Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of history

US is more interested in making more enemies and starting new wars. Terrorists won't just sit down and take a do nothing approach with such threats.

We are the Awaleq


Born of bitterness

We are the nails that go into the rock
We are the sparks of hell

He who defies us will be burned
This is the tribal chant of the powerful Awaleq tribe of Yemen, in which they bid defiance to the world. Its angry tone conveys the flavour of Yemeni life and it should give pause to those in the US who blithely suggest greater American involvement in Yemen in the wake of the attempt to destroy a US plane by a Nigerian student who says he received training there.

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Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of history - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

Yemen is now always in the news like Iraq and Afghanistan.

(SAN'A, Yemen) — The U.S. and Britain closed their embassies in Yemen on Sunday in the face of al-Qaida threats, after both countries announced an increase in aid to the government to fight the terror group linked to the failed attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas.

Read more: U.S., U.K. Close Yemen Embassies - TIME

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Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

Definately action is required, the tribes need to be put in their place.

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

OxymoronP said:

Definately action is required, the tribes need to be put in their place.

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Its easy in Yeman unlike the Talibans.

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

Another Somalia on the opposite side of the Gulf of Aden is just what we need.

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

Manc Skipper said:

Another Somalia on the opposite side of the Gulf of Aden is just what we need.

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You can kill 2 birds with one stone - both the pirates and terrorists.

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

RDS said:

US is more interested in making more enemies and starting new wars. Terrorists won't just sit down and take a do nothing approach with such threats.

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I haven't noticed terrorists being inclined towards a "live and let live" philosophy either.

The initial attempt on the Twin Towers, and the bombing of the USS Cole, and 9/11, all took place while we were not at war with nor occupying any Muslim or Arab nation.

It is true that it takes two to make a "fight"... because if only one attacks and the other does nothing, it isn't known as a "fight", it is called a "slaughter".

Or as Eowen so eloquently put it, "Those without swords can still die upon them."

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

Goshin said:

Or as Eowen so eloquently put it, "Those without swords can still die upon them."

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A few thousand more just like her, and I'd say we would have an effective fighting force there.

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

From the link.
"... There is ominous use by American politicians and commentators of the phrase "failed state" in relation to Yemen, as if this some how legitimised foreign intervention. It is extraordinary that the US political elite has never taken on board that its greatest defeats have been in just such "failed states"', not least Lebanon in 1982, when 240 US Marines were blown up; Somalia in the early 1990s when the body of a US helicopter pilot was dragged through the streets; Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and Afghanistan after the supposed fall of the Taliban.

Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the arch-hawk Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, was happily confirming this week that the Green Berets and the US Special Forces are already there. He cited with approval an American official in Sanaa as telling him that, "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If you don't act pre-emptively Yemen will be tomorrow's war." In practice pre-emptive strikes are likely to bring a US military entanglement in Yemen even closer. .... "

Re: Patrick Cockburn: Threats to Yemen prove America hasn't learned the lesson of his

arch-hawk Senator Joe Lieberman

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Holy crap. Anyone who considered Joe Lieberman "the arch-hawk" would think I was Attila the Hun. Source discredited, in my eyes at least.