Sunday, May 03, 2015

Can't see the drones for the bombs

White House statement on Yemen, specifically on a National Security Council meeting with the incoming UN special envoy on the Yemeni peace process --

Ms. Monaco underscored the importance the United States places on rapidly shifting from the military conflict in Yemen to all-party negotiations under UN auspices, and offered strong U.S. support for Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed’s efforts. She noted that this shift would allow Yemen to resume the inclusive political transition process outlined in the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative, the National Dialogue outcomes, and relevant UN Security Council resolutions and focus on combatting al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula. ...  Finally, Ms. Monaco and Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed agreed that all Yemenis must come together in a political dialogue to serve the needs of the Yemeni people and counter the shared threat from al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is exploiting the crisis. 

So the White House is defining a satisfactory solution to Yemen's crisis as one where everyone agrees that the big threat is AQAP and, implicitly, is fine with US drone attacks on AQAP and anyone else who might be in the vicinity. No other threat to Yemen -- such as its corrupt former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who tactically agreed with the US on the evilitude of AQAP -- is singled out the same way. Does the extreme tangle of a Yemen peace dialogue really need an externally-imposed demand of agreement to a militarized solution to the existence of one entity?

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