CIA Drone Base in the Land of Mecca and Medina

In case you missed it, because it was easy to do, last Tuesday there was a great piece written by Tom Engelhardt and posted on his web site, TomDispatch.com.  Titled "Dumb and Dumber: A Secret CIA Drone Base, a Blowback World, and Why Washington Has No Learning Curve," it tells how the media at the behest of the Obama administration sat for over a year on the story that a secret CIA drone facility had been established on Saudi Arabian soil:

Last Tuesday [two weeks ago, February 5], the Washington Post published a piece by Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung about a reportorial discovery which that paper, along with other news outlets (including the New York Times), had by “an informal arrangement” agreed to suppress (and not even very well) at the request of the Obama administration. More than a year later, and only because the Times was breaking the story on the same day (buried in a long investigative piece on drone strikes), the Post finally put the news on record. It was half-buried in a piece about the then-upcoming Brennan hearings. Until that moment, its editors had done their patriotic duty, urged on by the CIA and the White House, and kept the news from the public. Never mind, that the project was so outright loony, given our history, that they should have felt the obligation to publish it instantly with screaming front-page headlines and a lead editorial demanding an explanation.

According to the Post, approximately two years ago, the CIA got permission from the Saudi government to build one of its growing empire of drone bases in a distant desert region of that kingdom. The purpose was to pursue an already ongoing air war in neighboring Yemen against al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. 

The first drone mission from that base seems to have taken off on September 30, 2011, and killed American citizen and al-Qaeda supporter Anwar al-Awlaki. Many more lethal missions have evidently been flown from it since, most or all directed at Yemen in a campaign that notoriously seems to be creating more angry Yemenis and terror recruits than it’s killing. So that’s the story you waited an extra year to hear from our watchdog press (though for news jockeys, the existence of the base was indeed mentioned in the interim by numerous media outlets).

Engelhardt then proceeds to provide an excellent thumbnail sketch -- his article is worth reading just for this -- of our involvement with Osama bin Laden in bloodying the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan; and from there our first war with Saddam Hussein that led to a U.S. military presence in the Muslim holy land of Mecca and Medina; thereby creating the main rationale for al-Queda's 9/11 attack. One notable accomplishment of Bush's 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq is that it led to the withdrawal of combat troops from Saudi Arabia. But now, after enormous amounts of blood and treasure, we're back. As Engelhardt says,

And so we reach this moment and the news of that two-year-old secret Saudi drone base. You might ask yourself, given the previous history of U.S. bases in that country, why the CIA or any administration would entertain the idea of opening a new U.S. outpost there. Evidently, it’s the equivalent of catnip for cats; they just couldn’t help themselves. 

We don’t, of course, know whether they blanked out on recent history or simply dismissed it out of hand, but we do know that once again garrisoning Saudi Arabia seemed too alluring to resist. Without a Saudi base, how could they conveniently strike al-Qaeda wannabes in a neighboring land they were already attacking from the air? And if they weren't to concentrate every last bit of drone power on taking out al-Qaeda types (and civilians) in Yemen, one of the more resource-poor and poverty-stricken places on the planet? Why, the next thing you know, al-Qaeda might indeed be ruling a Middle Eastern Caliphate. And after that, who knows? The world? 

Honestly, could there have been a stupider gamble to take (again)? This is the sort of thing that helps you understand why conspiracy theories get started -- because people in the everyday world just can’t accept that, in Washington, dumb and then dumber is the order of the day. 

When it comes to that “secret” Saudi base, if truth be told, it does look like a conspiracy -- of stupidity. After all, the CIA pushed for and built that base; the White House clearly accepted it as a fine idea. An informal network of key media sources agreed that it really wasn’t worth the bother to tell the American people just how stupidly their government was acting. (The managing editor of the New York Times explained its suppression by labeling the story nothing more than "a footnote.") And last week, at the public part of the Brennan nomination hearings, none of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to provide the CIA and the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community with what little oversight they get, thought it appropriate to ask a single question about the Saudi base, then in the news. 

The story was once again buried. Silence reigned. If, in the future, blowback does occur, thanks to the decision to build and use that base, Americans won’t make the connection. How could they? 

It all sounds so familiar to me. Doesn’t it to you? Shouldn’t it to Washington?

To get a feeling why the Obama administration is engaging in what seems so obviously a retrograde geopolitical move read yesterday's article by Robert Worth on the current state of affairs in Yemen. To summarize quickly, it's a mess. If not a "failed state," in national security parlance, then certainly a state close to coming apart. The south, which as recently as 1990 was its own state, is moving towards independence.

Some progress has been made. A military campaign last year recaptured several southern towns from the jihadist militants who had controlled them for more than a year. But most of the fighters seem to have melted back into the population, and in the wake of the military’s withdrawal, large areas of the south remain a checkerboard of mysterious armed groups with no government presence. 

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate has adopted a new tactic: a ruthless campaign of assassinations that has left 74 military and intelligence officers dead since the start of last year, according to Interior Ministry officials. Almost all of the killings have been carried out by masked gunmen on motorcycles — often with pistols equipped with silencers — and only a few suspects have been arrested.

The new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is weak. He's a southerner who is reviled in the south; a man without an independent base of support in a tribal society. On top of all of this -- a weak chief executive, a secessionist movement, a surging al-Qaeda -- there is a burgeoning proxy sectarian war:

Another rising threat is the growth of an increasingly violent and sectarian confrontation between two of Yemen’s largest political groups. One of those groups, known as the Houthi movement, is led by radical adherents of a variant of Shiite Islam and has been accused of receiving support from Iran. Its followers have clashed repeatedly with youths from Islah, Yemen’s main Sunni Islamist party and the local equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

This conflict has taken on aspects of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia — which supports Islah — and Iran, with troubling Sunni-Shiite overtones. The Houthis have grown increasingly strident, holding vast public rallies modeled after those of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement. The two groups regularly malign each other in sectarian terms — a new occurrence in Yemen — and on several occasions, rallies have devolved into rock-throwing and even gun battles between members of the two camps.

So all the ingredients are there for a failed state and anarchy and chaos. And you can tell what the Obama administration is thinking, since its answer to all sources of turbulence in the Muslim world is the drone, "Let's get a base close to Yemen so we can bomb it when it all goes to hell." What are the lessons of history compared to a clear flight path for a bombing run?

While not totally apposite here, why not Roots Manuva meets Wrongtom on "Jah Warriors"?