Behind the Scenes at UN, American diplomats are doing the bidding of their Saudi allies by refusing humanitarian relief and war crimes accountability in Yemen

While Americans were transfixed by the bizarre turmoil in the White House, American diplomats at the UN have been actively trying to stop a multilateral proposal for a comprehensive cease fire in Yemen.  Instead they are pushing a pause without any humanitarian relief nor any mention of accountability for war crimes.  Read more in this article in the Guardian.

It seems that Nikki Haley is leaving her post as American ambassador to the UN and no longer has anything to say.  British diplomats trying to build a cease-fire proposal in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah were blindsided by an American counter-proposal after being promised American support for their efforts.  The American idea for a cease-fire has all the passages calling for humanitarian aid and accountability for war crimes stripped out, just as the Saudis want it.  The Americans even threatened to veto the British proposal.

This is the denouement of the Khashoggi incident– a peace offer in Yemen from the Americans, without any guarantees of humanitarian relief for twenty million starving Yemenis.  There has been no acknowledgement from the White House that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the assassination and post-mortem dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen with solid establishment ties who merely criticized the prince’s leadership style without calling for any upheaval.

Mohammed bin Salman is so sensitive that he orders the killing of a man who mildly criticizes him in public (not even saying anything personal or insulting, much less advocating his overthrow.)  He is so paranoid that he pursues this critic, who tries to escape his grasp by coming to America as a welcomed guest (not a bedraggled refugee.)  He engineers a plot to lure the man out of the US to a Saudi embassy in another country (Turkey) so he can be killed on Saudi soil.  He attempts to conceal the killing by having the body “disappeared.”

How can we associate with such a leader?  Only for vast sums of cash deposited in secret to the personal accounts of family members of the president.   Senators, not in on the payoff, are crying foul, to no avail.   Thus we see that the government is consolidating into an autocracy that follows the whims, for the personal cash benefit, of he who must not be named.  Our president doesn’t really believe in democracy.

He is betraying our democratic allies, supporting autocrats worldwide, and destroying our economy with capricious tariffs.  He has shown himself impervious to reasonable persuasion by the wisest men in his political party.  The only way to stop this catastrophe is to remove the autocrat.  Unfortunately, the mechanisms for orderly removal of the chief of state are unequal to the emergency.

In a simpler time, 1868 to be exact, a president was impeached (and acquitted) in a month.  So Americans should take heart.  We don’t have to wait two more years for another president.  All we need is Mueller’s smoking gun.  It only took Nixon three days to resign after the Oval Office tapes were made public.