29 May 20
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29 May 20
RSN: Mort Rosenblum | On Redacting a Wide, Wondrous World
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "A whiff of spice can take me back to a sundown in Sana'a, sprawled on carpet cushions, chewing khat with zonked-out Yemeni pals under bright stars atop a six-story skyscraper made of mud. A haunting chorus of muezzins wailed their call to prayer as they had for a thousand years."
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "A whiff of spice can take me back to a sundown in Sana'a, sprawled on carpet cushions, chewing khat with zonked-out Yemeni pals under bright stars atop a six-story skyscraper made of mud. A haunting chorus of muezzins wailed their call to prayer as they had for a thousand years."
We ate fahsi served on ornate brass platters: lamb cutlets stewed with chickpeas in cardamom, coriander and cumin (that is just the c’s), laced with fiery pili-pili. Honey-pistachio pastries came with cups of green coffee I won’t attempt to describe.
I left Tucson in the 1960s to roam the world in pursuit of news but also on a quest to find tucked-away treasures — to watch, listen, breathe in aromas and linger late at night to learn how the other 95 percent lived. Far and away, Sana’a was the jackpot.
That magical city, which legend dates back to Noah’s son Shem, nestled in a valley 7,500-feet-high among dramatic peaks. Narrow lanes dotted with donkey plop wound among the carved doorways, stained glass and alabaster façades of high-rise mud mansions. From above, it was an Arabian Nights fantasy in gingerbread.
In a warren of souks, alive with noise and color, we talked politics over hubble-bubble pipes. North Yemen was open to all comers. China built roads; Taiwan looked after F5 jets from America. North Korea did the stadiums; South Korea did the sewers. South Yemen was a Soviet vassal, but Moscow also sent financial and military aid up north.
Today, Sana’a is largely rubble, partly because of Raytheon Corporation bombs built in Tucson. Yemen, now unified but at war with itself, is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Half of its 30 million people are starving, and Covid-19 spreads. Perhaps 200,000 combatants and civilians have been killed, perhaps many more. No one knows.
I am partial to old mud walls and tile, lost long ago to Tucson when developers tore out its old Mexican heart. But so much else in the world has been destroyed or closed off by conflict. Today, a world map with no-go areas inked over would look like the Mueller report redacted by William Barr.
As Yemen makes dead clear, Donald Trump’s foreign policy is wreaking new levels of irreparable havoc in an interconnected world. And it exposes his single-minded pursuit of profit and his own personal interests.
Saudi Arabia waded into the civil war in 2015 with relentless airstrikes in the north on rebelling Shiites – Houthis. The kingdom blockaded food and medical supplies in what human rights observers call a deliberate, indiscriminate siege campaign.
Barack Obama authorized logistical support to counter Houthi shelling into Saudi Arabia, but he began to scale back as civilian casualties increased. Trump, in contrast, doubled down. Jared Kushner courted Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and worked out a 10-year arms sales package approaching a half trillion dollars.
Fury mounted in 2018 when the prince’s goons lured Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. They silenced his critical columns in The Washington Post by dismembering him with a bone saw. Trump shrugged that off with a few token words.
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, joined Bernie Sanders in a bill to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, invoking the War Powers Resolution to keep the American military out of foreign conflicts.
“We have been providing the bombs that the Saudi-led coalition is using, we have been refueling their planes before they drop those bombs, and we have been assisting with intelligence,” Sanders said. “In too many cases our weapons are being used to kill civilians.” In August, he noted, an American-made bomb hit a school bus, killing dozens of young boys and wounding many more.
The bill passed early in 2019, 54-46, but not enough senators could override Trump’s veto. A New York Times investigation recently revealed the damning details.
In May 2017, Lee put Saudi arms sales on hold in the Armed Services Committee. Raytheon countered with its chief lobbyist: Mark Esper, now secretary of defense. Peter Navarro, the trade adviser, wrote a memo titled, “Trump Mideast arms sales deal in extreme jeopardy, job losses imminent.” Sales soon resumed.
On the Fox business channel, Trump laid out his approach: “I want Boeing and I want Lockheed and I want Raytheon to take those orders and to hire lots of people to make that incredible equipment.”
Day after day, Americans watch their president intone dire threats with jutting jaw and glowering brow, a striking echo of Mussolini. At home, his self-serving policies are plain to see. But few realize how much destruction and suffering he causes abroad.
Nothing in foreign policy can be seen in isolation. In America, “breaking news” deals with the moment. But human memories are long, and the past matters. NATO and the UN need cooperation to stifle conflict; Trump doesn’t do cooperation. America First equates to America Only.
Trump inherited crises that required defusing tension, strengthening European alliances, and finding common ground with adversaries. The Middle East, especially, needed evenhanded diplomacy. His approach was the exact opposite.
In his view, the massive assault on the Islam State’s caliphate was the end of terrorism, an American victory to bedazzle his base. In fact, Iraqis and Kurds did most of the in-close dying, and American non-policy creates far more terrorists than it suppresses.
Until Desert Storm took back Kuwait in 1990, Middle East geopolitics amounted to backgammon, with subtle moves and shifting strategies. George H.W. Bush chose not to push on to Baghdad, mindful of a power vacuum after Saddam Hussein.
But the Gulf War infuriated Osama bin Laden, who said a half million infidel U.S. troops, females included, on bases in Saudi Arabia defiled Islam’s holiest sites. He formed Al Qaeda, which first attacked U.S. embassies in Africa.
After 9/11, George W. Bush pursued him in Afghanistan, then decided to finish off Saddam. That blasted the backgammon board all to hell. American torture embittered Sunnis, who created ISIS. When their caliphate was overrun, many fled to West Africa, linking up with other Islamic zealots who fled south when Libya fell.
Like pungent spices evoke Yemen, clunking wooden bells take me back to Timbuktu, knees gripping a camel hump with blue-turbaned Tuaregs headed into the dunes. That fabled center of Islamic learning on the Niger River dwarfed anything I had imagined.
I’d visit markets ablaze in color and then leave my shoes by carved wood doorways for tea with hospitable imams. Back at the French-run Sofitel, I’d swim while tourists sunbathed in bikinis. Dinner came with red wine unfazed by a journey from Burgundy.
Today, a wide stretch of West Africa is redacted off the map. Even armed convoys are wary of Timbuktu. Terrorists from Libya joined rebelling Tuaregs to occupy the city. Islamist fundamentalists destroyed much of it. French forces drove them out, but France has lost 41 men in Mali since 2013. Another 200 U.N. peacekeepers were killed.
Trump, uninterested in places with nothing to offer, wants to cut aid and U.S. military presence in Africa, where climate change he refuses to confront already forces millions to flee their homes.
Stepping back, the global order is changing. Trump’s version of the pandemic — it is all China’s fault — provokes scorn abroad. He mocked it for months as another Democratic hoax. Until mid-March, he praised Xi Jinping’s openness and prompt action.
China hid the threat briefly until courageous doctors sounded alarms. By mid-January, the Chinese published vital data about the deadly coronavirus, but Trump ignored his experts’ briefings. Had Obama left “a mess” (he didn’t), that was three years ago.
With grim irony as Covid-19 spreads in America, Trump supporters who want to keep out foreigners are, at least for now, themselves turned away at borders.
Trump refused WHO tests that contained the virus elsewhere. He withheld funding and shunned a video summit to plot a common strategy. Xi stepped in with a $2 billion grant, equal to four years of America’s dues.
Xi seized the moment to assert China’s growing global role. For starters, Beijing would end Hong Kong’s autonomy far sooner than agreed in the 1997 handover with Britain that pledged “one country, two systems” until 2047.
China contained Covid-19 with drastic surveillance, message control, and lockdowns that are anathema to any free society. Trump is doing his part, inspiring dictators to muzzle their media with two words: fake news. He applauds Narendra Modi as he veers the world’s biggest democracy toward Hindu hegemony.
After Trump saw he could not wish away the virus, he focused on twisting truth to elude blame. Meantime, crises deepen all over the map. Israel and Palestine face showdown. Kim Jong-un is building a bigger bomb. And all the rest.
Keeping the peace in today’s world is no job for a greed-obsessed, clueless amateur backed by private interests and corporations, each with their own to-do lists. A new president can fix some damage. But no one can bring back that sunset in Sana’a.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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