House of Saud in Gray Lady's Crosshairs

The New York Times' new willingness to focus on the Saudi role in war currently convulsing the Middle East is again on display this morning. First, in a frontpage story, "Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks," by Robert Worth where he skeptically interviews an erstwhile Saudi jihadist named Abu Khattab supplied by the Saudi Interior Ministry:

But as Abu Khattab talked about Syria, his own convictions seemed scarcely different from the jihadists he had carefully denounced (two officials from the Interior Ministry were present during the interview). He made clear that he considered Shiite Muslims and Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect to be infidels and a terrible danger to his own people. 

“If the Shiites succeed in controlling Syria, it will be a threat to my country,” Abu Khattab said. “I went to Syria to protect my country.” 

At times, his sectarian feelings seemed to outshine his unease about the excesses of some of his more extreme comrades. He did not deny that he had often fought alongside members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the brutal jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. 

Abu Khattab also mentioned proudly that he is no stranger to jihad. He fought as a teenager in Afghanistan (“With the government’s permission!”) and, a few years later, in Bosnia. He chose not to fight the Americans in Iraq “because there are too many Shiites there,” he said, with a look of distaste on his face.

Yet this is a man who lectures inmates at the rehabilitation center every week about ethics and war. The center, like many Saudi institutions, has been somewhat embarrassed by the contradictions of Saudi policy with regard to Syria. Although the center incarcerates some men who have been arrested for trying to travel to Syria, last summer the nephew of Abdelrahman al-Hadlaq, its director, was killed while fighting there. His mother posted statements on Twitter saying she was proud of him.

Worth makes clear that the Saudi ban on nationals traveling to Syria for jihad is a farce. A story like this could have been written and frontpaged at any time during the last year. Why now? Why the sudden focus on the explicit Saudi connection to the Qaeda florescence?

My sense is that the catalyst is Anbar. Fracturing Iraq with jihad is something that apparently is not going to fly with the United States Government. And the extent to which the Gray Lady is a stand-in -- definitely in terms of foreign policy priorities -- for the USG, the abrupt shift in coverage of the conflict in Iraq-Syria-Lebanon to highlight Saudi weakness and cravenness is noteworthy.

Next, a story by Ben Hubbard and Anne Barnard, also on the frontpage, that briefly quotes Nusra Front head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani calling for the creation of an Islamic court to resolve the conflict between ISIS and other Salafist groups. Then Yasir Ghazi and Tim Arango report in "In Iraqi City Under Siege, More Support for Militants Than Officials" a story which must be the reason the Saudis are suddenly getting frontpage attention. Sunnis in Falluja are lining up with Al Qaeda to fight against the Iraqi Army:

“We are going to fight for our city,” said Saif al-Jumaily, a resident of Falluja who said he did not want to live under Al Qaeda rule but would nevertheless fight against the Iraqi Army should it try to retake Falluja. 

The government’s shelling of Falluja in recent days, and its previous heavy-handed response to Sunni protests in the province, which prompted the recent fighting, has exacerbated the animosity among Sunnis toward the central government. For many residents, the shelling has also evoked painful memories of the early years of the American occupation of Iraq, when United States forces fought two big battles for control of the city, with heavy civilian casualties. 

“We are sick and tired of wars in Falluja,” said Mohamed Hameed, a 35-year-old resident of the city. “Every time, we think this is the end of the battles. We want to live a normal life. We have had enough wars in the previous years, and we saw Al Qaeda, the Americans and the Iraqi Army destroying our city.” 

Mr. Hameed added: “Today when I leave my home I cry. I see the flags of Al Qaeda again; I see damaged buildings. I see masked men with guns. It’s like walking into Falluja of 2005. I remember all those bad days and ask myself, what was the fighting about then? Why did so many Iraqis and Americans die for this city? Now we are in the same situation.” 

In the current fight for Falluja, many ordinary citizens would rather see their city in the hands of plain-clothed and masked militiamen — even if they do not understand their true allegiance — than under the control of soldiers loyal to the Shiite-controlled federal government. 

Scenes of Shiite men, some of them waving the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, as they lined up at army recruiting stations in Baghdad to volunteer to fight in Anbar Province, have only heightened the sense of sectarian grievances among Sunnis here. An offer from Iran to give military aid to Mr. Maliki has also added to the sectarian tensions.

The Awakening fighters in Ramadi have cooperated with the government to oust ISIS from that city. But Falluja appears to be different. As Iraqi Army tanks circle, the city is under siege. An all-out assault with heavy civilian loss of life would likely herald an expansion of civil war that would be the end of Iraq. 

The question then becomes, "How much longer before U.S. military intervention?" The United States spent trillions of dollars invading Iraq. I don't think American elites will stand by and watch a caliphate erected.

Hold the Pivot to Asia: Al Qaeda and the House of Saud

What is interesting about today's frontpage story, "Jihadist Groups Gain in Turmoil Across Middle East," by Robert Worth and Eric Schmitt, a decent sketch of the growing Al Qaeda hot spots in Yemen, southern Libya, the Sinai Peninsula and Syria, is the almost total absence of any explanation of the role of Saudi Arabia. Worth and Schmitt frame the Qaeda renascence in terms of a realignment of the Obama administration's relationship with the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad:

“We need to start talking to the Assad regime again” about counterterrorism and other issues of shared concern, said Ryan C. Crocker, a veteran diplomat who has served in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “It will have to be done very, very quietly. But bad as Assad is, he is not as bad as the jihadis who would take over in his absence.” 

It is not clear whether or when the White House would be willing to make such an abrupt shift in approach after years of supporting the Syrian opposition and calling for Mr. Assad’s ouster. It would certainly require delicate negotiations with Middle Eastern allies who were early and eager supporters of Syrian rebel groups, notably Saudi Arabia.

The role of the House of Saud in the explosive turmoil in the Middle East is given greater mention in a story this morning by Rick Gladstone, "Syria Crisis Is Worsening, U.N. Relief Official Says":

Mr. Jaafari [Syrian ambassador to the United Nations] also had harsh words for Saudi Arabia, long accused by his government of financing, recruiting and arming Sunni jihadist militants linked to Al Qaeda that are waging war in Syria. He said “thousands of Saudi fighters” had been killed in Syria and that the government had taken 300 Saudis prisoner. Saudi diplomats did not return telephone calls for comment. 

“Somebody should hold the Saudis responsible for what they are doing,” Mr. Jaafari said. 

In Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that is fighting on Mr. Assad’s side in Syria, accused Saudi Arabia directly for the first time on Tuesday of involvement in the deadly double bombing at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut last month. Mr. Nasrallah, on the Lebanese television channel OTV, said Saudi intelligence had collaborated with Qaeda-linked militants to carry out the attack, which was a direct challenge to Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival for power. 

But Mr. Nasrallah also pushed with new vigor for a political solution in Syria. He praised the signs of reconciliation between Iran and the United States as having averted regional war.

The assassination of senior Hezbollah leader Hassan Laqees is more proof (though Hezbollah is blaming Israel) of Saudi-fueled escalation of sectarian conflict.

The end game? Region-wide destabilization that keeps U.S. military forces fully engaged in the Middle East and the ballyhooed "pivot to Asia" on the drawing board for the foreseeable future.

Here's the last paragraph of the Worth and Schmitt story on the flowering of Al Qaeda groups:

“Whether they are dismayed by the way things played out in Egypt or by the growth of Al Qaeda in Syria, the worm has turned in the Middle East in the minds of American foreign policy makers,” said William McCants, an expert on jihadist movements and a former senior adviser at the State Department. “It seems we are back to counterterrorism as a guiding focus for American policy.”

How successful Obama will be in staying out of the Middle East briar patch is a tough question to answer. His agreement with Russian on Syria's chemical weapons and the nascent deal with Iran on its nuclear program have been spectacular successes given the outsize influence of the Saudis and Israelis on U.S. foreign policy. In our pay-to-play system, Congress is pretty much Saudi and Israeli occupied territory.

That's why keeping on an eye on events in Syria is so important. How Obama treads there -- whether a meaningful Geneva II deal is reached -- will point the way forward in terms of the Greater Middle East.

Another 9/11 in the Works?

Who knows how time works, if there is a science to the unfolding of history -- "Progress!" -- a la Hegel's dialectic? But we currently seem to be situated in a significant moment. The continuing impact of the Snowden revelations, which began in May of this year, with the latest report of the U.S. eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, puts one in mind of another era, the Vietnam era, with the battle over publishing the Pentagon Papers and then Seymour Hersh's frontpage expose of the CIA's Family Jewels at the end of 1974.

The neoconservative/neoliberal reaction that took place in wake of the exposure of the Vietnam era abuses by the intelligence agencies does not seem to be an option this time around because the neoconservative/neoliberal reaction has been the dominant global paradigm since the late 1970s. It is an exhausted paradigm that serves no one but the elites who profit from it.

But the ruling elites are so out of touch they do not realize that a paradigm shift is in order. This passage jumped out at me from Robert Worth's article on Saudi and Israeli disappointment in the current drift of Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East:

Some Middle East experts said that the unease over American policy went beyond the details of the United States’ position on Syria or a potential nuclear deal with Iran. It is also fueled, they say, by the perception that the Obama administration’s policy is grounded in the desire to avoid diplomatic and especially military confrontations in the Middle East. 

“There is a lot of confusion and lack of clarity amongst U.S. allies in the Middle East regarding Washington’s true intentions and ultimate objectives,” said Robert M. Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who was a State Department official on Middle East issues during both Democratic and Republican administrations. “There is also widespread unease throughout the Middle East, shared by many U.S. allies, that the United States’ primary objectives when it comes to Iran, Egypt or Syria are to avoid serious confrontation.”

The ruling Likudniks and scions of the House of Saud must not realize that there is no public support for another war in the Greater Middle East. Any U.S. politician or party that bangs the drum for such a war can expect to be voted out of office at the next election. Obama's attempt to win approval for missile strikes on Syria proved this point unquestionably.

A possible course of action to maintain the spent neoconservative/neoliberal paradigm that ruling elites so cherish is one voiced by Rowan Berkeley yesterday in a comment on the Moon of Alabama blog:

In my view, much of what has happened recently has been driven by a rather desperate push by the US to restore its deniability regarding AQ [Al Qaeda]. It wouldn't be altogether surprising if the US staged another major AQ attack on itself, another 9/11, just to restore this deniability. It cannot under any circumstances allow the fact that it is reliant on AQ to wear down its (or rather, Israel's) enemies, to become obvious. It has to create a massive facade of enmity between itself and AQ, and another two or three thousand USAian civilians might not be too great a price for it to pay. Then, when everybody is once again certain that AQ is the US's most deadly enemy, it will be possible for covert cooperation with AQ against Syria, Iran, Russia and China to increase substantially without fear of the secret relationship becoming publicly perceived.

While it is easy for people to dismiss this type of thinking as paranoid, I think that it needs to be seriously engaged; looked at from the perspective of paradigm maintenance it makes perfect sense.

London 11 Endorse Geneva II + Gray Lady Postmortem on Obama's Syria Policy

A long postmortem on the Obama administration's policy toward Syria appears today in the New York Times. There are no new revelations in "Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed," written by Mark Mazzetti, Robert Worth and Michael Gordon, except for the detail that CIA's covert program to arm and train the rebels began in April rather than June. Samantha Power comes off as a twit; White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough comes away looking good -- a persistent critic of military involvement in the civil war.

The word picture painted by Mazzetti, Worth and Gordon is of a skeptical commander-in-chief rope-a-doping a bloodthirsty foreign policy establishment, as well as Israel's Netanyahu, who was frightened that Hezbollah might acquire a portion of Syria's chemical weapons stock, and Jordan's King Abdullah, who was worried about the number of Syrian refugees he was having to harbor.

The article is skimpy when it comes to describing Obama's momentous decision to seek Congressional authorization for an attack on Syria and his quickly abandoning that route when the Russians came forward with a deal to have Syria sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. Nowhere is there a discussion of the overwhelming public and Congressional opposition to the Authorization of the Use of Military Force that stymied the warmongers and had Obama and Kerry grasping for the Lavrov-brokered deal.

The news this morning is that Geneva II appears to be a "go." This from Michael Gordon and Alan Cowell in "U.S. and 10 Other Nations Back Peace Talks, but Syrian Moderates Are Uncertain":

The communiqué issued by the London 11, as the group of nations is known, endorsed several points that are important to the Syrian opposition, but also lacked important details. 

It reiterated that a transitional government should be established as part of a political settlement, and said that when the transitional body was formed, President Bashar al-Assad and his close associates “with blood on their hands will have no role in Syria.” That approach is sharply at odds with the notion floated recently by Mr. Assad, who said in an interview that he was thinking about running for re-election in 2014. 

The communiqué also called for stepping up support to the political and military wings of the moderate Syrian opposition, but did not specify what additional assistance was to be provided.

The Syrian opposition coalition will meet next week to decide if it will attend. Since its president, Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, owes his position to Saudi influence I suppose there is a chance that the Syrian National Coalition will boycott Geneva II. Saudi Arabia has been making its disappointment with the current trend of international affairs known of late, first by declining to address the United Nations General Assembly and then refusing a seat that it had lobbied for on the Security Council.

But the train if not already gone is leaving the station:

On Tuesday, Martin Nesirky, a United Nations spokesman, said preparatory meetings would be held on Nov. 5 involving Russia, the United States and Lakhdar Brahimi, the special United Nations envoy for Syria, followed by a meeting that includes the other three permanent Security Council members — Britain, China and France. 

Mr. Kerry said Tuesday that he thought the moderate opposition leaders would decide to participate.

And it is unclear even if the Saudis are able to block participation in Geneva II by al-Jarba what this would mean. The Syrian National Coalition has always been something of a fiction, a creature of Turkish hotel conference rooms. If the great powers want to broker a peace deal on Syria, which now seems to be the case with the rise of Al Nusra Front and Islamic State of Syria and al-Sham, participation by the "official" Syrian opposition is not necessary. Hence the Saudi tantrums.

The Plan: Erase Arab Spring

The way it works is that things happen. Events take place. We read about them online or in the newspaper. Sometimes we are told that there is a pattern unfolding, but usually the news is presented without much rhyme or reason. Holders of great wealth and the large governments that bolster such interests prefer that the "deep politics" stay buried.

Reading this morning two stories in the New York Times national edition -- Robert F. Worth's "Egypt is Arena for Influence of Arab Rivals" and David Kirkpatrick's "Egypt Leaders’ Transition Plan Meets With Swift Criticism" -- it's pretty obvious what the plan is: Return to the days before the Arab Spring.

A lot is being made recently about the sudden decline in influence of the Qataris, who backed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and took the lead in organizing jihadists to fight in Syria, and the return of Saudi Arabia as the dominant regional player. I think this is a sidebar.

The Arab Spring is about more than monarchical Gulf states jockeying for influence and the electoral prowess of long-repressed Islamist organizations; it's about the aspirations of the young for gainful employment and a seat at the table where decisions are made. None of these aspirations are being met nor will they be. Take a look at the new Egyptian prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi. He's a neoliberal economist. This is from David Kirkpatrick's story:

The new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, is a prominent economist who served as finance minister under an earlier interim government. A founding member of the Social Democratic Party, he has criticized former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi as failing to move fast enough to open up the economy, reform Egypt’s bloated and unaffordable subsidy programs and provide for the poor. 

Mr. Beblawi, 77, is ideally suited to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund over a package of changes tied to a pending $4.8 billion loan, a deal that seemed out of reach after Mr. Morsi’s ouster but is still considered essential to save the economy. With a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, Mr. Beblawi has written three books on Middle East economics, worked as a senior official of the United Nations and advised the Arab Monetary Fund. He resigned after four months as finance minister under the previous military-led transitional government — after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster — after soldiers shot dozens of mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators and the generals blamed them for scaring their troops. 

Before the current crackdown, Mr. Beblawi had also welcomed the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak as providing an opportunity for Islamists to enter the democratic process. “The positive thing that resulted from this was that it gave a chance for the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam, which have always been persecuted and wrongfully treated for a long time,” he said in an interview published last month in an English language-newspaper here.

So this is the narrative we're being fed now: "Arab Spring meant that it was time to let political Islam have a shot at governance. We gave it a year, several if you factor in the transition. Now it's time to go back to the way things were." This is what the leaders in Jeddah and Tel Aviv and D.C. and Brussels are banking on. And it seems to me to be awfully weak. Certainly they must know that this is not going to fly with the masses. But I suppose that their calculation is that the only popular forces organized enough to pose a problem are the Islamist parties. (The holy warriors of Al Qaeda are in the pocket of the GCC member states, so no problem there.) The youthful masses who want economic justice and clean government but lack organization can be dealt with by force. Crackdown hard and they'll shut up and fall into line. This is the plan apparently. And I don't think it's a wise one.

If you want to send an email to Congress and the President, telling them to obey the law and call a coup a coup and cut aid to Egypt, you can go to the Just Foreign Policy web site.

Who is Fomenting Sectarian Hatred?

If there's any doubt who is attempting to broaden the Syrian civil war to engulf neighboring Lebanon, look no further than this morning's story, "Soldiers Clash With Sunni Sheik’s Followers in Southern Lebanon," by Ben Hubbard and Hania Mourtada. 

Sheik Ahmad al-Assir is a Sunni firebrand who has recently achieved notoriety thanks to several blistering speeches criticizing Hezbollah and attacking Hassan Nasrallah. Al-Assir's armed followers attacked Hezbollah offices earlier this month in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon. The Lebanese Army said it was attacked yesterday by al-Assir gunmen in Abra, east of Sidon. According to the Daily Star, seventeen soldiers have been killed, along with 35 gunmen. The Lebanese commandos seized the al-Assir complex in Sidon as fighting continued for a second day:

Army eavesdropping devices indicated that Assir was still in the vicinity of the complex, the sources said, adding that the fiery sheikh was heard as urging his gunmen not to surrender to the military and "fight to the death". 

The seizure of the complex at noon came after an attempt late Monday by a group of Salafi preachers to mediate a truce reached a dead end, with the Army determined to continue its operations until Assir was captured and his followers crushed, the sources said. 

In overnight fighting, the Army had tightened the noose around Assir and his some 250 gunmen barricaded in the Abra complex, 40 km south of Beirut, the sources said. 

Fighting erupted Sunday after armed supporters of Assir attacked a military checkpoint near the Abra complex, killing three soldiers and wounding several others.

Al-Assir is seen in Lebanon as performing deeds dictated by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two monarchies who thus far seem to be willing to go to any length, no matter the lives lost or the chaos caused, to oust Bashar al-Assad. I interpret this attack by al-Assir's group as proof that things are not going well for the rebels in Syria. There is a tried and true pattern to the conflict so far: when the opposition is getting its clock cleaned, terrorist attacks spring up in other countries in the region. In all of this, to the extent that the United States is facilitating this Saudi- and Qatari-led destabilization, the Obama administration looks truly feckless.

For a snapshot of this hopelessly confused, conflicted and dithering mindset, read Thomas Friedman's column, "Syria Scorecard," from yesterday. It seems simple to me. If you're from the "realist" school of foreign policy you apply the same standard you applied in Bahrain -- regional stability over ideology. But apparently anti-Shiite/anti-Iranian blinders are securely fastened.

A balanced, sober, lengthy piece, "The Price of Loyalty in Syria," written by Robert Worth, appeared in the New York Times Magazine yesterday. It's worth reading. It provides some insight into what it's like being an Alawite in Syria; also, it makes a convincing argument that anti-Shiite sectarianism crept in quickly to the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. It is commonly stated in the Western media that sectarianism was first introduced by the al-Assad government to raise doubts about the democratic bona fides of the opposition.

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"?