Sens. Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy had their Yemen resolution killed. The US will therefore continue to help commit war crimes in Yemen.
By
Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.
A
bipartisan effort to end US involvement in a bloody, three-year war in Yemen
failed in a close Senate vote on Tuesday afternoon.
The
vote demonstrated growing pushback on President Donald Trump’s coziness with
Riyadh, which is leading the war effort in Yemen. That same day, the president
met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was visiting Washington
during a country-wide tour.
A
disparate group of senators — Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chris
Murphy (D-CT) — drafted and introduced the resolution to stop America’s support
for the bloodshed. “This is one of the great humanitarian disasters of our
time,” Sanders told Vox in an interview last week.
But
the GOP-controlled Senate voted to table — that is, kill — the resolution that
says America shouldn’t assist Saudi Arabia in its three-year fight against
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. By a 55-44 margin, a majority of Republicans
and some Democrats effectively said the US can still help Riyadh, by refueling
its planes and providing intelligence in the Saudi’s brutal air campaign.
Supporters
of the resolution claimed it would immediately end America’s involvement in the
war; critics said it wouldn’t.
So
far, the conflict has claimed more than 13,500 lives — many of them in
airstrikes. Roughly 20 million Yemenis need humanitarian assistance to meet
basic needs — including food and water — out of a prewar population of 28
million, and nearly 1 million people are suffering from cholera. However,
conditions are so bad there that it is hard to have a reliable tally of any of
these measures, which means the situation could be much, much worse.
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