On Sept. 12, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made what was probably one of the most ill-informed and disingenuous foreign policy decisions of the Trump administration’s 20-month tenure. Pursuant to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, Pompeo certified to Congress that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were taking enough action to “reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure” in the course of the Arab coalition’s military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.
For those of us who have been monitoring the war in Yemen since its eruption over three years ago, the claim is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous, however, was Defense Secretary James Mattis’ press statement following Pompeo’s certification: “The governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are making every effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties and collateral damage to civilian infrastructure.”
How do we know the Trump administration’s certification is groundless? And why should the American people care to begin with?
The first question is the most straightforward: we know because we have eyes. The pictures, footage, and eyewitness accounts collected by humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders and human rights groups like Human Rights Watch lead us to the conclusion that the Saudi-led coalition’s war actions are reckless at best and criminal at worst. No civilian target has been spared from the bombing, not even school buses transporting children to a field trip. Name a location in Yemen — a funeral gathering, a marketplace, a bus station, a seaport, an airport, a home, school, factory, or refugee camp — and there is a good chance the Saudis have dropped a munition on it. The attacks have been so brazen that Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, a former JAG officer in the U.S. Air Force, has written to the Defense Department requesting an investigation into whether U.S. military personnel who are assisting the coalition’s operations can be held liable for violating the Law of Armed Conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Lieu’s concerns are well-founded. Last month, the chairman of an independent U.N. panel on Yemen assessed that all parties in the war have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and human rights violations. To compound it, the panel also found “[t]here is little evidence of any attempt by parties to the conflict to minimize civilian casualties.” Nor is there accountability for those on either side of the conflict who engage in these crimes. Despite an investigatory body set up by the Saudi-led coalition to probe incidents where civilian lives are lost, Human Rights Watch recently released a report with a long list of complaints about the body’s investigatory standards.
Did the Pentagon and the State Department review any of these public reports before making their decision? If they disregarded this open-source material, this would be a scandal deserving strenuous oversight from the foreign and armed services committees. If they did read these reports and yet still concluded U.S. aid was appropriate, one has to question the administration’s level of priorities.
To the American people, which combatant wins or loses in Yemen has no bearing on their personal lives. Yemen is such a poor, violent backwater that whoever comes out on top will be unable to secure the entire country. Yemen’s political process is insignificant to U.S. national security interests in the region. What is significant is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist group that has only become richer and more embedded into Yemen’s communities since the internal conflict began.
U.S. taxpayer money and military assets, however, are being used in the war nonetheless. At the same time the administration talks about supporting a peaceful resolution to the conflict, it continues contributing to the violence by refueling the very Arab coalition aircraft that are killing civilians and demolishing the country’s remaining infrastructure.
U.S. policy in Yemen is a collection of contradictions and a sad joke to millions of Yemenis. As if this weren’t bad enough, Pompeo and Mattis just insulted the intelligence of the American people by telling us all that what the videos we are seeing and the stories we are reading aren’t the products of our wild imagination.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
