See no evil

Russian airstrikes in Syria are killing civilians, and the US and its allies are on it:

“We express our deep concern with regard to the Russian military build-up in Syria and especially the attacks by the Russian Air Force,” said a joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States, which was released by Ankara.

“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalisation,” said the coalition, which also includes Canada.

“We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians,” added the statement, which was published on the websites of foreign ministries in Turkey, Germany and France.

Good for the US and Saudi Arabia, et al. Outside military interventions that deal out civilian carnage with impunity are morally vile and toxic to any hopes of reducing tensions and ending the wars that brought them on in the first place. They should be utterly condemned.

Say, that reminds me of something…

The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition striking Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen denies it launched airstrikes that hit a wedding party.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri tells The Associated Press Wednesday that “we did not conduct any operations in that area two days ago,” referring to Monday’s incident, in which more than 130 people were killed in the deadliest single event of Yemen’s civil war.

Asiri says there is no evidence of what caused the deaths, and that ordinary civilians cannot distinguish between airstrikes, missiles, cannon fire or local explosions.

Oh, the Saudis are denying it? Well that clears that up. Unfortunately, the details of this one strike, however horrific, are only a drop in the bucket compared to the 2300 total civilian deaths in Yemen thus far, “most of which,” according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, are courtesy of “the Saudi-led air campaign.” Luckily, the Saudis, with US support, managed today to push a resolution through the UN that will ensure that any investigation into human rights abuses in Yemen will only be done by the Yemeni government rather than the UN. Because when you want an impartial investigation into the human rights abuses committed during a war, there’s no better way to ensure that you’ll get one than to turn the investigation over to one of the two sides fighting that war.

Speaking of human rights, here’s a funny story:

The UN has issued an urgent call for Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a young man who faces imminent beheading and crucifixion for crimes he reportedly committed as a child.

A Saudi court has upheld the sentence of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the son of a prominent government dissident, despite growing and high-level international condemnation.

Mr al-Nimr, who was arrested in 2012 for his participation in Arab Spring protests when he was just 16 or 17 years old, could now be put to death at any time.

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is the nephew of Nimr al-Nimr, the Saudi Shiʿa preacher who is also in Saudi custody and could also be executed pretty much any time, for preaching against the Kingdom’s generally awful treatment of the its Shiʿa minority. Ali Mohammed is guilty first and foremost of being Sheikh Nimr’s nephew, and at any rate is going to be executed (via beheading and then crucifixion, mind you) for participating in a protest movement, and on the basis of a confession that was tortured out of him.

The funny thing is, as all this stuff is going on you hardly hear a peep about it from Washington. We’re actually aiding those Saudi strikes in Yemen, remember, and we supported that Saudi UN resolution that all but ensured there will never be an honest accounting of war crimes coming out of that conflict. And if anybody in the Obama administration would like to chime in about the plight of young Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, I’m pretty sure they’ll be the first person in the administration to do so. Or we could all just follow John McCain’s script and deny that the Saudis have done anything wrong, I guess ever, while pointing in the distance and shouting “SQUIRREL”:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spent the most time discussing the issue with me. But his answers were perplexing.

“They may be bombing civilians, which is actually not true,” McCain said, when asked about civilian casualties in Yemen.

“Civilians aren’t dying?” I asked.

“No, they’re not,” the senator replied. “Oh, I’m sure civilians die in war. Not nearly as many as the Houthis have executed,” McCain continued, referring to the Shiite militia waging an insurgency against the Sunni government in Yemen.

Asked about the recent reports of Saudi forces bombing a wedding party in Yemen, McCain said, “I’m sure in wars terrible things happen and the Houthis however are an extremist group backed by the Iranians who are slaughtering Yemenis.”

I hesitate to call John McCain a liar here, because that assumes that he would have cared enough to look up the actual casualty figures and then consciously lie about them, when he’s really more of a “make up your own reality as you go along” kind of a guy.

I’ve never understood why people like McCain and a good chunk of the DC foreign policy establishment think that the United States can get away with claiming to stand for human rights while constantly backing Saudi Arabia regardless of the fact that it flagrantly violates human rights all the time. Maybe they figure that America’s overwhelming military power affords it the luxury of hypocrisy, maybe they really pay no attention to objectionable Saudi actions, or maybe they genuinely don’t see the conflict somehow. I guess it’s one of those deep life mysteries.

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