Photo by Tom Thai | CC BY 2.0
As the war of words between the governments of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un has spiraled into child-like name calling and escalating military threats, the world shudders at the possible consequences. The Pentagon has reportedly estimated that a North Korean attack with conventional weapons against the South would kill 20,000 people a day; but deaths could reach the millions in the event of a nuclear war.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, the US is already participating militarily in what humanitarian aid groups have labeled crimes against humanity. US military forces are participating in refueling Saudi bombers and also in their targeting, which has killed thousands of civilians. By cutting off food imports, the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war has put more than seven million people at the brink of starvation.
The “Saudis are deliberately trying to create a famine inside Yemen in order to essentially starve the Yemenis to the negotiating table” — and “the United States is participating,” said Senator Chris Murphy.
And now, as a result of the destruction, Yemen has the worst cholera outbreak in the world, which has infected more than 500,000 people, with at least 2,000 deaths so far. The UN estimates that a child in Yemen dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes.
When our government threatens whole nations with annihilation, or participates in massive cruelty and collective punishment in far-away
places, it is important to at least try to understand why this happens. While these crimes are illegal (even Trump’s threats against North Korea are prohibited by the UN charter) and nothing could justify them, our political leaders and policy analysts nonetheless fill the mass media with rationales that often win at least tacit support from many people who should know better.
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