When it created a good excuse to help the US re-invade Iraq a few months ago, the US was all about rescuing “trapped” people, the Yazidis, even though it turned out they weren’t actually trapped (though Gazans massacred by US-backed Israel at the same time were and are).
But now it is Americans who are trapped – for real – and they are trapped under a dictator’s illegal blitz, in which the US is a major, open accomplice.
(The bombing of Yemen continues as “Saudi Warplanes Pound Yemen’s Defense Ministry, Food Supply“, and the Saudi naval blockade continues to worsen the humanitarian crisis and food shortage.)
While “at least eight … countries – including Russia, China and India – have rescued their citizens“, as well as rescuing foreign nationals, including Americans, “the United States has refused to launch an evacuation effort“, saying it won’t risk the lives of people Americans pay to, in theory, perform exactly this kind of task, but would risk those lives to refuel Saudi bombers, as the US has been doing, and to rescue Saudi bombers whose planes malfunction.
As for refueling the Saudi bombers, a Pentagon spokesman said “You can expect we will do so every day from now on.”
McClatchy: “Desperation for Americans in Yemen as US Refuses to Mount Rescue”
A Michigan family with two toddlers and an infant was stranded in Yemen after being forced from its home by rebel gunmen. A California woman tried to flee through an arrangement with the embassy of Djibouti, but failed. A mother of four from New York also tried that route, at the State Department’s suggestion, only to hear the same reply: There would be no help.
“Why is the United States not helping us?” said Sallah Elhushayshi, 21, of Brooklyn
Civil rights groups say that between 3,000 and 4,000 Americans remain in the country…
“India took out over 4,000 of their nationals in three days. If India can do it, why can’t the U.S.?”
Americans are suing Obama to try to force him to help people in Yemen, but an Obama spokesperson, when questioned, “wouldn’t address the lawsuit“.
McClatchy notes that in Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon (in which Israel saturated entire neighborhoods with millions of cluster bombs), the US was “among the last nations to arrange ships to ferry its citizens to nearby Cyprus.”
Now, for some Americans stranded in Yemen, “it might already be too late”:
With no embassy or consulate for protection, Elhushayshi said, he and his relatives have little choice but to huddle indoors and listen as the world outside descends into chaos.
“Our last airstrike was this afternoon. Our windows were shaking. It was a heavy one,” Elhushayshi said. “We have no gas, no petrol, no bread. Water has become so expensive. And the fighting will start here soon. I see a lot of suffering people taking up guns, and we have no police. It will happen soon. Soon.”
