The Administration’s Crocodile Tears Over Yemen
The Obama administration’s crocodile tears over Yemen are impossible to take seriously:
Grim briefing on #Yemen today. Yemen’s future on the line: over 700 schools destroyed/damaged; 2x increase in malnourished kids in just 9mo
— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) December 22, 2015
As I noted in a response to this, all of these things have been enabled and supported by the Obama administration. Washington’s concern for “Yemen’s future” has not been much in evidence for the last nine months. Instead, the administration has armed and fueled the Saudi-led coalition’s planes, helped the Saudis to cover up their likely war crimes at the U.N., and stood by while the coalition blockaded an entire country to the point of famine. As it has done since March, the administration feigns concern over the disaster caused by the war that they have actively supported. U.S. officials have avoided criticizing the coalition’s campaign in public, and there is not much reason to believe that there has been much pressure on Riyadh in private to scale back or halt the campaign. Power isn’t likely to publicize that the U.N. holds the Saudi-led coalition responsible for causing a “disproportionate” share of the civilian casualties in the last nine months, since the U.S. is partly responsible for causing those deaths. If the administration were interested in responding seriously to the grim news coming out of Yemen, it would cut off its support for the war and apply as much pressure as it could to get the blockade lifted, but it isn’t going to do any of that.