Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met yesterday with Obama on his first visit to the U.S. Today he sharply criticized the Saudi-led war on Yemen:

“The dangerous thing is we don’t know what the Saudis want to do after this,” Mr. Abadi said. “Is Iraq within their radar? That’s very, very dangerous. The idea that you intervene in another state unprovoked just for regional ambition is wrong. Saddam has done it before [bold mine-DL]. See what it has done to the country.”

I suppose Abadi’s opposition to the Saudis’ war is predictable because his government is relying on assistance from Iran against its own internal enemies and Iran has condemned the intervention, but he nonetheless makes some valid points about the Saudi intervention. The Saudis’ bombing of Yemen is an unprovoked attack on another country. Saudi Arabia is intervening in another country’s internal conflict, and has escalated that conflict into an international war. The Saudi war is inflicting terrible damage on the entire country, and it is putting the lives of millions of people at a much greater risk of dying from starvation and disease. Because they have the approval of Yemen’s deposed president, the Saudis can technically claim that they are assisting the recognized Yemeni government, but that government has very little support inside the country and has less support every day that the Saudis continue bombing. Whatever else it is, this is an unjust and unnecessary war.

If a state that weren’t aligned with the U.S. were doing this, we know that our government would ridicule the attacking government’s excuses for military action instead of echoing them, and they would be right to do so. If it weren’t one of our clients, the attacking government would almost certainly be sanctioned, denounced, and portrayed as a reckless aggressor threatening the stability of the entire region. Instead of any of that, the U.S. is enabling the reckless behavior of the client state, openly supporting the attack, and imposing sanctions on Yemenis that are being targeted by the Saudis. Abadi is quoted elsewhere in the article saying that the administration wants to stop the conflict “as soon as possible,” but the administration’s actions tell us that isn’t true.