Ron Paul Liberty Report - Weekly Update --- Why The Senate Vote to End Yemen War is So Important
Aired: 2018-12-18
Duration: 04:08


=== Senate Vote to End Yemen War (03:28) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report, Why the Senate Vote to End Yemen War is So Important.
[00:00:10]  Last week something historic happened in the U.S. Senate.
[00:00:14]  For the first time in 45 years, a chamber of the U.S. Congress voted to pool U.S. forces from a military conflict under the 1973 War Powers Act.
[00:00:25]  While there is plenty to criticize in the War Powers Act, in this situation it was an important tool used by a broad Senate coalition to require President Trump to end U.S. participation in the Saudi war against Yemen.
[00:00:40]  And while the resolution was not perfect, there were huge loopholes.
[00:00:46]  It has finally drawn wider attention to the U.S. administration's dirty war in Yemen.
[00:00:52]  The four-year Saudi war on neighboring Yemen has left some 50,000 dead, including many women and children.
[00:01:00]  We've all seen the horrible photos of school buses blown up by the Saudis using U.S.-supplied bombs loaded into U.S.-supplied aircraft.
[00:01:10]  Millions more face starvation as the infrastructure is decimated and the ports have been blocked to keep out humanitarian aid.
[00:01:21]  Stopping U.S. participation in this brutal war is by itself a wise and correct move, even if it comes years too late.
[00:01:31]  The Senate vote is also about much more than just Yemen.
[00:01:35]  It's about the decades of presidential assaults on the Constitution in matters of war.
[00:01:41]  President Trump is only the latest to ignore Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which grants war powers exclusively to Congress.
[00:01:52]  Yes, it was President Obama who initially dragged us into the U.S. illegally into the Yemen war.
[00:02:00]  But President Trump has only escalated it.
[00:02:04]  And to this point, Congress has been totally asleep.
[00:02:07]  Fortunately, that all changed last week with a Senate vote.
[00:02:12]  Unfortunately, members of the House will not be allowed to vote on their own version of the Senate resolution.
[00:02:19]  Republican leadership snuck language into a rule vote on the farm bill prohibiting any debate on the Yemen war for the rest of this congressional session.
[00:02:30]  As Representative Thomas Massey correctly pointed out, the move was both unconstitutional and illegal.
[00:02:39]  However, as is often the case in bipartisan Washington, there is plenty of blame to go around.
[00:02:45]  The Republicans were able to carry the vote on the rule and thus deny any debate on Yemen only because of a group of Democrats crossed over and voted with Republicans.
[00:02:58]  Democratic Whip Sterny Hoyer is being blamed for progressives for his apparent lack of interest in holding his party together.
[00:03:09]  Why would Democrats help a Republican president keep his war going?
[00:03:13]  Because, especially when you look at congressional leadership, both parties are pro-war and pro-executive branch overreach.
[00:03:22]  They prefer it to be their president who is doing the overreaching, but they understand that sooner or later they'll be back in charge.

=== Bipartisanship In Washington (00:37) ===

[00:03:31]  As I have often said, there is too much bipartisanship in Washington, not too much partisanship.
[00:03:39]  Americans should be ashamed and outraged that their government is so beholding to a foreign power, in this case Saudi Arabia, that it would actively participate in a brutal war of aggression.
[00:03:51]  Participating in this war against one of the world's poorest countries is far from upholding American values.
[00:03:59]  We should applaud and support the coalition in the Senate that voted to end the war.
[00:04:04]  They should know how much we appreciate their efforts.