Yemen war a quagmire for Saudi Arabia like America’s Vietnam War: Scholar

The Saudi war on the impoverished people of Yemen has become a quagmire for Saudi Arabia as the Vietnam War became a quagmire for the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s, according to Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday as Washington marked the 45th anniversary of its humiliating exit from Vietnam on April 30, 1975 after twenty years of death and destruction there. 

Many independent analysts are comparing the Saudi war on the impoverished people of Yemen to the Vietnam War.

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The United Nations refugee agency says nearly one million displaced people in Yemen risk losing their shelter due to a dire lack of funding at a time when the county is already threatened by the new coronavirus pandemic.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president, AbdRabbuh Mansur Hadi, back to power and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have purchased billions of dollars' worth of weapons from the United States, France and the United Kingdom in their war on Yemen.

Riyadh and its allies have been widely criticized for the high civilian death toll resulted from their bombing campaign in Yemen.

The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

The Saudi-led aggression and an accompanying blockade of Yemen continue despite the coronavirus pandemic and the impoverished country’s urgent need for medical supplies.

US backs Saudi regime in its genocidal war

Professor Etler said, “The US has backed the Saudi regime in its genocidal war against the Yemeni people with billions of dollars in arms sales and logistical support.”

“The Saudi assault is part of the US program of seeking regional hegemony in the Middle East by using its Zionist surrogates in Israel and Saudi Arabia to secure its position in opposition to Iran and by extension its main global rivals China and Russia. But, as in Vietnam, the Yemeni conflict has become a quagmire from which Saudi Arabia cannot extricate itself. It will eventually have to answer for its crimes,” he added.

“The conflict in Yemen must be seen in the context of this geopolitical rivalry. In conjunction with this policy, the US seeks to contain Iran by economic warfare, diplomatic isolation and a criminal program of assassination and internal subversion. It will use any and all methods to destabilize Iran and its allies, even to the extent of making humanitarian aid in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic conditional on political concessions,” he continued.

“The US, as it did during the Vietnam War, will use whatever subterfuge it can conjure up to justify aggression against its target. This was seen with the Tonkin Gulf incident which has been exposed to be a premeditated ploy to justify the escalation of the war effort. The US will use the same tactic in the Persian Gulf if and when it is deemed necessary,” he noted.

“The bullying and disinformation tactics of the US have not changed one iota since the height of the Vietnam War 50 years ago. But as in Vietnam, its efforts are bound to fail.  The Iranian people and nation will never submit to the machinations of US imperialism,” he concluded.

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