{"id":335911,"date":"2017-11-21T02:18:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T01:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ignoring-washingtons-role-in-yemen-carnage-60-minutes-paints-us-as-savior-by-adam-johnson\/"},"modified":"2017-11-21T02:18:33","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T01:18:33","slug":"ignoring-washingtons-role-in-yemen-carnage-60-minutes-paints-us-as-savior-by-adam-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ignoring-washingtons-role-in-yemen-carnage-60-minutes-paints-us-as-savior-by-adam-johnson\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignoring Washington\u2019s Role in Yemen Carnage, 60 Minutes Paints US as Savior | By Adam Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In one of the most glaring, power-serving omissions in some time, CBS News<\/strong>\u2019 60 Minutes<\/strong> (11\/19\/17<\/a>) 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\u2019s left over 10,000 civilians dead<\/a>, 2 million displaced,<\/a> and an estimated 1 million with cholera<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Correspondent Scott Pelley\u2019s segment, \u201cWhen Food Is Used as a Weapon,\u201d employed excellent on-the-ground reporting to highlight the famine and bombing victims of Saudi Arabia\u2019s brutal two-and-a-half year siege of Yemen. But its editors betrayed this reporting\u2014and their viewers\u2014by stripping the conflict of any geopolitical context, and letting one of its largest backers, the United States government, entirely off the hook.<\/p>\n

As FAIR has previously noted (10\/14\/16<\/a>, 2\/27\/17<\/a>), US media frequently ignore the Pentagon\u2019s role in the conflict altogether. Pelly did not once note that the US assists Saudi Arabia\u2019s bombing campaign with logistical support, refueling and the selling of arms to the tune of $400 billion<\/a>. \u00a0The US also routinely protects<\/a> Saudi Arabia at the UN from condemnation<\/a>\u2014a shield that may have vastly prolonged the war, given that it signals the support of the most powerful country on Earth.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iran\u2019s involvement in the conflict\u2014which, even by the most paranoid estimates, is far less than the United States\u2019\u2014is placed front and center as one side of the \u201cwar.\u201d The conflict is framed in hackneyed \u201cSunni vs Shia\u201d terms, with Saudi Arabia unironically called the \u201cleader of the Sunni world\u201d and Iran the \u201cleader of the Shia world.\u201d A reductionist narrative that omits that Sunnis have fought alongside<\/a> the Houthis, and the fact that Saudi bombs kill<\/a> members of the marginalized, mostly Sunni Muhamasheen caste, who are neither \u201cled\u201d by Saudi Arabia nor part of the \u201cShia world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s January 2017 estimates<\/a> of 10,000 total civilians killed), but who the Saudis\u2019 primary patrons are\u2014the United States and Britain (and Canada, too)\u2014is simply not mentioned. One would think, watching Pelley\u2019s report, it was a purely regional conflict, and not one sanctioned and armed by major Western superpowers to counter \u201cIranian aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n

To compound the obfuscation, 60 Minutes<\/strong> doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s World Food Programme, the organization coordinating humanitarian aid. \u201cThe US is [the World Food Programme]\u2019s biggest donor, so the director is most often an American. Beasley was once governor of South Carolina,\u201d Pelly narrates over B-roll hero shots of Beasley overseeing food distribution.<\/p>\n

Beasley, in his sit-down interview, bends over backwards to downplay Saudi responsibility, insisting at every turn that \u201call parties\u201d are to blame:<\/p>\n

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You see it\u2019s chaos, it\u2019s starvation, it\u2019s hunger, and it\u2019s unnecessary conflict, strictly man-made. All parties involved in this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands are dirty. All parties.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The spin that the crisis is the fault of \u201call parties\u201d is understandable from a US-funded de facto diplomat, charged with providing some cover for a major regional ally. But the premise that \u201call parties\u201d are causing the famine is never challenged by Pelley. It\u2019s taken as fact, and the piece moves on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of a broader trend of erasing American responsibility for the conflict and resulting humanitarian disaster. The Washington Post <\/strong>ran an editorial last week (11\/8\/17<\/a>) and an explainer piece Saturday (11\/19\/17<\/a>) 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<\/a> last year from the US\u2019s own State Department they could be liable for war crimes\u2014yet it hardly merits a mention in major media accounts. The war just is, a collective moral failing on the part of \u201call parties\u201d\u2014irrational sectarian Muslims lost in a pat \u201ccycle of violence\u201d caricature.<\/p>\n

As momentum builds in Congress<\/a>, 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<\/strong> 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 \u201cOh, dearism<\/a>\u201d: the act of feeling distressed but ultimately helpless in the face of mindless cruelty\u2014perpetrated, conveniently, by everyone but us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of the most glaring, power-serving omissions in some time, CBS News\u2019 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\u2019s left over 10,000 civilians dead, 2 million displaced, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":335912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-335911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}