{"id":388601,"date":"2018-12-10T16:42:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T15:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/send-trump-and-the-saudis-a-message-end-support-for-the-war-on-yemen\/"},"modified":"2018-12-10T16:42:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T15:42:07","slug":"send-trump-and-the-saudis-a-message-end-support-for-the-war-on-yemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/send-trump-and-the-saudis-a-message-end-support-for-the-war-on-yemen\/","title":{"rendered":"Send Trump and the Saudis a Message: End Support for the War on Yemen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Originally appeared on The American Conservative<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

A State Department official restated<\/a> that the administration very much wants to continue backing the Saudi coalition war on Yemen:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are pressures in our system \u2026 to either withdraw from the conflict or discontinue our support of the coalition, which we are strongly opposed to on the administration side,\u201d said Timothy Lenderking, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Arabian Gulf Affairs.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWe do believe that the support for the coalition is necessary. It sends a wrong message if we discontinue our support,\u201d he told a security forum in the United Arab Emirates. <\/i><\/p>\n

While Pentagon officials tell members of the Senate one thing, other administration officials tell members of the Saudi coalition something else. According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs\u2019 testimony last week<\/a>, the U.S. isn\u2019t a participant in the war and doesn\u2019t support any side, but the administration is quick to reassure an audience in the UAE that the US won\u2019t \u201cwithdraw from the conflict\u201d (acknowledging that we are a party to the conflict) and won\u2019t \u201cdiscontinue our support\u201d (admitting that we are very much on one side). Administration officials tell a dishonest story to Congress to discourage opposition to the war, but when they need to reassure regional clients that US support isn\u2019t going anywhere they drop the pretense of being uninvolved. It is no wonder that members of Congress have grown tired of the administration\u2019s two-faced Yemen policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lenderking calls support for the Saudi coalition \u201cnecessary.\u201d That raises some obvious questions: necessary for whom and for what purpose? It isn\u2019t necessary for US security. Supporting the war on Yemen has strengthened jihadists and destabilized the region to our detriment. There is no obligation to support the Saudis and Emiratis in a foreign war of choice. The US has no defense treaties with them, and they are the aggressors in any case. Support for the war on Yemen is the definition of a policy that the US doesn\u2019t need to have, and the war itself is a perfect example of an absolutely unnecessary war.<\/p>\n

What message would be sent if the US stopped supporting the indefensible war on Yemen? The message would be that the US doesn\u2019t provide mindless, unconditional support to its clients regardless of what they do. It would tell the world that most Americans want no part of this despicable policy that was made without our consent. It would at the very least convey a message that the US is still capable of correcting horrible foreign policy errors. More than that, it would show that Congress and the American people won\u2019t stand for enabling famine and crimes against humanity. The Trump administration strongly opposes sending all these messages, and so it is against every effort to cut off support for the Saudi coalition. Congress must ignore what the administration wants and end US involvement, and if they do that they will also be sending the…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally appeared on The American Conservative. A State Department official restated that the administration very much wants to continue backing the Saudi coalition war on Yemen: \u201cThere are pressures in our system \u2026 to either withdraw from the conflict or discontinue our support of the coalition, which we are strongly opposed to on the administration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-388601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}