US support for the bombing of Yemen to continue

On September 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially certified Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates "are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations of these governments."

This is required to allow U.S. planes to continue refueling jets for the Saudi/UAE coalition, without which it could not keep dropping bombs on targets in Yemen. Secretary of Defense James Mattis concurred with Pompeo, though congressional legislation required only Pompeo’s say-so.

Anyone who follows international news could be excused for accidentally cursing at Pompeo’s statement. Among many attacks on civilian targets in Yemen, last month’s bombing of a school bus in a market district, which killed 51 people including 40 children, was among the most horrific, so much so that even Saudi Arabia admitted it was "unjustified." Of course, the Saudi regime should not be allowed to merely get away with investigating itself; indeed, Human Rights Watch released a 90-page report which is highly critical of the Saudi-UAE coalition’s investigations into its attacks, particularly on civilians.

That bombing, which shocked the conscience of the global community, was only the latest massacre of civilians in Yemen. In 2016, Saudi attacks on a market and funeral hall killed 252 people. In response, the Obama Administration halted the sale of precision guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, citing human rights concerns, but then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson overturned the ban in March, 2017. The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is considered the world’s worst at this moment, with well over 10,000 people having been martyred (an estimated 20 percent are children) and 15 million of the total Yemeni population of 23 million considered "food insecure," according to the United Nations. Add in the planet’s worst outbreak of cholera in some time, affecting over a million people, and one gets a picture of the dire situation since the civil war began in 2015.

The United States is the number one weapons dealer in the world, and Saudi Arabia is its biggest customer, having purchased more than $100 billion in armaments since 2010. The bombs in all three attacks cited above were built by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer and the largest US government contractor of any kind, with net sales of more than $13 billion in just the second quarter of this year. It’s not hyperbole to state Lockheed makes a killing, in more ways than one.

Earlier this year, the US Senate attempted to intervene to stop US in-air refueling of Saudi jets and other logistical, intelligence and targeting support. The bipartisan measure, led by Republican Senator Mike Lee and the Independent Bernie Sanders failed on a procedural vote, 55 to 44. Similar proposals also fell short in the House of Representatives, but peace- and human rights-minded House leaders, led by Democrat Representative Adam Smith, Ro Khanna (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Jim McGovern (D-MA), and others will soon try again to stop US support for the slaughter, thinking the school bus bombing may have shocked some hearts and may change some minds.

Concerned individuals should contact their House member and demand they support this common sense effort to cease US participation in this tragedy, without which the Saudi-led coalition could not continue and would likely be forced to negotiate more seriously with the Ansarullah-backed government.

Another, more long-term action people of conscience can undertake is to ensure one’s investments or other financial instruments do not benefit Lockheed Martin and other weapons contractors profiting from endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. Code Pink, Peace Action, American Friends Service Committee and dozens of organizations support the Divest from the War Machine campaign, where one can find out more about how to divest individual or organizational holdings from the arms merchants. Another good resource, focused on divestment from nuclear weapons manufacturers, which in general are also the largest weapons makers overall, is Don’t Bank on the Bomb.

Divestment is an important long term strategy, and a strong moral statement. However, the US Congress can act now, and must.

For more than three years, Raytheon, a major US defense contractor, has been aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen, manufacturing the world’s worst humanitarian crises and profiting upon the bodies of Yemeni children torn apart by their bombs.

Largely hidden from the public, billions of dollars have been made by American arms manufactures in the US-backed war in Yemen. As a result, the Saudis are able to deliberately produce massive civilian causalities, using Raytheon’s weapons with the purpose of starving the people of Yemen and depriving them of life saving medicine.

With one Yemeni child dying every ten minutes, without the help of Raytheon, the Saudis would not be as successful as they are now; at the same time Raytheon also benefits from that success, seeing a sharp rise in their share prices, because when civilian death toll rises, so do Raytheon’s stocks.

This can be quite difficult for many Americans to stomach, but the sad truth is that the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have correlated with the dramatic rise in Raytheon’s share price; in the three years the war has been active, Raytheon’s stocks rose by 94 percent, from $108.44 per share in 2015 to $210.70 in 2018.

Remnants of missiles from Saudis have been retrieved which trace back to Raytheon, hundreds of civilian deaths have been confirmed from these discoveries alone. Considering the fact that Raytheon’s weapons have been used to target weddings, civilian homes, water drilling rigs, and funeral ceremonies, the high rate of civilian deaths is not as surprising.

In April, the Saudis launched a missile at a wedding in northern Yemen, 23 people were martyred with the majority of causalities being women and children. The missiles were later shown to come from Raytheon’s factory in southern Arizona, and four days after the attack, Raytheon’s quarterly earnings rose to $633 million for $2.20 per share.
Bombing civilians in order to make the Ansarullah movement and the revolutionaries surrender appears to be the Saudi’s intent. In 2016, a missile manufactured by Raytheon hit a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing 11, including a staff member. Shortly after, Doctors Without Borders was forced to flee the country, making the humanitarian crises much worse.

Despite all these atrocities, the US government continues to supply the Saudis with arms for their assault on Yemen. In 2017 Saudi Arabia agreed to $7 billion worth of munitions from Raytheon and Boeing. On top of that, the US military is also providing the Saudis with midair fueling and giving them the exact coordinates of where to bomb. All the while weapons manufactures idly sit back making a killing profit off of the killing of children.

That was a put together, joint article written by Kevin Martin, President of Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with more than 200,000 supporters nationwide, and Marcelo Guadiana, who writes for the Borgen Project and Rouser News, focusing on war and poverty. He is a senior at UMass Boston a B.A. in economics.