'Shameful': With Millions on Brink of Famine in Yemen, Trump Vetoes Resolution to End US Complicity

Congress urged to "pull out the stops to confront this president who thinks starving millions of Yemenis is a price worth paying for high arms industry profits."

byJake Johnson

President Donald Trump speaks as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens
during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S.
June 21, 2018. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Donald Trump decided late Tuesday to continue America's complicity in the world's worst humanitarian crisis by vetoing the historic Yemen War Powers resolution.

"With Trump's veto of Bernie Sanders' and my War Powers resolution, he is risking the lives of millions of Yemeni civilians to famine, deadly airstrikes, and the war crimes of the Saudi regime." 
—Rep. Ro Khanna

"Donald Trump's veto today is reckless and shameful," Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, said in a statement. "Sadly, it is also to be expected from a president who has pretended to be a champion of peace while actually expanding every war he inherited and putting us on a collision course to war with Iran."

Trump's veto—the second of his presidency—came nearly two weeks after the House of Representatives passed the Yemen measure with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, marking the first time Congress has sent a War Powers resolution to the president's desk.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who helped lead the House effort to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen, denounced Trump's veto on Twitter.

"With Trump's veto of Bernie Sanders' and my War Powers resolution, which passed with bipartisan support in Congress, he is risking the lives of millions of Yemeni civilians to famine, deadly airstrikes, and the war crimes of the Saudi regime," Khanna wrote. "We must override his veto."

In a separate tweet, Khanna challenged Trump's claim in his veto message that the Yemen measure represented "an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken [his] constitutional authorities."

Ro Khanna

✔@RoKhanna

The War Powers Resolution to end U.S. involvement in Yemen has nothing to do with weakening Trump’s constitutional authorities.

It’s about both houses of Congress taking back our authority outlined in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to decide on matters of war & peace.

1,368

6:42 AM - Apr 17, 2019

Trump's veto was immediately praised by Anwar Gargash, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a key Saudi ally in the years-long assault on Yemen.

According to a report published by the humanitarian group Save the Children last November, 85,000 Yemeni children under the age of five have died of malnutrition over the past three years, as the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition has relentlessly bombed the impoverished nation and restricted access to food and medicine.

The United Nations has estimated that 14 million Yemenis—half the country's population—are at risk of famine as the Saudi bombing continues with the help of American-made weapons and aircraft.

"The people of Yemen desperately need humanitarian help, not more bombs," tweetedSen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who led the Senate effort to cut off U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia.

Amid the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Peace Action executive director Jon Rainwater urged Congress to "keep the pressure up and continue the fight to stop U.S. complicity."

"They must pull out the stops to confront this president who thinks starving millions of Yemenis is a price worth paying for high arms industry profits," Rainwater said in a statement. "Congress should work to block arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition and cut off funding for U.S. military involvement in Yemen. They should raise hell in the run-up to the 2020 election and lay each new casualty of this war at Trump's feet where they belong."

US $1.6 Billion Arms Deal With UAE Will Perpetuate the War-Fest in Yemen

TEHRAN (FNA)- The warring factions in Yemen have agreed on the first phase of a withdrawal of forces around the key port of Hodeida.

According to the United Nations, Saudi-backed forces and Ansarullah resistance groups have made "important progress on planning for the redeployment" following talks, but no start date has been given. The pull-out is a critical part of a ceasefire agreed in Sweden in December. And Hodeida is the principal lifeline for two-thirds of Yemen's population, which is on the brink of famine.

Tell that to the United States government, which refuses to end its complicity in Saudi-led war crimes in Yemen, and has just signed deals with the United Arab Emirates worth more than $1.6 billion for Patriot missile launchers from Raytheon - even as the UAE- and Saudi-led coalition's actions in the war on Yemen is under fire by the UN, human rights groups, and international aid agencies.

The new arms deals come days after an Amnesty International investigation further implicated the UAE in war crimes for transferring Western weapons to unaccountable militia groups and terror proxies, thereby deepening the humanitarian crisis and fueling carnage in the war-ravaged country.

As maintained by Patrick Wilcken, arms control and human rights researcher at Amnesty International: "Emirati forces receive billions of dollars' worth of arms from Western states and others, only to siphon them off to militias in Yemen that answer to no-one and are known to be committing war crimes. The ongoing carnage against civilians in Yemen - including at the hands of the Saudi and UAE-led coalition and the militias it backs - should give serious pause to all states supplying arms.”

It’s a sentiment also shared by the UN Human Rights Council and UNICEF. They are also calling for a stop to the war and all arms transfers to the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition. They have steered the ground offensive in the conflict, which broke out in 2015 and has, by some estimates, killed over 60,000 Yemenis, uprooted millions, and left millions more on the brink of famine.

On that note, American fingerprints are all over the place too. US arms sales and intelligence to Saudi Arabia are still ongoing in the air war, despite new legislation at the Congress hoping to halt US support for the war. This is while the Trump administration officials have brushed off criticism the US and its weapons industry are facing. They make policy and this is not the way forward - at a time when all warring factions in Yemen have signed a ceasefire and pullout agreement that is being monitored by the UN.

At any rate, the new lucrative deals shed light on what is going to happen next to at least some of the weapons the UAE receives from its American partners: The ground war will continue, weapons will be used not only by UAE forces in Yemen, but will also be passed on to completely 

unaccountable Coalition-allied and Qaeda terrorists, with an open and long record of war crimes and terrorism.

Given the scope of war crimes and breadth of the catastrophe, the United States and its allies in Europe must halt all their weapons sales or risk being complicit in the Saudi-UAE war crimes.

The new arms sale by the US to the UAE is a wake-up call. It will only perpetuate this disastrous conflict which is getting out of hand. Given the shocking number of civilians that have been consistently killed in the war, the time is now for the US and its European allies to end their direct involvement and complicity.

Pakistan Bears Responsibility for Anti-Iran and Anti-India Terrorism

By: Kayhan Int’l

 

The two acts of terrorism that rocked the region in the spate of two days – Wednesday and Thursday – killing scores of security personnel, although they occurred in two different countries, their source was the same single failed state called Pakistan, the haven of terrorists, where the government is either too weak to prevent terrorists from operating against neighbouring countries from its soil, or is a party to such cowardly acts of terrorism, in view of the billions of petrodollars it receives from the godfathers of terrorism, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The modus operandi was remarkably similar in both acts of terrorism. If 27 Iranian border security personnel were martyred in Sistan-Baluchestan on February 13 when their bus near the Pakistani border was rammed by a remote-controlled explosive-laden car, the killing of 42 Indian security personnel in Phulwana in the Jammu & Kashmir state mirrored the same dastardly tactics – of a supposedly suicide crashing into the bus, some 42 km from the Pakistani border.

Immediately terrorist outfits based in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the two acts of terrorism in the two countries. Interestingly, the names of the two terrorist outfits starts with "Jaish”, which is ‘army’ in Arabic.

If the terrorists operating against the Islamic Republic of Iran style themselves "Jaish al-Adl” (Army of Justice), though they are among the most unjust cowardly killers, the anti-Indian terrorists call themselves "Jaish-e Mohammad”, when the fact of the matter is that these Godless murderers have no connection with Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) the Messenger of Mercy, whom non-Muslims revere as well, let alone any grounding in the humanitarian principles of Islam.

Both Iran and India have warned Pakistan of the consequences of harbouring terrorists and have not ruled out retaliatory actions against the bases of terrorism. 

Tehran has made it clear that if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to punish the terrorists and expel them from its soil, the Islamic Republic reserves the right to confront such threats to its security as per international law and will retaliate to punish the terrorists.
Major General Mohammad Ali Ja’fari, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has said without mincing words: "The Pakistani government which has sheltered these terrorist elements dangerous to Islam and knows their hideout – since these are supported by Pakistani security forces – should be held responsible for this crime.”

He added: "The patience the Islamic Republic of Iran once exercised against conspiracies and reactionary regimes in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE which carry out these acts on orders from the US and the Zionist regime, will be different and we will definitely take reparative measures.” 

He also said: "If Pakistan does not punish them, we will definitely take reparative measures against this counter-revolutionary force in the near future, and the Pakistani government will have to bear the consequences of its support for the group.” 

In view of these facts, Islamabad ought to be a real Islamic capital and stop kowtowing to the ungodly Wahhabi terroristic cult in Riyadh, which is pushing Pakistan to the edge of precipice – against both Iran and India.