Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The American War in Yemen
It was the rarest of graphics in the American news media: a CNN map in which recent Saudi air strikes in Yemen were represented by little yellow explosions. Below them were the number of civilians killed (“97,” “155,” “unknown casualties”) and, below those, the names of the makers of the weapons that had done the killing (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics). In fact, in the nearly three decades since the Soviet Union imploded, U.S. weapons makers have had a remarkable grip on the global arms trade (latest figure: 34% of all arms sales) and regularly sold their weaponry into places that were hell storms of conflict, particularly the Middle East. Nonetheless, remarkably little thought is given here to how snugly death and destruction in distant lands fit with these glory days of U.S. weapons makers, their soaring profits and rising stock prices.
Fortunately, we now have a report from Code Pink, “War Profiteers: The U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes,” that focuses on the five largest U.S. arms makers -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- and their dealings with just three countries: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. It couldn’t be a grimmer tale -- or, more accurately, the beginning of one, for as that report points out, while the U.S. spent $1.3 trillion on its wars between 1999 and 2011, it also spent a staggering $1.8 trillion in those years to buy, as Code Pink puts it, “new warplanes, warships, weapons, and equipment, most of which were unrelated to the wars it was actually fighting.” (And those figures seem, if anything, to be on the rise in the Trump era.) Keep in mind as well that the Pentagon is slated to receive more than six trillion taxpayer dollars in the next decade alone. The Code Pink researchers grimly point out (as few others do) that
“Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was paid $20.2 million in 2017, even as the company’s weapons killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy made $24.8 million, as millions of people became refugees, fleeing the carnage caused by its weapons. Boeing CEO Dennis A. Muilenberg made $18.5 million, as even the World Bank noted that 90% of the people killed in today’s wars are civilians, mostly women and children.”
As that CNN map suggests, of all the wars underway from which the U.S. weapons companies are profiting, none may be bleaker right now than the Saudi war in Yemen. Five years old and a human tragedy of the first order, it has become a catastrophe of still unknown but staggering dimensions for Yemen’s civilian population. Today, TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon considers that local Armageddon and the grim role the U.S. military (and those arms makers) continue to play in it. Talk about -- to resurrect a phrase from a long-gone era -- “merchants of death"! Those five giant arms makers give the phrase new meaning in our time. Tom
Fortunately, we now have a report from Code Pink, “War Profiteers: The U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes,” that focuses on the five largest U.S. arms makers -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- and their dealings with just three countries: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. It couldn’t be a grimmer tale -- or, more accurately, the beginning of one, for as that report points out, while the U.S. spent $1.3 trillion on its wars between 1999 and 2011, it also spent a staggering $1.8 trillion in those years to buy, as Code Pink puts it, “new warplanes, warships, weapons, and equipment, most of which were unrelated to the wars it was actually fighting.” (And those figures seem, if anything, to be on the rise in the Trump era.) Keep in mind as well that the Pentagon is slated to receive more than six trillion taxpayer dollars in the next decade alone. The Code Pink researchers grimly point out (as few others do) that
“Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was paid $20.2 million in 2017, even as the company’s weapons killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy made $24.8 million, as millions of people became refugees, fleeing the carnage caused by its weapons. Boeing CEO Dennis A. Muilenberg made $18.5 million, as even the World Bank noted that 90% of the people killed in today’s wars are civilians, mostly women and children.”
As that CNN map suggests, of all the wars underway from which the U.S. weapons companies are profiting, none may be bleaker right now than the Saudi war in Yemen. Five years old and a human tragedy of the first order, it has become a catastrophe of still unknown but staggering dimensions for Yemen’s civilian population. Today, TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon considers that local Armageddon and the grim role the U.S. military (and those arms makers) continue to play in it. Talk about -- to resurrect a phrase from a long-gone era -- “merchants of death"! Those five giant arms makers give the phrase new meaning in our time. Tom
Yemen’s Descent into Hell
A Saudi-American War of Terror
By Rajan Menon
It’s the war from hell, the savage one that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with seven other Middle Eastern and North African states, have been waging in Yemen since March 2015, with fulsome support from the Pentagon and American weapons galore. It’s got everything. Dead children in the dozens, a never-ending air campaign that pays scant heed to civilians, famine, cholera, you name it. No wonder it’s facing mounting criticism in Congress and from human rights groups. Still, ever since President Donald Trump (like Barack Obama before him) embraced the Saudi-led coalition as this country’s righteous knight errant in the Middle East, the fight against impoverished Yemen’s Houthi rebels -- who have, in turn, been typecast as Iran’s cats-paw -- has only grown fiercer. Meanwhile, the al-Qaeda affiliate there continues to expand.
For years now, a relentless Saudi air campaign (quite literallyfueled by the U.S. military) has hit endless civilian targets, using American smart bombs and missiles, without a peep of protest or complaint from Washington. Only a highly publicized, completely over-the-top slaughter recently forced the Pentagon to finally do a little mild finger wagging. On August 7th, an airstrike hit a school bus -- with a laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin -- in northern Yemen, killing 51 people, 40 of them schoolchildren. Seventy-nine others were wounded, including 56 children. Soon after, a U.N. Security Council-appointed group of experts issued a reportdetailing numerous other egregious attacks on Yemeni civilians, including people attending weddings and funerals. Perhaps the worst among them killed 137 people and wounded 695 others at a funeral in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, this April.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
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