officials have not publicly pressed Mr. Saleh to go, they have told allies that they now view his hold on office as untenable, and they believe he should leave."

Exactly! If Saleh could win the day, the United States would remain an ally of his regime and could care less about "reforms", but they have grudgingly come to the conclusion that Saleh is done for. So this is nothing about being so noble as to support a democratic revolution, but solely about a cynical calculation masked as liberal concern in the real interest of an undeclared war requiring a subservient Yemeni elite. That's it!