Yemen war is deranged bid by Saudi Arabia to say it matters: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Kevin Barrett, a political analyst, to discuss the Saudi war on Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why are Yemeni civilians being punished? Yesterday it was a market, today it was water infrastructure.

Barrett: Well, I think that this is intentional; it is at least partly intentional. We know that the Saudis are using cluster bombs and other kinds of munitions that tend to be indiscriminate. We know that their pilots are flying very high. The Americans who were advising and supplying the Saudis in this onslaught on Yemen are actually criticizing the Saudis for having their pilots flying so high that they cannot accurately hit targets, so they just end up indiscriminately slaughtering civilians.

I think that Ban Ki-moon and the world is gradually waking up to see that what we are seeing here is another kind of Vietnam situation. Just like the US in Vietnam, the Saudis in Yemen don’t really understand what they are trying to do. I guess they have some kind of domino theory involving Iranian influence just as the US in Vietnam had a domino theory about communism; in neither case does it make a whole lot of sense and unfortunately the Saudis, with their vast oil wealth have, managed to really destabilize the region by dragging other countries that are dependent on Saudi largess into this war; but they are bogged down. Just like the US in Vietnam, they have gotten into a quagmire, they are not achieving any military objectives, whatsoever, and so all they can do is just punish the people of Yemen for no particular reason.

And it is time for this to stop. I am glad that Ban Ki-moon is speaking out more forcefully now. He has spoken out in the past but he is apparently getting a little bit more intense now, which is good.

Unfortunately, the Western corporate media does not seem to care very much about Yemen and I wish that would change. I wish Amnesty International and other human rights groups would succeed in getting some media attention because this is a horrific destruction of an entire country.

Press TV: I am wondering… you said that the world is now slowly speaking up about this but speaking up is one thing and acting about this is another. Do you think that there will be action at some point?

Barrett: Well, I would like to imagine that the lame-duck Obama administration, which no longer really has to answer politically to the various lobbies in the way that it had to earlier, perhaps would be willing to pressure Saudi Arabia and to stop giving them a green light for this. The Saudis came to the Obama administration, we learned it in the New York Times article three days ago, and got the green light to go ahead and attack Yemen. They told the Obama administration that it would all be over very quickly, that they would have a quick and decisive victory and, on that basis, John Kerry convinced the Obama administration to say ‘yes go ahead;’ and this did not play out the way the Saudis said it would.

At some point, one would hope that the Obama administration and other world capitals would recognize that this is a disaster, a humanitarian disaster, a complete mess. There are no strategic objectives here being served; it is just a kind of a random mass murder of innocent civilians by Saudi Arabia and their accomplices simply in a deranged attempt to send a message that they still matter.

And the more people they kill to no purpose, the greater the message becomes that they are out of control and maybe where we really need the regime change is in Saudi Arabia.

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