Steil 11
(Jennifer, former editor of the Sana'a-based newspaper the Yemen Observer and lived in Yemen for four years, World Policy Journal, “Yemen: Descending Into Despair,” Volume 28, Number 3, Fall 2011, Project Muse, /Wyo-MM)
Sana'a—It's 2009...
... humanitarian crisis," he says.
Steil, who spent four years in Yemen, provides us with a narrative of the current shocking conditions in the country that allows us to reevaluate how we ethically engage with the Yemenis in a way that confronts the desensitization offered by the status quo that depicts the people of Yemen as the as a barbaric, terrorist breeding nation.
Our current framing of Yemen exists through a Western imperialist lens that condenses existence of the Yemenis to archaic men with values antithetical to the West. This has made every strike against Yemen a victory against Al Qaeda.
Blumi 11
(Isa, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Charos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg 13-14/Wyo-MM)
Scholars have long observed.....
...currently in power throughout the world.
These visions are replicated through US media depictions of a terrorist filled Yemen. These false reports hype up terrorist threats and fail to show the mass slaughter and violence caused by American drone. This breeds resentment and creates self-fulfilling prophecies that makes violence inevitable.
Greenwald 11
(Glenn, previously constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, now contributor to Salon.com July 18, 2011, “The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia,”http://www.salon.com/2011/07/18/terrorism_37/ /Wyo-MM)
Just as high civilian casualties...
...spawns its own justification.
Our war on terror is particularly dangerous because 911 was the catalyst that spun the US into a superpower syndrome that gave them credence to try to reshape the Middle-East in its Western vision.
Dreher 04
(Christopher, Common Dreams, “Is There a Cure for 'Superpower Syndrome'?” February 22, 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0222-06.htm/Wyo-MM)
To be clinical, Dr. Lifton traces ...
....writers can base their observations.
This superpower syndrome also contributes to Western democracy as a universal value which creates a dangerous us-them dichotomy that makes collective hatred and fear that eradicates anyone who threatens our perfect system; this fuels drone strikes and justifies infinite violence.
Blumi 11
(Isa, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Charos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg 2-4/Wyo-MM)
As if this were not enough to...
...different parts of the country.
Failure to confront this creates an unending war on the other that creates self-fulfilling prophecies to maintain US superpower status, creating cycles of infinite violence on difference.
Lifton 03
A superpower dominates and...
...the Islamist apocalyptic.
Foreign policy attempts to freeze the status quo by eliminating instability or rooting out uncertainty but no matter how much certainty we cloak our exceptionalist impulses with, the catastrophes we guarantee far outstrip the so-called impacts we avoid.
Taleb and Blyth 11
[Nassim Nicholas and Mark, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute and Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, “The Black Swan of Cairo”, June 2011, p. asp //wyo-tjc]
Both the recent...
...products that skirt those regulations.
This war on differences produces the rationalization for genocide and cultural annihilation. They render colonized bodies as sub-human, make forms of violent subjugation thinkable and domination inevitable.
Lissovoy 10
[Noah, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, “Decolonial Pedagogy and the Ethics of Global.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Vol. 31, No. 3, July 2010, 279-293, Accessed online via Academic search premier] /Wyo-MB
In a second moment...
...the culture industry)..
Yemen is a critical site to break down this epistemological understanding. Since the death of Osama bin Laden the US drive to combat terrorists has shifted our terrorist threat focus to Yemen.
Greenwald 11(Glenn, previously constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, now contributor to Salon.com July 18, 2011, “The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia,”http://www.salon.com/2011/07/18/terrorism_37/ /Wyo-MM)
In recent months...
...War on Terror Battlegrounds.
This year’s resolution asks us to increase democracy assistance to Yemen, but the resolution’s frame of democracy assistance is shaped by representations of a backwards society for the West to fix.
Our advocacy is an attempt to think Yemen differently by rejecting the current framing of Yemen as a “backwards, tribal, other.”
This is a starting point that paves the way towards a politics of pluralist understanding that makes ethical engagement with Yemen possible
Blumi 11
(Isa, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Charos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg 7-8/wyo-MM)
The first is the possibility...
..with tanks and fighter jets.
Our criticism of colonization solves the problems of democracy promotion and Eurocentrism by exposing the violence inherent in western ways of thinking that destroys difference with drone strikes, creating new possibilities ethical relationships and spaces for difference.
Lissovoy 10
[Noah, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, “Decolonial Pedagogy and the Ethics of Global.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Vol. 31, No. 3, July 2010, 279-293, Accessed online via Academic search premier] /Wyo-MB
The condition of globality both...
...moment of its enunciation
This lens through which we view Yemen is furthermore a result of America’s War on Terror that uses Media to psychologically condition the public with false and over-hyped depictions of terrorists to fear and demonize the other.
Snow 07
(Nancy, Associate Professor of Communications and Journalism at California State University, Fullerton, serves as Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California, WACC Global, “Media, terrorism, and the politics of fear,” 2007, http://waccglobal.org/en/20073-media-and-terror/465-Media-terrorism-and-the-politics-of-fear.html) /Wyo-MM
The media do not always follow...
...of what may be.
Institutional spheres like debate are key to overcoming our psychological docility by placing fear at the center of discussion in academia to repeatedly and openly confront that which creates anxiety.
Turner 11
(Robert, political theorist (Ph.D. Government, Cornell University), and medical researcher, currently doing epidemiological research at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Theory and Event, Volume 14, Issue 3, “Conditioned Subjects: Connolly, the Amygdala, Fear, and Freedom,” 2011, Project Muse/Wyo-MM)
To decrease its...
...techniques of the self.
Our reframing of politics is the best approach. This reductionist understanding of Yemen results in blurring all the Yemenis into terrorist threats, creating a War on Terror can never be won without a complete eradication of the Yemen population.
Blumi 11
(Isa, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s History Department and Middle East Institute and author of numerous articles on the modern Middle East’s history that focus especially on late imperial rivalries in the Araian Gulf and Yemen, Charos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism, Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2011, pg 152/Wyo-MM)
The interesting union of...
...conflict (Shapiro 1997; Campbell 1998).
