Today, the Senate will vote on whether to cut off military assistance to the war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, once again in an effort to reprimand Trump for his continued defense of the kingdom after the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Senate is doing this in an attempt to defy the President. Their second defiance will come Thursday when have their final chance to pass a resolution to overturn President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funds for his border wall. If the measures passed, it would call for the first vetoes of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders says, “The resolution we will vote on in the Senate tomorrow to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen is enormously important and historic. This war is both a humanitarian and a strategic disaster, and Congress has the opportunity to end it.” Those who support the Yemen resolution have faced a difficult task in getting the legislation to the President.
The passage of this legislation could be a turning point. It could greatly affect our country. It is essentially a do-over of previous legislation and may not receive the same amount of support from Republicans as it received before.
Why is it that people rarely explain anything about what is happening in Yemen? The article linked here didn't really give many details, though I was able to learn a lot more from an article linked on that article that actually informed me on what's going on.
ReplyDeleteFor those who don't know (I didn't know until today, and I've never seen anyone on the news talk in good detail about it, so I figure many people also don't know anything about this), the war in Yemen is between Saudi forces (the ones America supports) and the Houthis - a group of rebels who were originally a "movement of Shiite guerillas" who came to power in the region following the Arab Spring of 2011. Apparently, the Houthis are a proxy between Saudi Arabia and Iran, their enemy.
Why does America support Saudi Arabia, though? Is it for oil, or because they oppose Iran? I don't really know, but apparently the UN calls this the world's worst humanitarian crisis right now. I don't know much for sure, but the only things I've heard about Saudi Arabia have been really bad, and I'm not even talking about Khashoggi. Also, I'd like to point out that Saudi Arabia isn't at all a democracy, considering that their government is an absolute monarchy, and they have no legislature. And we're supporting them?
One of Trump's biggest campaign promises was to end the needless, pointless wars. He's proven at least some degree of commitment to this with his actions with North Korea, Syria, and Afghanistan. So why are we supporting this fight? What point is there to it? Unless there is good reason to support it, then I oppose it. However, I wouldn't be surprised if many people in Congress are only trying to end it as a measure to stop Trump, which is pretty unfortunate.
I think that our country should probably take a step back and consider whether we should really be supporting Saudi Arabia, much less backing their war. From what I can tell, we don't have any relevance to this war in the first place, considering that I bet this war is a religious one--the Houthis are Shiite Muslims, and the Saudis are Sunni Muslims, meaning that they are probably fighting merely based on religious disagreements (the two factions are often at war with each other in the Middle East, to my knowledge).