Twenty-nine school children were killed in a bombing raid in Yemen on August 9. Do we care?

In between our fascination with Trump’s latest tweets and discussions about who goes to the next Super Bowl, did we even notice the tragedy?

Probably nine out of ten Americans don’t know Yemen exists. Fewer don’t know that we sell aircraft and munitions to our ally Saudi Arabia who uses them to bomb people there.

A bloody war has raged for years in Yemen between one regime supported by Iran and one supported by Saudi Arabia and its ally, the United Arab Emirates. Mass starvation and bombings of school busses and wedding parties are part of the conflict.

Why are Saudi Arabia and Iran fighting? Because these two countries have been locked in a power struggle for years for control of the Middle East.

The two countries adhere to different interpretations of Islam, whose advocates have fought each other for well over a millennia.

Dan Simpson, a former U.S. diplomat, writes: “I don’t care what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may have done for President Donald J. Trump or Israel; this time what the Saudis are doing in Yemen is way beyond what the United States should tolerate.

“The two Sunni Muslim states have, first, added U.S. 9/ 11-vintage enemy al-Qaida to their and our allies in the war in Yemen, putting us and the terrorists who attacked us at home on the same side in the war against the Shiite Houthis there. The war in Yemen has basically nothing to do with us in any case. Second, the Saudis and their allies carried out yet another brutal air attack in Saada in the north of Yemen on Aug. 9 that killed among others at least 29 children in a school bus in a marketplace.” (“Dan Simpson: Beyond the pale in Yemen,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 14, 2018)

At the very least, we can keep the weapons we sell to Saudi Arabia from being used in the conflict. As Simpson says, “The war in Yemen has basically nothing to do with us in any case.”