Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes with American weapons

By Tom Moran

Americans are told over and over that Iran is the menace in the Mideast, that its Islamic rulers are bloodthirsty terrorists spreading mayhem as they force a sectarian showdown between Shiites and Sunnis across the region.

All of which is equally true of our close ally, Saudi Arabia, under its young ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is a murderer and a tyrant, and his war in neighboring Yemen is killing innocent people on a scale that could soon rival or exceed the body count in Syria.

President Trump has made it clear he doesn't give a damn. As long as Saudi Arabia delivers the oil and buys our weapons, our president is willing to sell this country's soul.But the U.S. Senate last week finally drew a line, unanimously endorsing a resolution acknowledging that MBS personally ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed in the Saudi embassy in Turkey on Oct. 2. That was the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies, who found evidence that MBS communicated with the team of 15 killers as they strangled and dismembered Khashoggi in the most brazen and brutal murder of our time.

The Senate also voted overwhelmingly to end United States support for MBS's war in Yemen, which relies on American weaponry, targeting assistance, and intelligence. The vote was 56-41, a rare and bipartisan rebuke of Trump. If there is any consolation to be drawn from Khashoggi's murder, it is the attention it drew to the disaster in Yemen, where Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are fighting a proxy war as part of their sectarian showdown. It's a bloody stalemate, and the brutality is on both sides. But the Saudi bombing campaign of Yemen is the worst of it, and it directly implicates America.

The bombing has killed thousands of civilians at weddings, funerals, and on school buses, according to the United Nations. It has left the Yemeni economy in ruins, its ports unable to absorb needed international aid. Save the Children estimates that 85,000 children have died during the three years of fighting, and the forecast is for death on a scale that is almost unimaginable.

According to the United Nations' World Food Programme, 12 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation, with children most vulnerable of all. Relief workers say they are bracing for the worst global famine of their lifetimes. The Senate's action will change nothing on its own, given opposition from Trump and Republican leaders in the House. But with Democrats taking control of the House soon, that could change. And in any case, the defiance of our amoral president is long overdue.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2018/12/saudi_arabia_is_committing_war_crimes_with_america.html