{"id":22286,"date":"2018-11-29T21:00:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T21:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jww.org\/?p=22286"},"modified":"2018-11-29T21:00:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T21:00:39","slug":"senate-vote-on-yemen-a-step-in-the-right-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/senate-vote-on-yemen-a-step-in-the-right-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate vote on Yemen a step in the right direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big news for Yemen \u2014 finally, Congress has stepped up to the plate and managed to get the ball rolling on ending the Administration\u2019s facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in this impoverished nation, which has been deemed the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.  In a 63-37 vote, lawmakers discharged S. J. Res. 54<\/a>, co-sponsored by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chris Murphy (D-CT), which would force the US to cease its assistance for the Saudi-led coalition in its unscrupulous fight against the Houthi rebels in Yemen\u2019s proxy war within 30 days.  Los Angeles-based Jewish World Watch (JWW) commends our local Senators, Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris, as well as 16 others, for co-sponsoring this crucial resolution, which comes not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the White House has already threatened to veto the Yemen joint resolution should it pass, contending that \u201cthe fundamental premise of S.J. Res. 54 is flawed\u2014United States forces are not engaged in hostilities between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi forces in Yemen.\u201d  It has, of course, been well-documented that America\u2019s role supporting the Saudi-UAE led coalition has been substantial since Obama<\/a>\u2019s time in office, including the provision of billions of dollars worth of arms and munitions, targeting assistance for Saudi war planes, intelligence and reconnaissance, and in-air refueling.  To be fair, earlier this month, the U.S. stopped midair refueling for Saudi aircraft \u2014 a small victory for critics of U.S.\u2019s intertwined relationship with the coalition.  Coalition forces have been indiscriminately bombing civilians, hospitals<\/a>, and civilian infrastructure, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s certification<\/a> that the Saudis were making every effort to minimize civilian casualties. <\/p>\n

The Trump Administration will have a hard time proving that this comprehensive assistance is not tantamount to engagement in hostilities.  The U.S.\u2019s hands are far from clean in this intractable conflict that has mercilessly wreaked havoc on the civilian population, killing thousands upon thousands of children, either through bombings or famine or disease.  In fact, America\u2019s involvement may make it complicit in aiding and abetting mass atrocities against the civilian population, which has been targeted unceasingly by Saudi air attacks, cut off from virtually all humanitarian aid and food aid, and forced to live in sub-human conditions because of strategic attacks on public works and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Some mainstream media sources have been referring to the legislation as a \u201cbill,\u201d which it is not.  To clarify, a resolution is not legislative in character.  It is primarily used to express principles, facts, opinions, and intentions of either chamber of Congress.  However, if both chambers seek to pass the exact same resolution in identical form and succeed in doing so, that joint resolution becomes a law in the same way that a traditional bill does.  S.J. Res. 54 is, luckily, a joint resolution, with companion legislation already introduced in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA-17), with 53 co-sponsors.  The House has attempted to craftily derail H. Con. Res. 81<\/a>, but adoption is still possible.    <\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, House Republicans, capitalizing on their last weeks in power before the Democratic majority takeover in January, blocked a quick vote on the House\u2019s joint resolution, depriving it of the privilege to leapfrog committee hearings and be fast-tracked to the chamber floor.  With just days left in session this year, this stripping of \u201cprivilege status,\u201d essentially means the resolution must languish for now.  But, Rep. Khanna has vowed to bring it back for a vote when Democrats control the House come January, and the likelihood of its passing is very high given the number of cosponsors and general feeling among Democratic lawmakers. <\/p>\n

This may not be the case, however, for the Senate.  Yesterday\u2019s vote was not an adoption of the resolution, strictly speaking.  Rather, it was a vote to take the bill out of committee and allow for a full floor debate and vote\u2014much like what the House was precluded from doing with its companion resolution a few weeks ago.  Hopefully, a full vote on passing the Senate resolution will happen before this session of Congress ends.  Though such delays and uncertainties are frustrating, the symbolic import of yesterday\u2019s vote should not be diminished. <\/p>\n

It is, of course, soul-crushing that Yemeni\u2019s civilian population \u2014 with at least 17,000 killed and 14 million on the brink of famine after four years of brutal hostilities \u2014 must continue to suffer<\/a> until the changing of the guard.  After a short ceasefire prompted by intense international pressure, the Saudi-led military coalition resumed its air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida last Sunday, once again trapping Yemeni civilians in the crossfire.    <\/p>\n

Although largely a symbolic victory at this point in time, the Senate\u2019s passage of its joint resolution puts us one step closer to the end of America\u2019s role in facilitating unconscionable atrocities.  If both chambers of Congress formally disapprove of America\u2019s assistance in the war in Yemen, the Trump Administration will be hard-pressed to find a legitimate rationalization for continuing to support the Saudis, without Congressional authorization, which, of course, is highly unlikely given the current changing of the tide. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, the exact same Sanders-authored resolution that passed the Senate yesterday failed<\/a> earlier this year in a 55 to 44 vote.  So what changed within the course of 8 months?  Most likely the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  Khashoggi war and dismembered inside Saudi Arabia\u2019s consulate in Istanbul, causing many politicians who have historically backed the relationship between Washington and Riyadh to feel betrayed by the murder, including staunch Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). <\/p>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s refusal to point a finger at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman \u2014 who is widely believed to be the chief architect of Khashoggi\u2019s murder, Republicans and Democrats alike have tied the dissident\u2019s death to the young royal.  Trump\u2019s refusal to respond to the shocking murder of a legal U.S. resident seems to have inspired senators on both sides of the aisle to send a strong message.  S.J. Res. 54 provided the perfect opportunity to do so.       <\/p>\n

It took the shocking brazenness and brutality of Khashoggi\u2019s murder to change policymakers\u2019 calculations about the value of the US-Saudi relationship with erratic and dangerous bin Salman at the helm.  It took the death of one man with a name and a face\u2014rather than the cries of millions of victims in Yemen\u2014to jolt the world into surveying the Saudi prince\u2019s behavior elsewhere, including Yemen.  Soon, it came to the fore that \u201cYemen is one big Saudi consulate,\u201d as Yemeni activist and founder of human rights group Mwatan, Abdulrasheed Alfaqih<\/a> puts it.  \u201cAll Yemenis are like Khashoggi, but without the Washington Post.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that the world is coming around to perceive the situation in Yemen in the way that Alfaqih describes, we must embrace this opportunity and press hard for the resolutions before both chambers not to run out of steam.  Please contact your local members of Congress and urge them to remain vigilant and engaged with the processes of  H. Con. Res. 81<\/a> and  S. J. Res. 54<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big news for Yemen \u2014 finally, Congress has stepped up to the plate and managed to get the ball rolling on ending the Administration\u2019s facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in this impoverished nation, which has been deemed the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.  In a 63-37 vote, lawmakers discharged S. J.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188,283,328],"tags":[388,389,225],"class_list":["post-22286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-features","category-news-analysis","category-yemen","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-congress","tag-yemen","category-188","category-283","category-328","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}