Saudi dictatorship fights for "democracy" in Yemen

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Pretty big under the radar news going on in the Middle East that I haven't seen posted about here. To make a long story short, the Sunni Yemeni government got overthrew by Shia backed rebels called the Houthis and now Saudi Arabia(a long with Bahrain, Sudan, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Morocco, and Kuwait) have decided to attack and probably invade the country with the US giving support as well. AQAP and ISIS have a major presence in the Yemen and our helping crush the Houthis removes pretty much their only obstacle from gaining complete control of the country, why is it that without fail that the US almost always seems to come down on the side Al Qaeda or ISIS? '

What a joke it is that the least democratic countries on earth waging an aggressive war and invasion in defense of "democracy and human rights", it really is monkey see monkey do. The US should lead by example and it seems we do I guess, just not in a rational or moral way.

Who is more of a threat to the US, the Ayatollahs and guys like Bashar al-Assad or the Saudis and their pets ISIS and Al Qaeda?

I don't think they are fighting for democracy. They are fighting Iran (the Houthis).

You mean Democracy comes one ordnance at a time
sarc/

I think neither are a serious threat to the US, not an existential threat anyway. These people are too busy fighting each other. It seems like a race to the bottom in the Middle-east, who can create the biggest s**thole. Yemen was called a failed state years ago before this latest messup, is there a name for a failed state 2.0? Go from SNAFU to FUBAR?

We should pull everything out of that taxdollar sinkhole, foreign aid, weapons aid, US forces, etc.
Put it to use to something that actually improves our country like schools, NASA solar system exploration, or even a secure border for once!

Aside from the oil exports from the region, the area around Yemen and Saudi Arabia is important for international shipping because of the Suez canal. But yeah, even the "allies" in the region are useless a**holes.

I wonder what the Houthis and the Saudis each see as the optimal outcome of this situation, and how much support the Houthis are getting from Iran.

This is only part related but what is the difference between the sunni and shia muslims? And why don't they get along if the main basis of the religion is the same

It's kind of like the difference between Catholics and Protestants hundreds of years ago. Sunni fundamentalists see Shi'ites as "apostates". Saudi Arabia, the center of Sunni Islam, is extremely paranoid about Iran.

The origin of the schism is disagreement over who should be the successor to the prophet Mohammed. I think there is agreement about the first couple of Caliphs (successors), but in the late 7th century the Muslim community split over the killing of the Shia candidate, Imam Hussein. Over time they evolved into different communities. Slightly different theologies have developed since then but one of the main things is that they are not in agreement over who the righteous early Muslim leaders were.

Nobody is fighting.for democracy in Yemen- that's the last thing anyone wants. Yemen is just serving as a proxie war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia wants to put their puppet government back in place whereas iran is trying to prevent that from occurring. Tbh though, messy as it is- the Yemeni conflict is actually much simpler than the one going on in Iraq & Syria due to less players being on the chessboard, so to speak.
From my understanding, Yemen is going to be a failed state. The houthis are fortified enough in their mountain enclaves that airstrikes are proven to be ineffective, whereas all the other Yemenis don't want their dictator back making it unlikely for Saudi Arabia to reinstall it. Ground troops are not very fashionable right now, so it's unlikely that a higher level of military intervention would take place, and the Shiites and Sunnis in Yemen ren't going to sing kum I ta any time soon.

Sunnis are predominantly Arabs, and Shiah are predominantly Persian. There's a lot of arguing about religion, yes, but it really comes down to racism.

Correction: like someone said earlier, they're fighting houthis

If Sunni Wahhabbis were driving the rebellion in Yemen, the Saudis might not have been so quick to deploy force.

In Yemen most of the Shia are Arabs. Though the ties between religious affiliation and tribal affiliation tend to be highly overlapped in Yemen. The Houthis do contend that the Ziada Shia (whom they claim to champion) of Yemen are a mistreated minority, who were marginalized by the past regimes.

I did not realize that. I guess, then, that tribalism would be more accurate than racism. The two are pretty similar, though.