Tuesday, August 23, 2016

There is no political cost to selling out Yemen to improve Saudi ties

It's surprising how little attention the Saudi's brutal bombing campaign in Yemen is getting. It only makes the paper whenever a hospital is bombed, or a market, or a wedding, and unfortunately those things have happened on a fairly regular basis. Still, those stories have generated little interest in the conflict. The U.S.'s support of the bombing campaign is getting almost no scrutiny in the U.S. The support is inexplicable other than a sop to the Saudis to try to assuage their concerns about the Iran nuclear deal.

I'm glad that Ted Lieu is fighting the good fight on this issue, but I'm pretty pessimistic that the American public will care about a middle east conflict that is not about terrorism directed at the West or Israel.