As expected, Donald Trump on Wednesday pulled out his veto stamp to kill three bipartisan resolutions designed to block him from speeding the sales of $8.1 billion in arms to autocratic Saudi Arabia. Included in the 22 sales that make up the deal are smart bombs and other weapons that have been implicated in the Saudi killing of thousands of civilians in Yemen over the past four years.
In May, Trump angered representatives and senators, including some members of his own party, when he invoked emergency powers to avoid having to clear the arms sales with Congress. Not all members who support the resolutions are necessarily opposed to the sales, but they want to be informed and consulted in the matter.
Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York said Wednesday:
“The President’s veto sends a grim message that America’s foreign policy is no longer rooted in our core values—namely a respect for human rights—and that he views Congress not as a coequal branch of government, but an irritant to be avoided or ignored. Worse still, this veto is going to cost innocent lives. These weapons are going to continue fueling a reckless and brutal campaign of violence and exacerbating the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. Whatever our security concerns in the region, there’s no ‘emergency,’ as the Administration claimed, that justifies this end run around Congress. I condemn the President’s decision and I’ll continue using every tool at my disposal to bring accountability to his foreign policy, including closing the loopholes that led to this arms sale fiasco in the first place.”
The confrontation between the White House and Congress over the sale emerged against the backdrop of the intervention of Saudi Arabia in the civil war in neighboring Yemen. Houthi rebels backed by Iran, the Saudis’ longtime mortal enemy for religious and geopolitical reasons, control the western third of Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. In targeting the rebels, the Saudis have used an array of U.S.-made weapons, including cluster munitions that take a huge civilian toll. At least 70,000 people have been killed in the war. Human rights groups say the total includes some 18,000 civilian fatalities. The Saudis have targeted hospitals, markets, weddings, a funeral, and a school bus loaded with 40 children.
The emergency the White House trumpeted in its original announcement about the sale said that the arms are needed because Iran is showing signs of stepping up overt and covert activities the United States and other nations view as destabilizing the Middle East. CNN reports that in May Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a letter to Congress in which he wrote that he had "determined that an emergency exists, which requires the immediate sale of the defense articles and defense services" to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan "in order to deter further the malign influence of the Government of Iran throughout the Middle East region."
Many critics found those claims to be, at best, exaggerated at a time when a counterproductive U.S. policy has all but demolished the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and spurred a perilous game of chicken between Washington and Tehran, with drones shot down and tanker ships seized. The prospects are good for much worse between two nations whose leaders publicly declare that the last thing they seek is war with each other.
In support of his veto of the arms resolutions, Trump said in statement, "The United States is very concerned about the conflict's toll on innocent civilians and is working to bring the conflict in Yemen to an end. But we cannot end it through ill-conceived and time-consuming resolutions that fail to address its root causes, Rather than expend time and resources on such resolutions, I encourage the Congress to direct its efforts toward supporting our work to achieve peace through a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Yemen."
In October 2018, Trump called for a cease-fire within 30 days in Yemen. That went nowhere. What’s obvious is how utterly phony the White House pretense of acting as a peacekeeper is.
Ten months ago, Pompeo certified that the Saudis were doing their best to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen. As a condition for continued U.S. support for the Saudi intervention in the country, such certification was required by bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Rep. Todd C. Young of Indiana. The disingenuousness of the call for a cease-fire was fully exposed when it became known that the State Department’s legislative affairs department had pushed hard for the certification to favor Saudis. And the argument backing that push? Not doing so might jeopardize profitable arms deals. Who headed that department until last month? Charles Faulkner, formerly a lobbyist for Raytheon, one of the major U.S. suppliers of weapons to the Saudis.
In May, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who sponsored one of the resolutions that would have blocked the sales, said in the midst of a hearing on the matter:
“The emergency declaration is nothing more than an egregious abuse of power by an Administration that doesn’t like being told ‘no.’ There is no emergency, but there is a conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians with U.S.-made weapons and a Congress that is tired of being complicit. Our arms sale process was designed to include congressional review to ensure that U.S. interests and laws are always met with each sale. The Trump Administration knows that these sales would not meet that standard, so they decided to declare a fake emergency in order to bypass Congress. It’s a tactic they’ve used before. This legislation sends a strong signal that we will not tolerate the Trump Administration’s blatant abuse of power.”
During discussion of one of the resolutions in June, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, said, “If we allow these arms sales, the effect will be to prolong a war that does not serve U.S. interests, while signaling to the Saudis that they can get away with anything.”
Given the human rights record of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—a pal of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October—the Saudis already know they can get away with anything. Trump has made that clear repeatedly. With his veto Wednesday, he did it again.