Of Cabbages and Kings

 The International Rescue Committee reports that since 2015 Saudi Arabia has undertaken 18,000 airstrikes on Yemen averaging one every 99 minutes, one-third of which have hit non-military targets. "August was the most violent month of 2018 in Yemen with 500 people killed in just nine days."

        The IRC, created in 1931 by Albert Einstein, Paul Tillich and other refugees from Nazism, is currently led by David Millibrand, former British Foreign Secretary and son of parents also forced to flee the Nazis. As previously reported here the killing in Yemen is being done by U. S. made planes and bombs, refueled midair by U. S. Air Force tanker aircraft piloted by U. S. airmen.

        The intensity suggests desperation. By many accounts the Saudi ground war against the Houthi rebels (said to be Iran's surrogets) in Yemen is not going well, turned into a stale-mate on the ground. Its horrors are part of the Trump-Bibi Netanyahu-John Bolton pathological obsession with Iran as Middle East monster. Zeid bin al-Hussein, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, cites Nietzsche's observation that if you set out to fight monsters you have to be careful you do not turn into a monster yourself. Eighteen thousand bombing runs should surely qualify.

        The coalition that Saudi Arabia (a Sunni Arab nation)--plus the U. S. and Israel--has cobbled together is a wobbly fertile crescent composed of Sunni followers scattered from Lebanon through Iraq and into Afghanistan, but these demographics don't really work. In addition to Shiite Iran, Shia Muslims make up the majority of the civilian population in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan and of course irony of ironies in Syria which is 70 percent Sunni, but they're the enemy!

        Iran, on the other hand continues to conform to the inspection requirements of the nuclear accord of 2015 that Trump has now abrogated and the EU opposes the Trump/Pompeo/Netanyahu strategy against Iran.  

        There's more woe for the Trump-Pompeo strategy: including the circumspective and arms length attitude of both Turkey and Russia; while not exactly waiting in the wings there is also China-already on station in the Middle East with many lucrative development contracts. A very imperfect union indeed.

        Hence the night flight last Wednesday by Secretary of State Pompeo to Riyad to meet with King Salman and his Princely CEO, Mohammid bin Salman was not to solve the hideous murder of Jamal Kashoggi, but to prevent further damage to this Trump/Israeli inspired strategy to destroy Iran. Far more important, it was to keep the biggest military and development contracts in the world in U. S. hands. Briefly summarized by the by the New York Times today (10/20/18):

• "Saudi Arabia is pouring $20 billion into a new investment fund run by Wall Street's Blackstone Group. The French oil giant Total just inked a nine-billion-euro petrochemical deal with the kingdom. The British defense company BAE Systems is selling 48 Typhoon combat jets to Riyadh for an estimated five billion British pounds...."
• "In the last decade, Saudi Arabia was awarded $138.9 billion in potential military contracts under the United States' Foreign Military Sales rules, according to the Congressional Research Service. American companies including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing, not to mention President Trump, are salivating over recent Saudi pledges to buy nearly $110 billion worth of arms in coming years. Much of that commitment has yet to be fulfilled....
• "And that's just spending on weaponry. Saudi Arabia has also dished out billions in fees to American and European banks for advising on business deals. The kingdom bought around $20 billion worth of American products last year, including Ford autos and Boeing jets.
• "Riyadh also sealed $15 billion in deals with General Electric for goods and services in areas like power generation, mining and health care. And the oil giants can't possibly walk away from one of the world's biggest producer. American start-ups have benefited from the largess, as Saudi Arabia became their biggest source of capital last year. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund recently invested $1 billion in Lucid, a competitor to Elon Musk's Tesla car company, and $3.5 billion in Uber.

So you see it's all about the money.

        In the meantime, half of the American religious community remains captive to the power symbols of Trumpian evangelicalism because it is so American, therefore so right with God! The other half, the liberals-with notable exceptions-continue too often deaf to the cries of hundreds of children dying in Yemen or drowning in the Mediterranean or being separated from their parents at our southern border. At two liberal congregations this writer observed in the past week not a word was spoken about the growing savagery. It is to weep.