This commentary is by MaryDiane Baker of Brattleboro, an Action Corps VT organizer.
President Biden is now abandoning his promise to treat the Saudi regime as a “pariah.” So once again the responsibility falls on the American people — you and me — to insist that enabling the atrocities of the Saudi regime is not what America is about.
Our government is enabling a humanitarian crisis of astounding proportions by backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates regimes in their war on Yemeni civilians. This unconstitutional war, never authorized by Congress, has continued through more than seven years and three American presidents despite multiple attempts by Congress to end our involvement, in which our senator, Bernie Sanders, has been a key leader.
Bernie’s focus and attention are again needed in the current push to get a new Yemen War Powers Resolution introduced and passed in Congress. As United Nations Emergency Relief Chief Martin Griffiths said in March about efforts to confront the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, “If we have one message for the world today, it is this: Do not stop now.”
Griffiths also told the U.N. Security Council, “Yemen is in a chronic state of emergency, marked by hunger, disease and other miseries that are rising faster than aid agencies can reverse.”
Roughly three-fourths of the population currently needs food assistance. The International Red Cross states that 70 percent “have almost nothing to eat,” two-thirds “have no access to health care,” and nearly as many do not have clean water.
As the U.N. has long said, the most important cause of this humanitarian crisis has been the U.S.-backed Saudi war, with Saudi air strikes and the Saudi blockade stopping access to fuel, food and aid. If this foreign-imposed humanitarian crisis were happening in America, 3.7 million Americans would be lost.
The U.S. has been one of the biggest donors of humanitarian aid to Yemen since 2015, the year the U.S. entered the war. Our “aid” tax dollars have been used in a futile treadmill to try to mitigate the humanitarian crisis our unconstitutional participation in the Saudi war is creating.
While the U.S. has supplied “aid” with one hand, we have supplied bombs, targeting intelligence and military equipment to the Saudi and UAE regimes with the other, which they have used to starve and destroy Yemen. Some three-quarters of the Saudi regime’s arms imports have come from the U.S. Our tax dollars have funded this, at the expense of urgent needs here at home.
Sen. Sanders renewed his commitment to address this crisis in March, when he joined Reps. Jayapal, DeFazio and Khanna, urging Biden to follow through on his pledge to “end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen,” promising to introduce a new Yemen War Powers Resolution if President Biden did not do so. Now Vermonters are asking Sen. Sanders to follow through on his commitment.
Sen. Sanders’ introduction of a companion War Powers Resolution in the Senate is crucial in the coming days, when the House version is launched. The two-month truce in Yemen is about to expire. More congressional pressure on the Saudi regime is needed now to protect the truce and make clear to the Saudi regime that it will not have U.S. support for restarting the war.
There is only one Bernie in the Senate. We need Bernie’s help now to end the Saudi war in Yemen for good.
