There hasn’t been much Western media coverage of the war on Yemen, and often when there are reports the role of the U.S. in helping to make the war possible is minimized or left out all together. There is now more and better Western media coverage of the war than there used to be, but the coalition’s Western patrons often escape notice even now.

 

Ignoring U.S. and British backing for the Saudi-led war on Yemen matters for a few reasons. For one, it presents an incomplete and therefore inaccurate account of what is happening and why, and that allows Western audiences to think that their governments have nothing to do with the terrible consequences of the war.

 

If the American and British publics remain largely unaware of their governments’ responsibility for helping to create the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, they are unlikely to demand that their governments stop enabling the disaster. Ignoring their role also lets those governments off the hook for appalling policies, and that in turn ensures that there is much less international pressure on the coalition governments that are destroying Yemen. Absent sustained international pressure and criticism, the coalition governments are able to wreck and starve an entire country without paying much of a price.

 

The lack of international pressure on the Saudi-led coalition is one more reason why the coalition and U.S. and other Western support for it should be under much more intense media scrutiny. Several major Western governments are deeply complicit in the destruction of Yemen, and that fact cries out to be exposed and broadcast far and wide as often as possible.

 

Our government’s enabling of despotic regimes to attack their impoverished neighbor while causing the worst famine in decades ought to be a major scandal and a leading story every day, which makes the failure even to mention U.S. involvement in creating the disaster unfolding in Yemen an inexcusable omission.