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Why Is the War on Yemen Being Ignored?

The lack of attention makes it much easier for the U.S. and Britain to continue their disgraceful support for an indefensible war.
yemen school

David Wearing succinctly describes the war on Yemen:

It is a case of the wealthiest Arab states joining forces to bomb and starve the poorest, with the assistance of two of the world’s richest and most powerful countries.

One of those two is the U.S., and the other is Britain. Just as the Obama administration has backed the Saudi attack from the start, Cameron’s government pledged support “in every practical way short of engaging in combat” once the campaign had begun. Remember that this is the same government that has supposedly presided over British “retreat” from the world. Far from “retreating,” Cameron’s government has lined up behind yet another unnecessary and despicable war that has nothing to do with British security.

Wearing notes that the war and Britain’s role in supporting it have gone largely unnoticed in Britain. Sophia Dingli has noticed the same thing:

These awful figures can only convey a glimpse of the suffering endured by Yemenis on a daily basis. The point of bringing them all together, as argued above, is to highlight the relative silence that has greeted this war as compared to other, similar conflicts.

I don’t know exactly why the war on Yemen has been mostly ignored in the West, but my guess is that it doesn’t attract the same criticism or attention as similar conflicts elsewhere because there are no Western forces directly involved in the fighting. The U.S. and Britain are facilitating the Saudis’ campaign, and they are undeniably implicated in the damage it has done, but they are just far enough removed from it that their involvement is mostly allowed to escape scrutiny. That is the difference between a Western-backed intervention and a Western intervention: the latter tends to provoke strong reactions on both sides of the debate, and the former seems to produce shrugs or no reaction at all. The U.S. and Britain are arming and fueling the Saudis’ campaign, but that usually receives minimal attention and sometimes goes unmentioned all together. Because the Saudis and most of the other governments in their coalition are U.S. clients, there may also be greater reluctance to cover a war that can only embarrass the client governments and their patron. Insofar as Western media outlets have bought into the Saudis’ dishonest framing of the war as a struggle against Iranian “expansionism,” there may be more sympathy in the West for the ostensible goal of the war and therefore less inclination to condemn it. Whatever the reason for it, the lack of attention is making it much easier for the U.S. and Britain to continue their disgraceful support for an indefensible war.

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