According to Oxfam, Saudi Arabia carries out the equivalent of "one air raid every 10 days affecting hospitals and water facilities in Yemen.
The United States has a long history of mistreating Yemen. In 1990, the administration of George H.W. Bush wanted a unanimous United Nations agreement to rubber-stamp its attack on Iraq. Yemen, newly appointed to the Security Council, refused to go along with the resolution (as did Cuba). Just minutes after it voted against the U.S. plan, a senior American diplomat told the Yemeni representative, on a hot mic, "That was the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." Within hours, all U.S. aid (a $70 million program) to the country was stopped. 800,000 Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia, and the country had difficulties securing loans with international financial institutions. Thus, as Bennis said, "The U.S. refusal to take Yemen and Yemenis seriously goes back a very long way."
Saudi Arabia has proven to be one of the United States' most loyal allies in the region over the past 50 years - and its enforcer. In return for keeping the oil money flowing into the United States, Washington has been willing to defend the country's abysmal human rights record, and even to overlook the assassination of journalists like the Washington Post's Jamal Khashoggi. Andrew Feinstein, an arms industry expert and author of "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade," explained to MintPress that,
The U.S. has allied itself with Saudi Arabia, despite it being one of the world's most corrupt countries and worst human rights abusers, at home and abroad, for two primary reasons: oil and the U.S. right's desire for regime change in Iran. This is despite the reality that Saudi is the primary ideological supporter of, financier and, weaponizer of the most extreme Islamist groups."
Under Trump, the United States has sharply increased its military support to Saudi Arabia, signing a number of weapons deals that put the lie to any idea that he was an anti-war president. Overall, SIPRI calculates that the U.S. accounted for 36% of global weapons sales between 2015 and 2019, a large increase over the previous five years. Saudi Arabia is by far America's best customer, and America is the Kingdom's most important supplier, accounting for three-quarters of all purchases. In 2019, this included 59,000 guided bombs, most of which were destined to be dropped on soft targets in Yemen. As Bennis noted, "The Saudis buy more arms from the U.S. than any other country in the world, so it is embedded in the very fabric of the military industrial complex here." Furthermore, many of Washington's other best customers are also Middle Eastern dictatorships also bombing Yemen.
Saudi Arabia will be hosting the G20 summit this weekend, a meeting of the 20 most powerful nations in the world. Remarkably, for a country where women cannot travel or get married without permission from a man, the Saudi government has chosen "female empowerment" as the theme of this year's meeting. And while the G20 is being urged to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its role in Yemen, that possibility seems doubtful, seeing as G20 arms exports to Riyadh are three times what they give to Yemen in aid.
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