[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 211 (Tuesday, December 7, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8952-S8955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MOTION TO DISCHARGE
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I move to discharge S.J. Res. 31 from the
Foreign Relations Committee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is pending.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the most common cause of famine and
starvation is war. Saudi Arabia's air and naval blockade of Yemen has
led to thousands and thousands of deaths in Yemen from lack of food and
medicine. The United States should end all arms sales to the Saudis
until they end their blockade of Yemen.
President Biden said he would change the Trump policy of supporting
Saudi's war in Yemen, but it is not all that apparent that policy has
changed.
Today, we challenge the Biden administration's sale of $650 million
worth of arms, including air-to-air missiles in Yemen.
Just 2 months ago, the Biden administration approved $500 million
worth of arms, including maintenance for attack helicopters that are
used in Yemen.
Some want to differentiate offensive weapons from defensive weapons,
but, really, even defensive weapons can be used to allow a country to
absorb attacks in order to continue their offensive operations.
The real question is not an artificial designation of weapons as
offensive or defensive but whether Congress is serious about using the
leverage of arms sales or withholding arms sales to end the blockade in
Yemen.
That the Biden administration continues to reward Saudi Arabia with
weapons seems to indicate that President Biden is not really serious
about withholding arms sale to end the war in Yemen.
Indeed, if this administration were serious about ending the Saudi
blockade, they could do one thing, and this thing would end the war
tomorrow, would end the blockade tomorrow. The Saudis, I think, would
immediately stop the blockade if this administration would stop sending
spare parts and stop fixing the planes.
Bruce Reidel of Brookings writes that ``the Saudi air force would be
grounded in short order'' if we quit sending them spare parts, quit
repairing their aircraft. We could stop this war if we really had the
will to do it.
All America should be appalled at the humanitarian disaster caused by
the Saudi blockade of Yemen. For years now, ships that would otherwise
carry food, fuel, and medicine are turned away by the Saudi-led
coalition, depriving the Yemeni people of the necessities to sustain
civilization.
Yemen is one of the poorest countries on the planet. They have to
import their food. The blockade is killing their children.
Saudi Arabia's intervention in the Yemeni civil war is a chilling
example of the cruelty of warfare by starvation. According to the
United Nations, in Yemen 5 million people are one step away from
succumbing to famine and disease, and 10 million more are right behind
them.
We can start the process of ending this crisis by enacting this
resolution of disapproval.
The children of Yemen who survive Saudi's barbaric blockade will
inevitably tell their sons and daughters of the horrors of their youth,
and those sons and daughters will tell their sons and daughters.
Through oral tradition, a thousand generation of Yemenis will know of
the Crown Prince's ruthlessness, and they will also know that it was
the Americans who sold the weapons to wage this murderous campaign.
The reports from Yemen are literally a nightmare. The Washington Post
reported recently of a 3-year-old boy who cannot walk or speak, who
weighs 10 pounds--a 3-year-old boy who weighs 10 pounds. The images are
grotesque. His face is ``skeletal.'' His arms and legs are as ``thin as
twigs.'' He weighs 10 pounds. His father says that he sometimes goes
days without any food.
And we are complicit. We are arming the Saudis and allowing this to
happen. Offensive, defensive--they shouldn't get any of our weapons. We
should stop selling them any weapons until they stop starving the
country of Yemen.
The New York Times tells the story of a mother who, after 3 days of
failing to get a ride, carried her 8-month-old while walking 2 hours to
reach medics to treat her child's acute malnutrition. But even after a
week of treatment with enriched formula, the boy still lay motionless
on his hospital bed.
Tens of thousands of children have already died from disease and
malnutrition from this war, and we should not be complicit. We should
not be aiding the Saudis.
[[Page S8953]]
International aid agencies, which also have to fight the Saudi
blockade to provide assistance, put it this way:
The people of Yemen are not starving. They are being
starved.
The Saudi's siege of Yemen is made possible because of American
weaponry. The arsenal provided by the United States includes billions
of dollars' worth of military aircraft and thousands of air-to-ground
munitions.
Only weeks ago, the Biden administration approved a new $650 million
sale of 280 advanced medium air-to-air missiles and 596 missile
launchers. As painful as it is to admit, the United States is an
accessory to this Saudi savagery.
President Biden says the latest sale is merely to help defend Saudi
territorial integrity, but the Commander in Chief's words do not match
Saudi actions. According to William Hartung, the director of the Arms
and Security Program for the Center for International Policy, ``the air
blockade is enforced by a threat to shoot down any aircraft, military
or civilian, that enters Yemeni air space. . . . The provision of air-
to-air missiles gives further credibility to this threat, dissuading
any government or aid group from bringing in crucial medicines or
flying patients in and out of Yemen.
These weapons are not purely defensive. They are used as a threat to
any aircraft that brings aid into Yemen, and they are part of the
blockade. They are part of the problem, and it is our leverage.
These weapons belong to the American people. They may be made by
private companies, but they are owned by the American people because we
commission these weapons, and we should not give them to countries that
are starving children and committing, essentially, genocide in Yemen.
In other words, no weapon is exclusively defensive, and continuing
arms sales means continued death and destruction in Yemen.
We must end America's complicity in Saudi Arabia's war on the Yemeni
people. If you believe in humanitarianism, if you believe America is a
force for good that serves as a model for other nations to emulate, if
you believe that the crushing of the Yemeni people must be stopped,
then you must vote for this resolution of disapproval.
We have a chance to tell the Crown Prince that American arms sales
will end until he gives up his starvation campaign. We can end the
Saudi blockade and bring relief to the long-suffering people of Yemen.
Should we fail to seize this opportunity, history will not let us
forget that America, the last best hope for humanity, failed to protect
defenseless civilians from the cruelty of a criminal regime.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I find myself in the somewhat
uncomfortable and unusual position of agreeing with Senator Paul. And
let me thank him and Senator Lee for their hard work in reclaiming
Congress's congressional war powers, another very important issue. The
understanding that it is Congress that has the constitutional
responsibility to authorize war--not the President--should, in fact,
transcend partisan disagreements.
On November 18, we introduced a congressional resolution of
disapproval to block the sale of 280 air-to-air missiles, 596 missile
launchers, and other weapons and support--totaling some $650 million--
to Saudi Arabia. That is what we will be voting on in a few minutes.
Let me be very clear. As the Saudi Government continues to wage its
devastating war in Yemen and repress its own people, we should not be
rewarding them with more arms sales. We should be demanding that they
end the devastating war in Yemen, which has killed over 230,000 people
in one of the very poorest countries on Earth. For more than 6 years,
the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen's civil war has been a key
driver of the largest humanitarian disaster in the world--the largest.
According to UNICEF, four out of every five children in Yemen need
humanitarian assistance--that is over 11 million children--400,000
children suffer from severe malnutrition; 1.7 million children have
been displaced from their homes by violence from this war; and some 15
million people, more than half of whom are children, do not have access
to safe water, sanitation, or hygiene.
United Nations humanitarian relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said
in September: ``The country's economy has reached new depths of
collapse, and a third wave of the pandemic is threatening to crash the
country's already fragile healthcare system.''
According to Griffiths, millions of Yemenis are ``a step away from
starvation.'' In other words, this poor country is hell on Earth. It is
the worst humanitarian disaster on a planet.
Under first the Obama administration and then the Trump
administration, the United States was Saudi Arabia's partner in this
horrific war. In 2019, Congress made history--and I am very proud of
that, and we did this in a bipartisan way--by passing the first-ever
War Powers Resolution through both Chambers of Congress, pressing then-
President Trump to end this military support. It marked the first time
that Congress invoked the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to direct the
President to withdraw troops from an undeclared war.
Sadly, tragically, President Trump vetoed that resolution.
Many of us welcomed the Biden administration's announcement earlier
this year that it would end U.S. support for offensive military
operations led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and name a special envoy to
help bring this conflict to an end, but the crisis has only continued.
American defense contractors continue to service Saudi planes that
are waging the war, and the U.S. military also continues to provide
intelligence to the Saudi Armed Forces. And now, tonight, we are
looking at a new $650 million arms sale to the Saudi Armed Forces.
Now, I am aware that ending U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia's
brutal assault will not alone end the multisided conflict in Yemen. The
Houthis are launching bloody attacks on the central Yemeni city of
Marib and increasing cross-border attacks on Saudi territory. Violence
has also erupted between rival factions in the south of Yemen. A U.N.
expert panel found that all parties to the conflict may have committed
war crimes.
U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia and this war should be clear: The
United States must do everything in our power to bring this brutal and
horrific war to an end. Exporting more missiles to Saudi Arabia does
nothing but further this conflict and pour more gasoline on an already
raging fire.
In my view, the United States must support an international observer
mission along the Saudi-Yemeni border and spearhead generous
international development efforts to rebuild Yemen. This aid should be
focused on bolstering local humanitarian and development initiatives,
like Yemen's Social Fund for Development.
We must also dramatically increase our diplomatic engagement to press
Saudi Arabia, the Riyadh-based Republic of Yemen Government, and the
Houthis to accept the U.N.'s roadmap as the basis for a compromise that
ends foreign military intervention and allows Yemenis to come to an
agreement. The war has gone on for too long, and it is time for the
United States to be bold and to be decisive in bringing about peace.
I also think that it is long past time that we took a very hard look
at our relationship with Saudi Arabia, a country whose government
represents the very opposite of what we profess to believe in. Saudi
Arabia is an extremely undemocratic country that is run by a
hereditary, authoritarian monarchy, one of the wealthiest families in
the world whose wealth is estimated to be over $1.4 trillion.
At a time when children in Yemen are starving to death, when that
impoverished country's healthcare system is collapsing, when the people
of Gaza are suffering mass unemployment and environmental devastation,
when people throughout that region lack clean drinking water, Saudi
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman bought himself a $500 million yacht, a
$300 million French chateau, and a $450 million Leonardo da Vinci
painting. Mass starvation in the region that he helped create, children
do not have housing or drinking water, and this guy buys himself a $450
million da Vinci painting.
According to Freedom House, a respected human rights organization:
[[Page S8954]]
Saudi Arabia's absolute monarchy restricts almost all
political rights and civil liberties. No officials at the
national level are elected. The regime relies on pervasive
surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, appeals to
sectarianism and ethnicity, and public spending supported by
oil revenues to maintain power. Women and religious
minorities face extensive discrimination in law and in
practice.
Freedom House also notes that working conditions for the large
migrant labor force are extremely exploitive.
Saudi Arabia is home to millions of migrant workers, many from
African countries but also from Pakistan, India, and elsewhere. These
workers constitute more than 80 percent of the private-sector
workforce, often as laborers and other service workers. They are
governed by an abusive system that gives their employers excessive
power over their mobility and legal status in the country. As a result,
these migrant workers are vulnerable to a wide range of abuses, from
passport confiscation to delayed wages and forced labor.
According to Human Rights Watch, under the government headed by Crown
Prince Muhammad bin Salman, ``Saudi Arabia has experienced the worst
period of oppression in its modern history.''
Human Rights Watch reported earlier this year that ``accounts have
emerged of alleged torture of high-profile political detainees in Saudi
prisons,'' including Saudi women's rights activists and others. The
alleged torture included electric shocks, beatings, whippings, and
sexual harassment.
And I think we all understand the nature of this government. Every
Member of Congress and I hope every American knows--and our own
intelligence services made this very clear--that Muhammad bin Salman
himself ordered the murder and the dismemberment of Washington Post
columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in retaliation for Khashoggi's
criticisms of the Saudi regime. We all remember that terrible, terrible
murder of a Washington Post columnist.
We also know that the Saudi regime has waged a campaign of harassment
and attempted kidnapping against other critics, including on U.S. soil.
My simple question is: Why in the world would the United States
reward such a regime which has caused such pain in Yemen with more
weapons?
My friends, the answer is we should not. I urge my colleagues to
support S.J. Res. 31.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the joint
resolution of disapproval on the sale of air-to-air missiles to Saudi
Arabia, which are being used to defend against armed drone attacks from
the Houthis.
I think everybody in this body well knows that I carefully consider
every arms sale that comes before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee for review. Arms sales are a critical tool of foreign policy
that can help bolster alliances while keeping Americans and our
partners safe.
However, we have to ensure that our arms sales policies adhere to our
core values, including respect for human rights and human dignity. It
is for that very same reason that I, along with a series of my
colleagues here, introduced the Safeguarding Human Rights in Arms
Exports Act--or the SAFEGUARD Act--to make the protection and promotion
of human rights a core statutory principle in our arms sales export and
monitoring process.
This legislation would enhance our collective oversight of all arms
sales to countries that abuse human rights, and I hope it receives
consideration in this body and in the House soon.
Now, my colleagues may well remember in 2019 and 2020, that when I
truly believe an arms sale undermines our American values, our national
security, or when 22 sales are notified under false ``emergency''
pretenses, for example, I will not hesitate to use the tools we have to
stop those sales. In fact, that is exactly what we did in this body
when I came to this floor and led that effort, in conjunction with
others.
Beyond these extreme measures, the committee carefully consults with
the State Department and others on the ground to fully understand how
weapons will be used.
We have all known for years that there is no military solution to the
devastating and tragic conflict in Yemen. Indeed, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee passed my bipartisan Saudi Arabia Accountability
and Yemen Act in 2019, which would have halted certain arms sales,
stopped refueling, imposed accountability on the people involved in the
murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and sought to end the suffering of the
Yemeni people. Unfortunately, the full Senate failed to act.
Make no mistake, the Saudi-led coalition bears the brunt of the
responsibility for the devastation in Yemen. Yet I, along with most
Members of this body, have always supported the use of weapons systems
in defense of civilian populations.
I wish to remind my colleagues that the Biden administration has
largely suspended sales of many of the offensive weapons the Trump
administration was all too happy to sell to the Saudis. However, there
is no denying that the Houthis have been increasingly deploying more
sophisticated weapons, particularly armed aerial drones, to target
civilian populations in Saudi Arabia, and let's not also forget that we
have 70,000 American citizens living in Saudi Arabia.
The weapons up for discussion today are being used in this context to
defend against these aerial attacks. As air-to-air missiles, they are
largely incapable of attacking civilian targets or infrastructure--a
critical factor in my decision to support the sale.
While some have argued they could be used to support the Saudi
blockade, the fact is that most humanitarian aid is delivered via land
and sea. Indeed, tragically, the Saudis have been perfectly capable of
blocking the delivery of aid for many years, and in more recent years,
the Houthis have also created abhorrent obstacles for the delivery of
food, medical supplies, and other vital humanitarian aid, contributing
to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
While I believe the United States must continue pushing for a
political solution to the crisis in Yemen--and I agree with several of
the things said by my colleague Senator Sanders--I also believe that we
should continue supporting efforts to stop attacks on civilians.
According to the State Department, there have been close to 400 Houthi
attacks this year, many of which get past the Patriot missile defense
system.
I know that many see this vote as an opportunity to voice
dissatisfaction with Saudi Arabia over a variety of its policies, from
Yemen to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which we have not forgotten, to
the harassment of American citizens and their family members.
So let me be clear that I completely agree with the need to push
harder to hold Saudi leadership accountable for a variety of actions. I
even offered a bill last month as an amendment to the NDAA to do just
that, and I am hopeful we will see some of that language in a final
product. But I also believe it is important that our security partners
know that we will uphold our commitments and prioritize security
arrangements that protect civilians.
For that reason, I will oppose efforts to stop this particular sale.
I will continue to hold sales as I have--there are many other sales
that have not moved forward that I have not permitted to get out of the
committee--and continue my efforts to hold Saudi leadership accountable
and encourage my colleagues to do the same.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, fellow Senators, I rise to oppose the
matter that is before us, and I want to rise in support of the sale of
these particular weapons to the Saudis.
The Saudis are an ally of ours. As with many allies, they have items
that we don't agree with, and those obviously have been highlighted
here on the floor today. My colleague, the chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee, has laid out exactly why we need to see that the
sale goes through.
There have been 240-plus drone missiles to strike Saudi targets this
year. The latest one was just yesterday. These are Houthi rebel drones
that come out of Yemen. They are provided to them by the Iranians. This
thing would be over if the Iranians would back away and get out of
this.
I agree that we need to press for a solution here. What is going on
in Yemen
[[Page S8955]]
is one of--not the but close to it--one of the worst humanitarian
crises on the planet today. In fact, what is going on there, it is
going to get worse as this year goes on. As the Senator from New Jersey
indicated, the Houthis have been really unhelpful in getting
humanitarian supplies to the people of Yemen, who badly need it.
The Saudis, obviously, need the weaponry that is included in this
sale. There are a lot of American citizens in Saudi Arabia, and we
should support our allies when they are doing defensive things like
this to defend themselves, to defend Americans who are present in their
country. We all hope that this will reach a resolution in the near
future.
The Iranians are the ones who are stoking this fire. The Houthis are
not helpful to us. But we need to help the Saudis defend themselves. So
I would urge a ``no'' vote on this matter before us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, earlier this year, a disastrous retreat
from Afghanistan gave our allies and partners reason to doubt that the
United States could be counted on. Today, some of our colleagues want
to double down on that mistake by blocking defensive support to yet
another important partner.
Saudi Arabia is literally surrounded by violent threats conceived,
funded, and orchestrated by Iran. To the north, they have got Iran-
backed terrorists sowing violence in Iraq and Syria. To the east, they
have a gulf filled with the flags of Iran's own increasingly
belligerent navy. To the south, the Saudis have Iran-backed Houthi
terrorists strangling Yemen and lobbying rockets, missiles, and armed
drones over their border.
To be sure, this violence and the plight of the Yemeni people have
only worsened since the Biden administration removed the Houthis from
the terrorist list and imposed new restrictions on our support to the
Saudi-led coalition.
Around the world, from time to time, we all have legitimate concerns
about the behavior of our partners, but we are in a better position to
influence their conduct if they trust in our partnership. So our
colleagues don't get to vent their moral outrage in a vacuum without
accounting for what comes next.
A vote to block the sale of defensive military systems to Saudi
Arabia would undermine one of our most important regional partners, but
there is even more at stake. Whether we help or not, our Arab partners
will still be under siege tomorrow. They still need military
capabilities to defend themselves. And we know that Russia and China
will happily sell them advanced weapons systems. The importance of so-
called great power competition is a matter of general consensus. So we
should be wary of turning our backs on longtime partners and of pushing
them into the arms of our adversaries.
So here is what our colleagues' resolution would actually do. It
would give the world yet another reason to doubt the resolve of the
United States, and it would give our biggest adversaries a new foothold
to exert their influence over a rapidly changing and important region.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. MENENDEZ. I ask that all remaining time be yielded back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Vote on Motion to Discharge
The question is on agreeing to the motion to discharge.
Mr. MENENDEZ. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 30, nays 67, as follows:
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton) and the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr.
Lankford).
[Rollcall Vote No. 484 Leg.]
YEAS--30
Baldwin
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Casey
Duckworth
Durbin
Gillibrand
Heinrich
Hirono
Kaine
Lee
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Van Hollen
Warnock
Warren
Wyden
NAYS--67
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Burr
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hassan
Hawley
Hickenlooper
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Kelly
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lummis
Manchin
Marshall
McConnell
Menendez
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Portman
Reed
Risch
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Shelby
Sinema
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Tuberville
Warner
Whitehouse
Wicker
Young
NOT VOTING--3
Cotton
Lankford
Leahy
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The Senator from Washington.
____________________