“$100 Billion in Weapons to the Saudis Buys a World Full of Hurt,” writes George D. O’Neill, Jr., founder and chairman of the Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy, in an op-ed published January 4, 2019 in The American Conservative. He continues:
On December 13, the United States Senate made history with a vote invoking the 1973 War Powers Act to stop America’s military participation in, and support of, the unauthorized and immoral war against the desperate people in Yemen.
Never before had a vote of this nature passed the Senate. The measure passed with 56 senators voting in support and 41 voting against. It marked the first time the Senate has been able to put the breaks on our involvement in Yemen, a war that was never authorized by Congress, as is required by our Constitution.
Meanwhile, Speaker Paul Ryan went to extraordinary lengths to forestall a vote on a similar motion in the House of Representatives.
The history here is worth noting.
The 1973 War Powers Act was written to protect such motions from political shenanigans. However, in 2017, the leadership killed House Concurrent Resolution 81, using parliamentary trickery to table the motion without a vote. In November 2018, the House Rules Committee, controlled by Ryan and company, slipped a rule into the Wolf Protection Act to de-privilege H.Con.Res.138 so that a vote would again be thwarted. When the measure was brought up again in December, the Rules Committee inserted a rule on Res.142 into the farm bill, which again prevented Congress from voting on the issue.
Why so much effort on Capitol Hill to protect and perpetuate an illegal war that has brought the 14 million people of Yemen to the brink of starvation? Why so much support for enabling the Saudi government’s inhumane naval blockade and bombing campaign, which are intentionally designed to starve the Yemenis and prevent other supplies, particularly medicines, from coming into Yemen?
When queried, the typical supporter of this horror tells us we have to support the Saudis because they are “our friends.” But how can we call those who willfully perpetrate such unthinkable misery “our friends”? For many years, our political, military, and press leadership have intoned the “our friends” mantra. Why? Exactly who benefits from this so-called friendship?
Read more at The American Conservative
