Really, YEMEN?

Editor [Carbondale Times]:

We are apparently at war with Yemen now, though Congress has made no declaration of such, as required by our constitution. In one recent 24-hour period, the U.S. bombed Yemen 65 separate times, and the assaults are now daily events.

Our corporate press, of course, has been in a frenzy about the leaking of one night’s bombing campaign. Yet war has been so normalized here that virtually no questions are raised about the wisdom or morality of these actions.

 Yemen is among the very poorest countries in the world. Today, according to the UN, one half of Yemeni children under five are malnourished. A child dies in Yemen every ten minutes from a preventable cause, usually related to starvation, viruses, or bacterial-borne diseases.

Few Americans seem to know or care that for a decade or so, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, the U.S. directly aided Saudi Arabia in reducing Yemen to its present condition. Starting in 2014, Uncle Sam provided in-air refueling services to Saudi war planes which savagely bombed the small country. Nor did the U.S. raise the slightest disapproval as Saudi Arabia starved Yemenis by blocking their access to food and other essential supplies.

 Now, as mentioned, the U.S. is doing its own bombing of Yemen. The excuse is that the Houthi rebels, who control much of it, have been firing missiles at U.S. and Israeli ships in the Red Sea. Those attacks – which have yet to even injure a single American -- are in solidarity with Palestinians who are being saturation bombed by Israel. The Israeli attacks are in response to a violent uprising by Palestinians in October 2023, and the violent uprising by Palestinians was in response to violent maltreatment by Israelis for several decades before that.  

And so, in other words, the U.S. bombing of Yemen is not just psychopathically cruel. It’s also an escalation of a situation that could easily erupt into world war.

I once thought my country was better than that.