Hours ago, a Saudi-UAE airstrike killed at least 29 children in Yemen. Their campaign gets refueling from American planes & streams of US intelligence to help it pick targets--ostensibly to avoid calamities like this. But don't hold your breath for the US to take responsibility.
The line the government is giving reporters (like "I don't know if we'll ever know" about US role to @AlexWardVox) is consistent with what it's said under Obama, who first authorized US assistance for the Saudis & UAE in Yemen, and its increasing obfuscation under Trump.
In March, I got hold of a document that shows this is the Pentagon line even in private: huffingtonpost.com/entry/pentagon…
They say they have no way to know if US support aids war crimes--but concurrently US support should continue because otherwise there would be war crimes.
They say they have no way to know if US support aids war crimes--but concurrently US support should continue because otherwise there would be war crimes.
For the US, it's not "hostilities" when US-made planes drop US-made bombs using US-provided fuel and US-crafted intelligence. There's significant legal dispute over whether that's a fair reading. But the popular perception to nearly everyone but the US gov't is that it's shaky.
Even if that view doesn't change military planners' thinking, it creates a real mismatch that matters when you're in a democracy. There's a sense among the autocratic gov'ts doing the bombing with US backing that that doesn't really matter. Even more dangerously, there's a denial
of why it does rile people up, and sometimes just misinformation and lies. I think that's short-sighted. The POTUS these gov'ts love harnessed a powerful wave of frustration about the US being involved in so many random places abroad. Increasingly clear the mood in America is..
..not going to sustain support for people like the Saudis forever just because it hums along in the background. As these same gov'ts cheer an unprecedented level of US toughness with another dodgy increasingly popular authoritarian partner, Erdogan, they might reflect a little.
(increasingly *unpopular*)
