Saudis Tell US Senate 'Where To Go' - Time To Leave?
The Saudi government has issued a blistering condemnation of last week's Senate vote blaming Riyadh for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While that voice vote may have irked them, the vote before it demanding an end to US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen may prove far more significant. Is it time for a divorce from the Saudis?
The Saudi government has issued a blistering condemnation of last week's Senate vote blaming Riyadh for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While that voice vote may have irked them, the vote before it demanding an end to US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen may prove far more significant. Is it time for a divorce from the Saudis?
The Saudi government has issued a blistering condemnation of last week's Senate vote blaming Riyadh for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While that voice vote may have irked them, the vote before it demanding an end to US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen may prove far more significant. Is it time for a divorce from the Saudis?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel Mick Adams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I am doing fine.
Good.
Ready and rare and ago.
That's right.
Solve all the problems of the world.
Immediately.
Peace is at hand in the Middle East, and the war will end in Yemen.
But it looks like maybe a little progress there.
That's very interesting.
You know, there were some votes in the Senate.
And one was to condemn the murder of Khashoggi, which, you know, the fact that that was brought up in an emergency, like probably when nobody was there and it was unanimous consent, I don't consider that meaningful other than the fact that it was there and it was the sentiment and nobody was going to fight it and it was going to be no debate, but it got passed.
But I guess it isn't too hard to condemn this type of murder.
But the other vote was in the Senate, and that was a good vote.
They got some Democrats together with some Republicans to tell Trump it's time to get out of this war and told Congress, you know, this.
But unfortunately, it was passed in the Senate, not in the House.
And it's not a law of the land, but it still has a great deal of significance because they used the arguments, even though they had to go around it a little bit to get to the Constitution.
The War Powers Act of 1973 was used in the only way it could be used in a proper fashion, even though since 1973 it's never been used this way.
So that is good.
My argument has always been you could do it with just the Constitution if you need to.
But the fact that they had it there and they used it, but there's been, you know, a group in the Senate and outside of the Congress.
People like our program have talked about this for a long time.
There's no reason why we should be supporting Saudi Arabia, but it took this murder of Khashoggi to get the attention of the members of Congress where they felt compelled to do it.
To me, there's an inconsistency and saying, oh, yeah, this is a horrible, horrible murder.
We'll get our anti-Saudi credentials and we'll show how great we are and we're going to condemn this.
At the same time, over the years, they've supported the war.
But this is the first step in the right direction.
What will happen, we don't know, but I think we have to say what happened there in the Senate was a good vote.
Yeah, and it's a shift because, you know, in March, they've been trying to do this for a while.
And there are a few, there's sort of a tripartisan group, but I think we wrote about it in the Senate because Bernie Sanders, of course, is an independent who've been trying to push this war powers vote for a while.
The president set Mattis up in the spring to convince the senators not to vote to invoke the war powers resolution to withdraw troops.
And they held, but this time it didn't hold.
This time it shifted.
And as you've written, it was an historic event.
It was the first time the war powers resolution was invoked to call for the removal.
As you point out, the Constitution should be enough.
The only thing that the War Powers Resolution, the War Powers Act contains, which is convenient, is this expedited consideration on the floor.
And so that was invoked to do it.
But really, it was an historic vote.
Right.
I want to talk a little bit about why the House will not be debating it, especially through the period of time that they have left in control of the House, because Ryan, when he passed the farm bill, which was a welfare type bill, and it went through, and he sticks in there this whole thing on foreign policy said there will be no debate between now and the end of our term in office about ending the war in Yemen.
He puts it in the rule.
Put it in a rule, which is very, very strange.
And guess what?
We should be very pleased.
It was bipartisan.
The Democrats could have defeated that so easily.
All they needed was a couple Republicans, which they'd have had.
And it went down.
So lo and behold, some Democrats came home over, and Hoyer wasn't exactly opposed to it.
And the thing, the thing went by, and that got put in there.
It's sort of like closing down debate before it started.
Yeah, and I think what happened, if I'm not mistaken, is that they got five more Republicans to vote with them, but then five Democrats stepped over the line.
And it's pretty, as we talked about it before, it's pretty uncommon on a rule vote, which is usually kind of a straight party line vote, for Democrats to jump over and vote with the Republicans on this rule.
Well, you know, but this points out that some issues are much bigger than partisanship.
We're Involved Again00:11:24
That's all you hear in the news: the fighting and the yelling and the screaming and throwing people in jail and doing just about everything.
But when push comes to shove, if you have a war to defend, you know, they will go to extremes and they will work together.
And that's exactly what they did in the House.
So even though with the good vote we had in the Senate, it can't go any far except for the public relations deal.
This is big for that reason.
But it points out a very important point.
You know, if you're elected as the populist president and America first foreign policy and an independent mind about these things and having all his advisors working like crazy this past year.
Don't curtail anything.
This is our war.
We've got to keep it going.
And, you know, they wanted to condemn the killing of Khoshogi, but MBS is the one that started the war.
You know, so they condemn his murder, which if he actually did murdering Khoshogi, but they're not condemning him, you know, for starting this war.
Yeah, that's the thing that, you know, and hence the title of the show.
So two things were passed pretty almost simultaneously was the resolution we're talking about, which called on the president to withdraw troops, withdraw support for the war.
But after that was a vote condemning the Saudi government for the murder of this journalist.
And that's the one that really ticked off the Saudis.
And they issued a strong rebuke.
They were furious about it.
Saudi Arabia said the recent position of the U.S. Senate, which has been built on baseless allegations and accusations, includes blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Saudi kingdom.
Isn't that amazing?
We're interfering in their internal, they use it, on the internal affairs, their internal affairs, by us telling and recommending as senators that we shouldn't be there.
And it's exactly the opposite of what is happening.
And condemning the killing.
And I think, in a strange way, they almost have a point.
Because if everything hinges on this killing, and we're saying, okay, because you did this specific thing, we're going to pull out of the war, we're going to do this and that and the other, and we're accusing you without a trial of you personally being responsible.
In that sort of narrow sense, the Saudis do almost have a point.
But we would argue that, you know, whereas something looks like it happened overnight, a lot of groups like ours and others have been working for years to try to raise this to a level and maybe the killing was responsible for putting it to the front.
Yeah, and that in a way is beneficial.
But let's say we had non-interventionist foreign policy.
We stayed out of the Middle East and they continued their murdering of their various leaders like they have over the centuries.
Actually, if this was, if it's occurred and there's a little uncertainty, I don't know why we should have to make a statement.
I think there were some of those resolutions like that.
I just wouldn't vote for them.
I'd either vote no or just avoid it because you don't want to look like, oh yeah, that murder is okay.
But how can we all of a sudden be so knowledgeable and that we know exactly who did it absolutely, even though weeks before that they absolutely knew it had nothing to do with the Saudi leadership?
So it's something, though, ironically, the murder has played a positive role in us getting the support to get this resolution passed.
Yeah, it almost feels awkward because it's sort of like we'll get it if we can.
We'll get it where we can.
And this unfortunately was it.
We'll take it as we can.
The National Interest had a piece we saw it on antiwar.com today that talked about the speed at which the opinion in Washington has shifted in the oft-ignored war in Yemen.
And it's caught a lot of people by surprise how quickly it shifted.
And I think that's the most substantial thing because the murder of Phashogia's side, this voter side, there is a sense, you know, and here we've been from the underneath pushing and pushing for a long time.
And then all of a sudden it's noticed that at the top there's a shift happening above the iceberg.
And that's, I think, the most fundamental, the most important thing that's happening.
Yeah, and I think that represents the positive nature of persisting with an idea or a sound position.
As long as it's there, it may take time, but it's a power of that.
The anti-war people have been around for a long time, but something came together.
I think sometimes that's sort of the way we've gotten some attention on the Federal Reserve.
You know, people talk to a degree about the Federal Reserve since it was started, but it was only in recent decades or two when it was recognized how bad their job is that all of a sudden it is starting.
It's a conventional issue that most people now are very much aware of.
So to me, it represents the power of ideas and persistence that you don't give up, even if you do it in a quiet way.
If you're just out there, sometimes it breaks through, and in this case, it happens to have been the murder.
And the other thing that's, I think, important and significant about this vote, first of all, the neocons are furious about it.
They're very frustrated.
And not because of the specific thing, because what the vote does, I think, it calls into question just how much our alliances really are in our national interest.
And that goes with Saudi Arabia, it goes for other countries that we're close allied with.
How much does it go in our real actual interests?
And how much does it really reflect the values that we claim to uphold?
You know, we talk about U.S. foreign policy is for good, for spreading good all over the world.
And then you look at this alliance with Saudi Arabia, which is obviously a malevolent force, certainly in Yemen, but you could say elsewhere as well.
So it really questions, I think, which these kinds of alliances that we have, are they really in our interest and do they reflect our values?
You know, there's been a little bit of debate about a ceasefire agreement with the Saudis and the Houthis, and yet the war still rages.
But maybe this vote will help push that effort, and maybe they could have a ceasefire.
But right now, I don't think it exists.
I think they passed the day and said, well, we're going to hold off, and maybe next week we'll have a ceasefire.
But that could turn out to be something positive.
And it can, and I think the Saudis, viewing this and reading the tea leaves in Washington about this shift in focus, nobody knows.
Here's a good question.
Nobody knows what the Democrat-controlled House will do next time.
Obviously, politics is going to play a big role.
They'll take every chance they can to rebuke the president.
They're going to be very excited about doing that.
But might the unintended consequences of their desire to make political gains result in them doing some decent things when it comes to the anti-war issue?
Maybe they'll rediscover their constitutional role on issues of war and peace.
You know, it turns out that the resolution of 1973 has been helpful.
Although it's deeply flawed, it's actually gotten us involved in more things because it literally legalized war for 90 days.
And that's what's been happening overall.
So many times we get involved in so many different countries, and everybody ignores it.
And a lot of people don't know it.
A statistic just came out yesterday.
We're more involved in Africa than we are in the Middle East.
And nobody can keep up with them.
So the war powers resolution is there to correct it.
But it would be so much better if we had an honest government and people who actually believed in the Constitution, both in the Congress as well as in the executive branch, that we shouldn't get involved.
The weapons shouldn't be over there.
We shouldn't be involved in spreading America's goodness with a lot of weapons and killing.
As controversial as the world wars were and how we got into them all, they were more constitutional.
There was an outrage, there was a vote, we got involved, and the wars lasted for a shorter period of time.
But now we're involved in so much.
So, in a way, this is a victory.
But boy, after all these years, you have to say it's about time.
It's about time, that's for sure.
And I think this is a great opportunity also for us to point out the fact that it's been American bombs, it's been American fighters that have been dropping weapons on the Yemenis.
Now they're saying about 60,000 people have been killed, way, way more than they initially anticipated.
Probably 80,000 have starved so far, and many more threatening their threat to starve.
This is an opportunity for us to really reassess not only our policies in the Middle East, but the role of Congress in telling a president you can't send troops everywhere without authorization, without a declaration of war.
So I think we should celebrate this minor victory with some caveats.
Minor victory.
I also would like to remind our viewers to sign up for Ron Paul Institute updates, RonPaulInstitute.org.
Go up there and hit updates or sign up and sign up for our updates.
I know your column this week is about it.
We must have a mind meld because I did something a few days ago about it.
So we're both both on our minds.
So please do sign up and get some updates from us as well.
There's one point that I'd like to make that I've made many times before, and that is the criticism that we get if we become and maintain a non-interventionist position.
Oh, you guys are a bunch of isolationists.
You want to be isolated from the world.
You don't want to do anything with them.
Well, tell you what, this type of a foreign policy that the world endorses ends up isolating a lot of people.
Sometimes it's segments of a society.
Sometimes it's the wars that exist, and there's tremendous problems.
But the idea that if we have non-intervention that we're not involved, we're involved peacefully.
That's the biggest difference.
We want more involvement.
We want more people trading and traveling and talking and sharing cultures and all these things, as long as we're not intervening in the internal affairs of other nations.
It's pretty weird when Saudi Arabia can come and challenge us for intervening in their internal affairs, which is totally absurd, except that we have been involved in internal affairs, but a long time ago we should have avoided all this.
So people should remember that non-interventionism is not isolationism, it is exactly the opposite, and it is the road to peace and prosperity.
The war and interventionism and throwing our weight around and spending all the money for the military-industrial complex, avoiding believing and following the Constitution, that is an isolationism that is very, very bad.
So I say that we should look to our Constitution and our belief in liberty, set a good standard for the rest of the world, and people will come to realize it isn't isolationism that we're advocating.
We're advocating peace and prosperity in a moral society.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.