[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 17 (Thursday, January 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S189-S190]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 YEMEN

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, this is a screen shot from a video taken 
during a school field trip on August 9, 2018. These are Yemeni 
schoolchildren going to school in a northern governorate inside the 
country, and they are on their way either to or back from a picnic that 
they were having with their classmates.
  As you can see, they are schoolchildren of elementary age--around 8, 
9, 10 years old. They don't look any different than what school 
children here in the United States would look like on their way to a 
fun-filled school field trip. There is a little boy catching a little 
nap somehow amidst all of the den of the rest of his classmates so 
excited.
  They are excited because there isn't and there wasn't a lot of fun to 
be had for schoolchildren in Yemen today or in 2018. A civil war still 
plagues that country and plagues Yemeni children who are too often 
facing starvation and disease, but on this day, there was fun to be 
had.
  This is that schoolbus hours later. Forty children died when a U.S.-
made bomb dropped from the sky and hit this schoolbus. Not every child 
on that bus died, miraculously, but 40 children on the bus and around 
the bus did. It was a war crime.
  The Saudis, in the aftermath of the incident, defended it saying that 
it was a legal action. They were targeting enemy leaders who were 
responsible for recruiting and training young children.
  They hit a schoolbus in the middle of the day, right next to a 
crowded marketplace. It wasn't on a lonely road. It was in a crowded 
area. It is why not only people on the bus died, but children and 
families surrounding the bus died as well.
  This was a military strike done, in part, as part of a coalition 
campaign of which the United States is a member. It is not just that we 
sold the bomb that hit this bus. We participated and still do 
participate in this military campaign in a myriad of ways
  For years, we flew planes in the sky that put fuel into the Saudi and 
Emirati jets that dropped these bombs. We embedded U.S. personnel in 
the operations center that planned these bombing campaigns, and maybe, 
most importantly of all, we lent moral authority to the Saudi-led 
campaign inside Yemen.
  But over the course of our time as a coalition partner with Saudi 
Arabia, the war in Yemen has been a national security apocalypse for 
the United States. Our bombs and our planes have been used to kill 
thousands of civilians; 17,000 civilians have died inside Yemen since 
the beginning of this war.
  The war has caused the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe on the 
ground inside Yemen. Over 100,000 children have died of starvation and 
disease. Yemen, since 2015, has been the site of the world's worst 
cholera outbreak anywhere in the world during all of our lifetimes--
likely caused by the targeting of water treatment facilities by the 
coalition, of which the United States is a member.
  And inside this country, Yemenis rightfully blame the United States 
for this cataclysm. They know that it is our equipment, they know that 
it is our bombs, and they know that it is that moral authority that the 
United States gives to this war through our decision to continue to 
take part in it, human rights crime after human rights crime.
  It has radicalized a generation of Yemenis against the United States. 
It has made us part and parcel of repeated human rights violations, and 
it has created a chaotic environment on the ground in Yemen that has 
allowed for AQAP, the wing of al-Qaida with the clearest designs to hit 
the United States, again, room to govern and room to grow. AQAP and 
ISIS are able to operate and control territory inside Yemen because of 
the chaos created by this civil war.
  Iran has grown stronger. At the beginning, Iran and the Houthis, who 
are on the other side of this civil war, had a slightly tenuous 
connection, but as the war has dragged on, the Houthis have had to 
become more and more reliant on Iranian assistance and Iranian 
expertise. Iran has grown stronger and stronger inside Yemen and inside 
the region as this war persists. In every way, it has been a nightmare, 
from a security perspective, for the United States.
  But with the election and inauguration of President Biden, our 
participation in this national security cataclysm is coming to an end. 
I come to the floor today to thank the Biden administration and to 
thank the incoming Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, for their 
recognition that it is no longer in our security interest to be a part 
of this.
  The Biden administration has made several very important decisions 
that they have announced at the outset of their term in office: one, 
the plan to withdraw from the military coalition; second, a decision to 
suspend arm sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who are the primary 
participants in this coalition. UAE has dramatically scaled back their 
involvement--to their credit. The Saudis continue to fight this war on 
the ground and in the air.
  And lastly--and, perhaps, most immediately importantly--the Trump 
administration announced that they were reserving an eleventh-hour 
decision by the Trump administration naming the Houthis a terrorist 
group.
  Now, the Houthis are incredibly bad actors. The Houthis are also 
guilty of war crimes in and around this conflict. They recruit child 
soldiers. They deliberately hold up aid and don't allow it to get to 
the citizens in areas under which they control. The Houthis have a lot 
to answer for as well. But by naming them a terrorist group, what the 
Trump administration effectively did was to stop the international aid 
community from being able to deliver any aid into Yemen because the 
Houthis control some of the most important ports, and 80 percent of the 
aid is commercial food. That would have all stopped if you couldn't run 
aid through ports controlled by an organization named at the eleventh 
hour by the Trump administration as a terrorist organization.
  The Biden administration has made a decision to suspend that 
designation to make sure that we are not going to end up with millions 
of people starving inside Yemen because the United States makes the 
decision to eliminate the ability of humanitarian groups to get food on 
the ground in Yemen. They are all incredibly important decisions that 
the administration has made--decisions supported by a majority of this 
body.
  We have voted here in the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, to end the 
U.S. participation in the war in Yemen. We didn't have a veto-proof 
majority. So we couldn't overcome the President's veto. But there is a 
bipartisan coalition that believes the United States

[[Page S190]]

shouldn't have anything to do with this, and President Biden is now 
effectuating that bipartisan consensus in policy.
  Lastly, let me say this. Saudi Arabia is an important security 
partner for the United States. The UAE is an important security partner 
for the United States. We have an important counterterrorism 
relationship. The Saudis and the Emirates have been part of this 
groundbreaking detente with Israel, resulting in several recognition 
agreements. That is great for U.S. security interests in the region. 
But it is time for us to reset those relationships to make clear that 
if our Gulf partners are going to participate in actions inside the 
region that are terrible for our security interests, then we can't join 
them in those actions--a reset that includes an expectation that the 
Saudis and the Emirates address what is a very disturbing downward 
trend in the ability of individuals inside those countries to have 
political space with which to contest grievances with the regimes.

  It is time for us to make sure that our relationships with our Gulf 
allies are always consistent with U.S. national security endeavors, and 
the Biden administration is off to a very good start in resetting those 
relationships by pulling ourselves out of a war inside Yemen that has 
killed 17,000 civilians, caused 100,000 kids to die of starvation and 
disease, and ends up with our bombs doing this to a school bus full of 
8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Iowa.

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