Noting that Saudi Arabia is deliberately targeting civilians in Yemen, killing huge amounts of innocent civilians, bombing economic infrastructure and committing myriad war crimes is no longer particularly controversial, some 20 months into an extremely ugly invasion.
Legal experts, including Columbia University professor Gabor Rona, are pointing out something that the Obama Administration has desperately tried to avoid, however, which is that by virtue of heavy US backing for the Saudi war, and indeed US involvement in the war, those Saudi war crimes may well also be crimes by US personnel.
The US has been backing the Saudi war since it began, providing ships to participate in the naval blockade of Yemen, and also providing substantial in-air refueling support, allowing the US-made Saudi planes to remain in the air longer, dropping more US-made Saudi bombs on Yemen’s civilians.
More than a few administration lawyers have made the exact same warnings in the past, and while the administration is trying to shrug off the concerns by claiming they don’t have any specific role in deciding on targets. Whether this is true or not, and the Saudis have certainly claimed the US and Britain are both helping them with targeting, isn’t necessarily relevant to legal culpability in supporting the attacks.
Just getting the US to stay on the sidelines,
would be enough to get this particular war/military action
grinding to a halt.
The Saudis cant even do air-to-air refuelling on their own.
(and over past 30+years US must have sold Saudis
with enough miltary equipment to supply several countries)
Saudis also have troops in Yemen, doing their bidding.
(No. not their own; just a gang of mercenaries from Africa and South America
whose primary aim is just to get paid)
Its not even clear just what Saudis think they are accomplishing, apart
from their usual stated aims.
truth: teach a saudi to fly a plane – he crashes it into our towers.
We should remember the Nuremberg Principles as well there the average soldier was not considered to have been a War criminal UNLESS he did something specific that was his own personal choice to be a war crime! We didn’t see US bomber pilots considered to be a War Crime but we all know that Le May said that if the US had have won the war HE as their commander and who ordered the raids was a War Criminal, we also note the same argument for their Commanders and their Commander’s in Chief both Hitler and Donitz were considered to be at fault as Presidents of the Reich and the various senior leaders as well! Effectively Bush and Obama the various senior personnel Joint Chiefs, and the like the CIA heads that authorized the intelligence that killed civilians etc!