In this op-ed, poet and author Seth Oelbaum explains how the war in Yemen is part of a deadly division that’s been maintained throughout history.

The war in Yemen is approaching its fourth year.

So far, since Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies joined the Yemeni government's fight against the rebel Houthis, the war in Yemen has killed nearly 10,000, left 400,000 children malnourished to the point of death, and put 22 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, the Associated Press reported in January.

Much blame has been aimed at financial and military assistance from the administrations of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Last fall, Reuters reported that the United Nations had verified 5,144 civilian deaths in the war in Yemen, mainly from airstrikes by a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition.

For most Americans and Westerners, such constant cruelty undoubtedly seems like something out of a dystopian movie or TV show. But for people in Yemen, the brutality has become a reality, it has become routine.

The misery in Yemen is one more example of a larger global pattern that’s repeated itself for hundreds of years. For centuries, the British Empire and then the U.S. Empire have been ranking "the relative value of human lives."

In the United States, it seems like the majority of those deciding which lives are of value have white skin — or the type of influence associated with white skin — and apparently see themselves and their country only as symbols of “freedom” and “humanity. The "other'd" people — those with lives that don't seem to matter or contain much value — often have had darker skin and are believed by some to be “savages” who pose a threat to “one of the greatest countries” on earth.

With this binary established throughout time and across continents, it’s routine for Western governments to avoid meaningful accountability for their deadly actions. That is what’s happening in Yemen.

People in the United States much prefer to criticize Trump for his tweets, rather than for launching six times more airstrikes in Yemen in 2017 than Obama launched in 2016. Similarly, people would rather praise Obama for his tweets than ask why his administration approved international arms deals totaling more than $200 billion from 2009 to 2015, including $115 billion in arms offered to Saudi Arabia.

The problem is huge, and many are complicit. As Rami Khouri, a journalism professor at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera, "The Anglo-American media has been criminally complicit in not reporting accurately about what actually is going on in Yemen.”

But it’s not just the media — it’s the people who glorify media, condemn media, or conflate media with progress. The media is not separate from society — it’s a reflection of the many biases and distortions of society, of its mindlessness. At this point, many Americans accept situations like Yemen and view such suffering as normal and undeserving of attention.

“We Yemenis feel neglected by the international community and feel like we are living on another planet,” Heba, a 35-year-old living in Yemen whose name has been changed, told German news site DW.

Yemen is not another planet, though. Neither are Afghanistan, Syria, or Somalia. When the United States and others bomb these places, people are killed and hurt, and that daily destruction could end up leading to more violence. The Pulse nightclub shooter told police and 911 operators, "Because you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. . . . They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes, OK? . . . They are killing too many children, they are killing too many women, OK?"