“What the hell is the point of Congress? Why are we starving children?” asked the outraged cable news anchor. “Someone make some affirmative argument for the policy, if you think it’s so important to continue killing children. But to kill the possibility of a vote in the rules committee? Cowards.”
While a vote in the U.S. Senate to push forward a War Powers Resolution on Wednesday resulted in applause from peace advocates and critics of the U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led assault on Yemen, five Democrats in the U.S. House stirred outrage as they helped Republicans in the chamber pass a rule—attached to massive Farm Bill legislation—that effectively killed the hopes of voting on its version of the resolution for the remainder of the congressional session.
The procedural vote in the Senate, said resolution co-sponsor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), will help send a message to the world that the chamber will soon end its support for “this brutal, horrific war in Yemen led by an undemocratic, despotic regime.”
But in the House, say critics, the five Democrats—Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Al Lawson (Fla.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Dutch Rupperberger (Md.), and David Scott (Ga.)—sent the exact opposite message by backing the GOP-led effort to kill the resolution.
MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes was just one of the journalists and other experts following the story who expressed outrage about the House vote.
“There is literally no domestic constituency of actual voters who are agitating for the US to continue facilitating the bombardment and starvation of Yemen,” Hayes tweeted. He added, “What a despicable sham.”
What a despicable sham. What the hell is the point of Congress? Why are we starving children? Someone make some affirmative argument for the policy, if you think it’s so important to continue killing children. But to kill the possibility of a vote in the rules committee? Cowards.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 12, 2018
The Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein reported that after the vote it was the “angriest at leadership I’ve seen progressive House aides and members in a long time.” And with the final vote 206-203—a margin where the Democratic votes made the crucial difference—one of those aides told him that was “not a coincidence.”
And Matt Fuller of the Huffington Post added:
Kind of amazing that Democrats bailed Republicans out on this one.
This was a clear winning issue for Democrats.
Does the voting public support Republicans sliding in language to a farm bill rule to subvert the War Powers Act and block any debate on Yemen?
Way to go, Congress.
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) December 12, 2018
Stein asked Rep. Peterson directly why he voted the way he did, to which the congressman responded, in part: “I don’t know a damn thing about” the war in Yemen but dismissed the resolution to end U.S. complicity in the world’s worst humanitarian disaster as an off-topic “tangent.”
Full transcript below. Some estimates say more than 50,000 civilians have died in Yemenpic.twitter.com/rR2ezICtv2
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) December 12, 2018
“Just to be extremely clear about what happened here,” explained Stein in a separate tweet: “The farm bill was going to pass regardless of the outcome of this vote. In other words, these 5 Democrats could have voted both for the farm bill and against blocking a vote on Yemen. It’s not like they were incompatible.”
Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs for Peace Action, said Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, his fellow Republicans, and the five Democrats who voted with them “are condemning more Yemeni civilians to die horrible deaths, and condemning our nation as a democracy in name only. History will not look kindly on those who abdicated their constitutional duty to debate and vote our nation’s wars in the name of petty politics and shoring up future campaign contributions from the arms industry and pro-Saudi lobbyists.”
This article was originally published by “Common Dreams“
The 21st Century
Absolutely deplorable! Yet the UN has done nothing, where is the ICC? Are they at work typing up charges against the US, Saudi’s? These global parasites such as the UN and ICC live of back of nations taxpayers, whoring for the Atlantic Scum, Zionists, the Plutocrats Scum, Zionists,, all of them greedy pigs at the global trough, sucking up all the middle class wealth through out the globe, raping and pillaging for all their shameless worth, sharing spoil between nations, there is no end to their destruction their greed, their hunger for power, but their is one group of people who can pull them to ground and bury them, once and for all. The people. History proves this!
The UN is threatening to unless an explosion of Refugees upon the globe, destroying the existing culture, and lifestyle, and they are doing this with impunity, until now. I personally consider the UN new law’s outrageous, extremely provocative, authoritarian with deliberate intention to cause division, unrest that has ALREADY proving violent, and destructive, destroying government infrastructure, communications, property, businesses, and lives! But the good thing is this will NOT stop, it will only progress, forcing populists to dig their heals in further, civil war, it’s happening, the people are getting the drift, momentum is building, every single day.
They WILL lose, it may take 100 yrs, but the populist WILL win, history proves this!
I sent a scathing email to the UN and told them what I thought of them and their stinking grubby new law’s and that I do not and will not accept ANY of their law’s, because the US has been provided impunity by the UN and ICC for all it’s crimes to date, so prove their own complicity in murder of millions
I received an email back from them, with a warning trying to intimidate me! What else would you expect from these parasites, living off the backs of nations taxpayers and the spoil from their wars! I replied stating I consider the UN a threat to my country Australia, to our Nationalism, our culture and our way of living, and consider they have no right nor ownership of my country, a sovereign nation, owned not by them nor who they work for, but is owned by all Australians, and under our domestic law, as the UN and ICC have proved, they don’t even uphold nor support Ihe International Law they claim to represent. The facade continues.
This is really great material, God bless this man!