Commentary: “It was like something out of Judgment Day.” A resident of Mokha, speaking to Amnesty International, described an air strike that killed scores of civilians. “Corpses and heads scattered, engulfed by fire and ashes.”
Yet that day’s carnage in July 2015, repeated and amplified over the 28 months Saudi Arabia has been destroying Yemen in aerial bombardments with the crucial assistance of the United States, has no Biblical or supernatural cause. God may or may not be able to create a rock God cannot lift; but a more pressing question is, could that Divine Creator make a species it cannot morally fathom?
What judgment, what public reckoning, what accountability for the slaughter and moral depravity in Yemen can we expect? American news media generally have not covered the conflict in depth, despite an overwhelming humanitarian crisis and flagrant war crimes conducted by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Oddly, there is more media interest in the humanitarian crisis – the famine and outbreaks of cholera – than the conflict itself, including the shameful participation by the United States in this industrial-scale butchery of innocent life.
Beginning in March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war on the side of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, against the Houthi movement that had overthrown his government, and other forces loyal to a former president who had been deposed by a popular revolution. Everybody in this conflict has routinely perpetrated war crimes. The coalition (with American logistical support and American-manufactured ordnance) has bombed hospitals, schools, homes, and marketplaces, with no regard for non-combatants. The UN has also presented evidence that the Houthis and their allies have targeted civilians and blocked them off from food and medical care. If you’re already confused by this, it won’t help to mention that ISIS is also in the mix, on nobody’s side, attacking everybody else.
Wars seem to make better copy when they fit into a facile moral narrative with clearly defined good guys and bad guys fighting over a cause. The madness of war negates all those narratives, and this is painfully obvious in Yemen. We, the United States, have no business participating, and every voter and every taxpayer who says nothing is complicit. We have no business refueling planes that pound Yemen with bombs, no business providing munitions lobbed at families, and no justification for continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia when we know what work is being done. Citizens have no business remaining silent about this. This rancid amorality began under President Obama’s government, and President Trump has increased weapons traffic to our Saudi “friends.”
Weirdly, the United States has responded generously with humanitarian aid, but there has been no reckoning for the policy that permitted the crisis in the first place, killing thousands of civilians, displacing millions, and unleashing famine and deadly epidemics while our allies intentionally block humanitarian aid to nearly 20 million people in need.
Last month, the House passed a National Defense Authorization Act that would set some limits on our participation in Yemen. There is, however, no indication any “Judgment Day” is looming for those who have aided and abetted war crimes. Indeed, the State Department appears to be gutting the Office of Global Criminal Justice. Historically, the worst our own war criminals need fear is tripping on the rug while accepting medals for their public service. Meanwhile, American streets that once were filled with popular resistance to the invasion of Iraq and other warfare are empty.
What judgment? When?
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Algernon D’Ammassa writes the Desert Sage column for the Deming Headlight and Sun News papers. Write to him at adammassa@demingheadlight.com.