Index

Yemen and the American (lack of) intelligence

Well, the state department has decided every American needs to leave Yemen immediately.  Anybody betting nothing is going to happen there?

Let’s look at this from the viewpoint of what the U.S. likes to call “terrorists,” which is to say anyone who doesn’t like the U.S. policies.  If I wanted to make the U.S. “intelligence” community look like fools, I would make sure that they thought I was about to blow Yemen off the map, then do absolutely nothing.  At this point, even if I had been planning on doing something in Yemen, I would immediately call a halt to it and start some stuff in, say, London.  Let’s face it, if your plan is blown, write it off and move on.  So from their point of view, the damage in Yemen is already done anyway.  Why not add to the nervenkrieg by ignoring Yemen completely for a couple of years while continuing to pretend they are doing stuff there.

On the other hand, let’s look at it from a U.S. spook’s point of view - if I wanted to screw up the “terrorists” and I knew they were staging operations out of Yemen, I would get my people out of there on general principles.  But even if nothing is happening, creating a false sense of emergency is nothing new for the spooks, and plays perfectly with their general strategy of keeping Americans scared/nervous/paranoid/whatever you want to call it - if I were a spook, I would stage something like this once every couple of years just as a matter of continued employment and budget enhancement.  The spooks cannot let the sheep…er…citizens get complacent.

So which is it?  In the grand theater that is international politics, either one or even both could be true.  The point is that “terrorism” is exactly the same class of theater as “war”, “police action” or any lesser form of hostility such as economic blockade - the real intent is never made public, or immediately changed if it accidentally makes it out into the public sphere.  This is all a game, played by politicians, and ultimately the politicians (and businessmen - really the same group) are the only ones that benefit.  The people involved are pawns, sheep to be lead where the politicians want them to further their aims.

As an observer of this mayhem, all I can say is that I can never believe what the media sees - even if they get it right, the players immediately change their plans to compensate and falsify whatever the media knows.  The media is nothing but a pawn in the game also, and has shown little initiative in taking a broader role - they are corporate players in the end.