The Bogus ‘Emergency’ and the War on Yemen
Even Lindsey Graham is so disgusted by Trump’s bogus arms sales “emergency” that he wants to close that loophole in the law:
One of President Trump’s closest congressional allies is ready to strip him of certain emergency powers in response to the administration sidestepping lawmakers to secure 22 arms sales benefiting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“Do away with the emergency exception,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday. Doing so, he added, would prevent the executive branch from repeating such a move in the future. “I would not have agreed to that before, but after this maneuver by the administration, count me in.”
It is a measure of how outrageous the Trump administration’s phony “emergency” is that even such a reliable hard-liner and Trump ally as Graham is opposed to it. Graham is a supporter of the war on Yemen, and he has generally had no problem with U.S. arms sales to despotic clients in the past, but the president’s attempt to make an end-run around Congress is such an egregious abuse of power that he can’t count on Graham’s support in this matter. When it comes to Trump’s handling of the relationships with the Saudis and the UAE, the president has done such a horrible job and has treated Congress with contempt so many times that he is driving his closest allies into the opposing camp.
The loophole in the Arms Export Control Act was an invitation to abuse, and in Trump we have a president eager to exploit every available opening. Congress needs to close off that opening so that this president and future ones can’t abuse it in similar fashion. It has taken too long for Congress to stand up to the president’s abuses, but this is a promising sign that they aren’t going to put up with them any longer.
As I mentioned earlier, there is equally strong opposition on the House side:
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), began the hearing with R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, by accusing the administration of creating a “phony” emergency to justify the sales.
“Here’s the reality: There is no emergency,” Engel said. “It’s made up. And it’s an abuse of the law.”
Everyone can see that the emergency is fake, and more important leading members of Congress are willing to excoriate administration officials publicly for the obvious lie. We all understand that the administration resorted to this obnoxious abuse of power because they have already lost the argument over arms sales to the Saudis and Emiratis, and they lost because there is no case to be made for continuing to arm war criminals as they massacre civilians in Yemen. Like the cowardly and cynical Congressional Republican leaders that desperately tried to prevent a vote on the antiwar Yemen resolution, the Trump administration is afraid to debate these arms sales on the merits because they know the majority is against them. Luckily, in their arrogant attempt to short-circuit the process and avoid Congressional review they have turned even more members of Congress against them.
The “emergency” lie is tied up with the larger lie that is administration Yemen policy. They claim that providing the Saudis and the UAE with precision-guided weapons reduces the risk to civilians, but that ignores the fact that the Saudi coalition routinely launches attacks on civilian targets on purpose. Sending more weapons to governments that massacre civilians obviously cannot reduce the risk to civilians. It guarantees more civilian deaths. We know in advance that these weapons will be used to commit war crimes, and by trying to rush these weapons to the war criminals the Trump administration is giving a green light to more massacres, deepening U.S. complicity in these crimes, and announcing to the entire world that the administration’s support for the Saudi coalition is unconditional. The “emergency” is a lie in service to an evil cause, and all members of Congress should reject it.