I agree with the editors of the New York Times. Congress should end U. S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen:
The Pentagon has argued its military aid is noncombat assistance, like advising the Saudi Air Force on how to drop bombs so they kill fewer civilians. But while the Saudis pledged in 2017 to reduce civilian deaths, Human Rights Watch said six attacks since then killed 55 civilians.
Meanwhile, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of Central Command, told Congress, “We’re not parties to this conflict.†That isn’t credible. The Saudi-led coalition would have a hard time continuing the onslaught without American assistance, which has included air-to-air refueling, arms, intelligence assessments and other military advice.
Apart from the humanitarian disaster, members of Congress who have supported the resolution are concerned about the legal basis for American involvement. The United States initially deployed forces to combat Al Qaeda in Yemen under post-Sept. 11 congressional authorization measures. But Congress never specifically approved military involvement in the Saudi-Houthi war even though the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act give lawmakers a role.
It’s long past time we end our military support for Saudi Arabia and its war in Yemen and it’s long past time that Congress reasserted its constitutional warmaking powers.
I do disagree with the editors in one particular:
It has been wracked by civil war since 2014, when Houthi rebels allied with Iran, and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took control of the capital, Sana, and much of the rest of the country.
I would have pushed the causes of the civil war back slightly further to President Obama’s drone war which inevitably transitioned from fighting Al Qaeda to fighting the enemies of the governments of the various countries everywhere in which it was prosecuted. They’re just promoting the Saudi party line.
Here’s a little food for thought. The U. S.’s greatest geopolitical foe isn’t Russia or China. It’s Saudi Arabia. Keep that in mind during Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington this week.
We advise a lot of countries about how to conduct war the American way. They are eager to learn about the effective use of firepower but could care less about our systems for reducing collateral damage.
Yemen has long been a total mess. I was in East Africa in 2014 when the Sadi government fell and the Houthi’s took over Sana’a and we closed our embassy. It’s too complicated to go into here, but suffice it to say that no one in that “country” has clean hands.
But for the strategic quotation mark shortage I would put quotation marks around all of the “countries” of the Middle East and North Africa.