A C-17 aircraft evacuating Indians stranded in Yemen.

Thousands of Americans are trapped in war-torn Yemen. But the U.S. government, which is legally mandated to protect and evacuate its citizens from dangerous situations anywhere in the world, is doing nothing to help them. Instead, the Obama administration is delivering weapons to Saudi Arabia to deepen the conflict and further endanger Yemeni Americans. 

According to the Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities executive order, the State Department and Department of Defense are legally required to plan for the protection and evacuation of U.S. citizens in threatened areas overseas.

The law is straightforward and is not open to interpretation. Americans in Yemen are threatened by war. Abandoning them is illegal. 

But beyond the legal issue, for a nation to abandon its own citizens in a war zone is a failure of its moral character.

A lawsuit, filed last week by the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) against federal officials, made the argument that abandoning Americans is a continuation of discriminatory policies against Yemeni Americans. 

The lawsuit cites the withholding and delaying of Yemeni Americans’ passports as an example of such policies. Our government’s lack of regard for the lives of Americans who are of Yemeni origin goes beyond neglect. The Obama administration assassinated Yemeni American Islamist fundamentalist cleric Anwar Alawlaki without due process. Despite the unconstitutionality of targeting Alawlaki, understandably few tears were shed for him because he promoted killing Americans. But when his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, who had no connection to terrorism, was murdered by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, the lack of media and public outrage was indicative that the lives of Yemeni Americans do not matter to the establishment.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf put the burden of rescuing Yemeni Americans on the stranded citizens themselves. “We have been warning— for I think a decade now— that American citizens not travel to Yemen,” she said.

Harf added that the situation in Yemen is “dangerous and unpredictable” and sending U.S. military forces to evacuate Americans could put U.S. citizens in greater danger.

However, the situation is not that unpredictable to U.S. policy makers, given their role in the crisis. Using his influence over U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, Obama can broker a humanitarian truce to evacuate American citizens, but our government is not even willing to try. 

There have been more than a dozen precedents where the U.S. government has evacuated large numbers of citizens from equally dangerous zones. Thousands of Dearborn residents were evacuated out of Lebanon on American ships and helicopters during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. 

A leaked cable from the U.S. embassy in Yemen estimates the number of American citizens in the Arabian Peninsula country at 55,000. We understand that it might be hard to evacuate all of them, but if the administration doesn’t make any effort, none of them will be rescued.

Failed state Somalia and developing countries like India and Pakistan have gotten their citizens out of Yemen. It is bewildering that a nation that prides itself on being the greatest in the world would watch— and supply— bombs falling on its citizens.

We urge Michigan’s delegation to Congress, especially Southeast Michigan’s representatives whose constituents include Yemeni Americans, to press the administration to fulfill its moral and legal duties to protect Americans in Yemen.