Saudis Should Kill Civilians More Slowly, Two US Senators Say

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36513-saudis-should-kill-civilians-more-slowly-two-us-senators-say

It sounds a little like a joke (and in a sense it is): Two US senators introduce a resolution based on fraudulent representations of reality, seeking to make the president insist that the Saudis bomb fewer civilians in Yemen, and this darkly hilarious hoax is still better than anything the other 98 senators (and the whole House) are doing about the US illegal war in Yemen. Our would-be heroic duo in the Senate doesn’t actually oppose the US war on Yemen, even though they acknowledge its savage daily violations of international law (currently suspended during a tenuous ceasefire). Regardless, these two senators are simultaneously misrepresenting US participation in those ruthless crimes (which the rest of the Senate simply ignores and the State Department trivializes).

Following 15 years of special ops there, the US has been openly at war against Yemen for more than a year, in support of a genocidal Saudi coalition (mostly the Gulf Cooperation Council that President Obama met with privately recently). Once again, the US is in a war undertaken without Constitutional consultation with Congress, and without Congress raising a peep of an objection. This is a criminal war in which the US is at least accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US drone war’s toll on civilians arguably makes the US guilty of committing both sets of crimes.

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In other words, Resolution 32 is a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to give the impression of moral decency while leaving the reality of the US/Saudi war unlikely to be affected even in the unlikely eventuality that this proposal becomes law. (A companion resolution has now been introduced in the House, where it too will be sent to committee to await further action, if any.)

We pay senators $174,000 a year (plus their perks and staff) and this is the best any of the hundred of them can suggest “to prevent the United States from continuing to support Saudi-led military campaigns in places like Yemen”? Seriously?

The conventional beltway banalities, the bipartisan deceits, the continuing failure of business as usual are worthless. We need someone who will stand up and say, simply: US OUT OF YEMEN NOW