The war nobody’s talking about

How should you react when your coalition partner bombs a funeral, killing close to 150 people and injuring 600 more? This is the exact situation that the US faced after Saudi Arabia carried out such an attack on October 8. As the public pressure mounted for the US to withdraw support, the first thing they did was to issue a cautionary statement, “cooperation with Saudi Arabia is not a blank check.” They then waited five days and then claimed their destroyer was fired upon, and launched cruise missiles at three suspected Houthi communications targets.

There were three US Presidential debates held within the last month. The word Yemen was never brought up even though the US is exceedingly embroiled in the sectarian conflict inside Yemen. Such complete annihilation of civilian infrastructure and 10,000 deaths deserve at least a few minutes of airtime, especially when the deaths were caused by Saudi Arabia’s use of $115 billion worth of weapons purchased from the US. Yemen is a recent addition to the list of challenges facing the next US president’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

Yet, the Republican Party has produced a candidate who has little to no foreign or domestic policy experience. The only other major Presidential candidate on the ballot is Hillary Clinton. She recently had to defend her own statements about maintaining contradictory public and private personas. A calculating Clinton would support the most politically acceptable position when questioned, while continuing to pander to arms manufacturers and eager buyers behind the scenes. However, her close ties with the kingdom will draw extra scrutiny due to their $10 — $25 million donation to the Clinton Foundation.



Despite recent bad publicity around the funeral bombing, the US-Saudi alliance appears to be as strong as ever. This is alarming since there isn’t even a hint of protecting the civilians when it comes to Yemen. Saudi Arabia has conducted 3,000 strikes in public places — markets, hospitals and funeral homes. Nothing is off limits, it seems. Saudi warships have also blockaded Yemeni ports, successfully creating a humanitarian tragedy where almost 14 million Yemenis are starving. All of this is facilitated by the US in terms of intelligence and logistical support such as refuelling Saudi jets.

While American voters are preoccupied by stories of women fondled by Trump or Hillary’s distractionary tactic to bring up Russia each time her emails are mentioned, their war machine is busy. Unfortunately, real policy issues have been sidelined and the voters have been cheated out of meaningful opportunity to consider globally important issues.

The ease at which Yemen is being ignored is extremely concerning. Former president George Bush deserves his share of credit for ongoing conflicts, but President Barack Obama reigned in a new era by ramping up drone warfare. This tactic, combined with the withdrawal of most US troops, appears to be the new politically palatable norm.

It’s all so easy since now there is no need to persuade Congress to declare war and those fancy Presidential addresses to sway the public can be skipped altogether.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2016.

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