Yemen: bad guys vs worse guys

President Obama was trying his best to be a friend to Iran, but one thing he did that infuriated his "friends" in the knee jerk European left was to back the Saudis and approve of airstrikes against the Yemeni Houthi rebels.

Here is the PC meme from DW:

Instead, Trump chose to feed the Saudis' exaggerated fears about Iran's influence in the region. He explicitly gave his approval for Saudi Arabia's murderous military intervention in Yemen as an important part in the war on terror. If he is really serious about wanting "Muslim boys and girls to grow up free from fear and safe from violence" then he should have asked his hosts to end the Yemen conflict.

Reality check: The Persian/Arab wars predate Islam... and while Iranian backed Assad regime is bad, it has pretty well been realized that the ISIS takeover of the rebels in Syria would be a lot worse.

In contrast, the Houthi, who are helped by Iran, are in some ways as bad as ISIS... maybe worse, because there isn't a lot of reports coming from there, and the westeern press swallows the Iranian anti Saudi/anti western agiprop without bothering to check what is reported by people who actually have people working there.

the UNFPA page has lots of article about how women are suffering and how rights for women have gotten worse especially in Houthi areas.

more here

why does this count? Because the social media can be manpupated with photo ops of "drone/bomb" strikes, but when women die in childbirth or children die of malnutrition, they die quietly.

This Human Rights Watch report starts with the evil saudi part (summary: Bombing the bad guys and killing nearby civilians accidentally is evil), but if you read down you find they didn't start the atrocities: The Houthi atrocities were up front and personal.

Child soldiers? Check. Terror attacks against civilians? Check. Stopping protests? Check. Jailing political enemies? Check. Using landmines in civilian areas? Check

more here.

and most importantly: The lack of civil rights for women. 

In 2011, Yemeni women took the streets to participate in the revolution. Many of them were subjected to defamatory campaigns, which culminated in Saleh's April 2011 speech in which he banned gender-mixing in the demonstration arenas....

Although Islah seems to have been harsh about women’s issues, Houthis are much worse. They are not obsessed with imposing gender segregation, but they obstruct female movement by forcing women to return to their homes before the sunset. All Yemeni political forces are similar in their targeting of women. The victims of Islah are now suffering the same fate at the hands of the Houthis, but with greater harassment and fear given the absence of any accountability for such acts.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/yemen-women-activists-revolution-houthis-saleh.html#ixzz4i4bm9Z3n

2014 Reuters article on Houthi oppression against women.



Strategypage on the history and culture of that ancient culture.
this article is about the problem in getting in food to feed their civilian population. Corruption is a big problem.

The rebels are accused of expelling UN personnel needed to inspect aid shipments and the government claims the rebels have been seizing aid shipments and preventing UN personnel from verifying that the aid is going to civilians...

This article notes the Iranian connection, and how they manipulate the press:

summary: President Obama was called a murderer by the "anti war" left for helping the Saudis by using drones (which are more accurate than regular bombings, i.e. fewer nearby casualties).

But now everyone is waiting to see what the new president does.

Trump's visit making nice with the Saudis mean two things; One, the Saudi side (the less bad side) will probably win.

And two: The anti war left will, with Iran's help, be able to smear Trump as a baby killer for doing the same thing as President Obama, but now will actually get lots of press coverage for this in the anti Trump press.