Friday, November 24th., 2017Ignoring Washington’s Role in Yemen Carnage, 60 Minutes Paints US as Savior
Friday, November 24th., 2017
"...The
$400 billion in arms the US has sold to Saudi Arabia are not part of
the Washington Post‘s explanation (11/19/17) of how things got so bad in
Yemen..."Ignoring Washington’s Role in Yemen Carnage, 60 Minutes Paints US as Savior
(FAIR) — In one of the most glaring, power-serving omissions in some time, CBS News’ 60 Minutes (11/19/17)
took a deep dive into the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and did not
once mention the direct role the United States played in creating,
perpetuating and prolonging a crisis that’s left over 10,000 civilians dead, 2 million displaced, and an estimated 1 million with cholera.
Correspondent Scott Pelley’s segment, “When Food Is Used as a
Weapon,” employed excellent on-the-ground reporting to highlight the
famine and bombing victims of Saudi Arabia’s brutal two-and-a-half year
siege of Yemen. But its editors betrayed this reporting—and their
viewers—by stripping the conflict of any geopolitical context, and
letting one of its largest backers, the United States government,
entirely off the hook.
60
Minutes‘ Scott Pelley (11/19/17) introduces a report on the
humanitarian crisis in Yemen–without mentioning the US role in the
conflict.
As FAIR has previously noted (10/14/16, 2/27/17),
US media frequently ignore the Pentagon’s role in the conflict
altogether. Pelly did not once note that the US assists Saudi Arabia’s
bombing campaign with logistical support, refueling and the selling of
arms to the tune of $400 billion. The US also routinely protectsSaudi Arabia at the UN from condemnation—a shield that may have vastly prolonged the war, given that it signals the support of the most powerful country on Earth.
Meanwhile, Iran’s involvement in the conflict—which, even by the most
paranoid estimates, is far less than the United States’—is placed front
and center as one side of the “war.” The conflict is framed in
hackneyed “Sunni vs Shia” terms, with Saudi Arabia unironically called
the “leader of the Sunni world” and Iran the “leader of the Shia world.”
A reductionist narrative that omits that Sunnis have fought alongside the Houthis, and the fact that Saudi bombs kill members
of the marginalized, mostly Sunni Muhamasheen caste, who are neither
“led” by Saudi Arabia nor part of the “Shia world.”
This cartoon dichotomy is the extent of the context. Saudi Arabia is
rightly singled out as the primary aggressor (though a dubious
comparative body count of 3,000 killed by Saudis vs. 1,000 by Houthis is
proffered that is far lower than the UN’s January 2017 estimates of
10,000 total civilians killed), but who the Saudis’ primary patrons
are—the United States and Britain (and Canada, too)—is simply not
mentioned. One would think, watching Pelley’s report, it was a purely
regional conflict, and not one sanctioned and armed by major Western
superpowers to counter “Iranian aggression.”
To compound the obfuscation, 60 Minutes doesn’t just omit the
US role in the war, it paints the US as a savior rescuing its victims.
The hero of the piece is American David Beasley, the director of the
UN’s World Food Programme, the organization coordinating humanitarian
aid. “The US is [the World Food Programme]’s biggest donor, so the
director is most often an American. Beasley was once governor of South
Carolina,” Pelly narrates over B-roll hero shots of Beasley overseeing
food distribution.
Beasley, in his sit-down interview, bends over backwards to downplay
Saudi responsibility, insisting at every turn that “all parties” are to
blame:
“You see it’s chaos, it’s starvation, it’s hunger, and
it’s unnecessary conflict, strictly man-made. All parties involved in
this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands are dirty. All
parties.”
The spin that the crisis is the fault of “all parties” is
understandable from a US-funded de facto diplomat, charged with
providing some cover for a major regional ally. But the premise that
“all parties” are causing the famine is never challenged by Pelley. It’s
taken as fact, and the piece moves on.
The
$400 billion in arms the US has sold to Saudi Arabia are not part of
the Washington Post‘s explanation (11/19/17) of how things got so bad in
Yemen.
It’s part of a broader trend of erasing American responsibility for the conflict and resulting humanitarian disaster. The Washington Post ran an editorial last week (11/8/17) and an explainer piece Saturday (11/19/17)
detailing the carnage in Yemen, neither one of which bothered to
mention US involvement. American complicity in the war is so broad in
scope, it merited a warning last
year from the US’s own State Department they could be liable for war
crimes—yet it hardly merits a mention in major media accounts. The war
just is, a collective moral failing on the part of “all
parties”—irrational sectarian Muslims lost in a pat “cycle of violence”
caricature.
As momentum builds in Congress,
animated by grassroots anti-war activists, to push back against the war
and hold US lawmakers accountable, how the US contributes to the death
and disease in the Arabian peninsula is of urgent political import. By
erasing the US role in the war, CBS producers obscure for viewers
the most effective way they can end the war: by pressuring their own
lawmakers to stop supporting it. Instead, viewers are left with what
filmmaker Adam Curtis calls “Oh, dearism”:
the act of feeling distressed but ultimately helpless in the face of
mindless cruelty—perpetrated, conveniently, by everyone but us.
This article was chosen for
republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media
republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The
views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect
Anti-Media editorial policy.
Written by Anti-Media News Desk
