Currents News Staff
By now, it has become an all too common sight – young child starving slowly to death, yet another victim of Yemen’s ugly civil war. For three years the world has watched impotently as the war has dragged on.
The conflict, which pits a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the U.K. and U.S., against Iran-backed Houthi rebels has brought fourteen million people to the brink of famine, according to the U.N.
Saudi air strikes have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. In August, dozens of children were killed when their school bus was hit.
The bomb that killed those kids was American – a laser guided five hundred pound munition designed by Lockheed Martin sold to Saudi Arabia by the U.S. under a lucrative weapons deal.
But patience with Saudi Arabia’s war may finally be wearing thin as disenchantment grows with the conflict’s architect- Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Following the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, there have been growing cries in the U.S. congress to hold the Crown Prince responsible.
“They’re an important ally. But when it comes to the Crown Prince, he’s irrational, he’s unhinged, and he’s done a lot of damage to the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. And I have no intention of working with him ever again,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham
But President Trump has been unwilling to blame the Crown Prince directly, despite a C.I.A. conclusion that Bin Salman personally ordered the journalist’s killing, according to a senior U.S. official and a source familiar with the situation. “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” he said.
President Trump seems reluctant to rein in an ally who has been personally cultivated by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and jeopardize billions of dollars in weapons deals.
“They have been a truly spectacular ally in terms of jobs and economic development and I also take that into … you know, I’m President. I have to take a lot of things into consideration,” said Trump.