Congress Must Stop Biden's Sales To Saudi Arabia

A lobby group promoting democratic change in the Arab world has urged the US Congress to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia after President Joe Biden backtracked on his pledge to end such sales.

Photo Insert: A Raytheon Patriot missile battery

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), stressed that Biden should not appease Riyadh, which is responsible for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamaal Khashoggi and widespread human rights violations.

In an article for Foreign Policy, Whitson said that this week, US Sens. Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden, and Mike Lee are expected to push for a vote on a motion disapproving of the Biden White House’s first major arms sale to Saudi Arabia—a $650 million deal to export 280 Raytheon-built missiles and 596 missile launchers.

The showdown with the White House comes in the same week as an expected Senate vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to ban all US support for the Saudi war in Yemen, including this proposed arms sale.

If the democratic will of US citizens mattered, the resolution and amendment would pass easily because the American public has made clear that it opposes arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

In a rare display of bipartisan unity, a united House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, recognized this when they voted to ban arms sales and end the US role in the Yemen war not once, but four times in 2019 (the former topic saw three joint resolutions; the latter saw one). They were blocked only by former President Donald Trump’s vetoes.

Change seemed on the horizon when then-presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to end arms sales to Saudi Arabia—all arms sales, not just “defensive” ones. This is what the American people want and Congress affirmed in October: to end the United States’ complicity in the war destroying Yemen.

US weapons and Washington’s ongoing support for the Saudi war effort have contributed to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Yemen, with millions of Yemenis near starvation and over 130,000 killed, residential areas and factories reduced to rubble, and the economy on the brink of collapse.

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