Yemen Is America’s War Too

Yemen has long been the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Slaughtered civilians. Wrecked infrastructure. Millions hungry. Cholera epidemic. Now COVID-19 is afflicting the vulnerable population. “Yemen is really on the brink right now. The situation is extremely alarming, they are talking about that the health system has in effect collapsed,” explained Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s priority is selling more arms, $478 million worth, to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). Indeed, the administration might stop notifying Congress about impending sales to forestall legislative opposition. It is difficult to explain why the U.S. government, typically so sanctimonious in lecturing the rest of the world on liberty and morality, ended up backing one of the world’s most oppressive nations in a blatant war of aggression.  Of course, the human carnage is of no concern to that country’s de facto ruler, who ordered the invasion of Saudi Arabia’s impoverished neighbor in 2015. In a war that was supposed to last weeks, not years, he planned to restore to office Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the pliant ruler who had been ousted by an unorthodox coalition between Hadi’s predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and a perennial opposition movement known as the Houthis. But the Kingdom’s military turned out to be a vanity force, of little value other than to strike civilian targets — weddings, funerals, school buses, hospitals, apartment buildings, and markets. Thousands of civilians have been killed directly. Even more have died as a result of the widespread destruction civilian infrastructure. Yemen never was important to American security. The country, which began as two states, has suffered through protests, violence, disorder, conflict, and war for the roughly six decades of its existence. Yemen also was regularly victimized by outside intervention. Years ago Egypt and...