Student concern must not be myopic


USC students have recently and proudly participated in protests against abuses that they fear will result under the incoming Trump administration. Student groups on campus have become more active in order to provide solidarity and solace for their members and to encourage their fellow millennials to continue to fight for their beliefs using political pressure and the democratic process. Our generation is preparing to faithfully defend human dignity here at home. Yet, with all of the fanfare during the 19-month election cycle, we have forgotten the places where even basic human rights are nothing but a memory.

This week, The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia has also been participating in something important for 19 months: a campaign against Shi’ite Muslim rebels in Yemen. The military intervention by Saudi Arabia and its allies has failed to oust the rebels, however, and has resulted in shocking damage to Yemen’s struggling economy and populace. Compounding matters, Saudi and allied fighter-bomber pilots have operated with reckless abandon, bombing food manufacturers, hospitals and schools. Even weddings and a funeral have been hit by bombs dropped from Saudi planes. Major cities are pockmarked with craters and the civilians beg in the street for sustenance. The United Nations has cried foul at what appears to be the Saudi coalition’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure and its interference in providing aid.

Not even a leading international disaster relief agency, the Iranian Red Crescent Society, was safe from needlessly abhorrent endangerment. Early in the conflict, Saudi planes bombed the entire Yemeni capital’s airport to prevent a single aid plane from the IRCS from landing, destroying the runways, the control tower and a civilian airliner in the process. Most shameful of all, the Saudi coalition is estimated to be responsible for twice as many casualties as the rebels they are fighting. Clearly, this is a humanitarian crisis, and the United States government needs to act.

Except it already has. It sold Saudi Arabia and its allies the F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers that they are using. It taught the Saudi Arabian pilots how to use those planes and provided bombs that were dropped on civilian targets, violating international law. It even offered to refuel Saudi planes in mid-air. And the United States continues to sell arms to the Saudi military, all the while claiming that the airstrikes it is enabling are needlessly escalating the conflict.

The United States did this in order to not upset the delicate balance of Middle Eastern powers in the Arabian Peninsula, especially after warming relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s religious and political nemesis. Despite hundreds of factories being destroyed and about 10,000 Yemeni deaths, the United States has shown no willingness to sensibly delay fulfilling arms deals with the Saudis until the conflict concludes. What the United States has shown through its example is that convenient geopolitical considerations are more important than the lives, livelihoods and rights of thousands of innocents. Bear in mind that this has been allowed under the auspices of a Democratic administration.

Enabling such a horrific tragedy to continue to play out is certainly worthy of protest. Yet, no student group has publicly spoken out in recent months against the United States’ role in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. No arguments have been made in lieu of regularly-scheduled class discussions like what has been occurring because of the election. The Daily Trojan published a pair of articles on the conflict when it began, and that appears to have been both the beginning and the end of the discussion on campus until today. Compare that to student fear of and discussion about Trump’s xenophobic policy recommendations while the conflict in Yemen has raged on and you see the problem. When we fear that our rights may be violated, we mobilize. When it happens abroad, we seem to sip our tea and shake our collective heads, if anything at all.

If human rights and dignity are truly human, students need to address where our government violates them -— not only at home, but abroad, too.