By Danaka
Katovich
June 13, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" -
At some point
before the summer of 2018, an arms deal from the US
to Saudi Arabia was sealed and delivered. A 227kg
laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin, one of
many thousands, was part of that sale. On August
9th, 2018 one of those Lockheed Martin bombs was
dropped on a school
bus full of Yemeni children.
They were on their way to a field trip when their
lives came to a sudden end. Amidst shock and grief,
their loved ones would learn that Lockheed Martin
was responsible for creating the bomb that murdered
their children.
What they might
not know is that the United States government (the
President and the State Department) approved the
sale of the bomb that killed their children, in the
process enriching Lockheed Martin, which makes
millions in profits from arms sales every year.
While Lockheed
Martin profited from the death of forty Yemeni
children that day, top United States weapons
companies continue to sell weapons to repressive
regimes around the world, killing countless more
people in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and more. And in many cases, the United States
public has no idea this is being done in our name to
benefit the largest private companies in the world.
Now, the newest
$735 million
in precision-guided weapons that are being sold to
Israel- are destined to have a similar fate. The
news about this sale broke in the midst of Israel’s
most recent assault on Gaza that killed
over 200 Palestinians.
When Israel attacks Gaza, it does so with US-made
bombs and warplanes.
If we condemn the
abhorrent destruction of life that occurs when Saudi
Arabia or Israel kills people with US-manufactured
weapons, what can we do about it?
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Arms sales are
confusing. Every once in a while a news story will
break about a certain weapons sale from the United
States to some other country across the globe that
is worth millions, or even billions of dollars. And
as Americans, we virtually have no say in where the
bombs that say “MADE IN THE USA” go. By the time we
hear about a sale, the export licenses are already
approved and Boeing factories are churning out
weapons we’ve never even heard of.
Even for people
who consider themselves well informed about the
military-industrial complex find themselves getting
lost in the web of procedure and timing of weapons
sales. There is a gross lack of transparency and
information made available to the American peoples.
Generally, here’s how arms sales work:
There is a period
of negotiation that takes place between a country
that wants to buy weapons and either the US
government or a private company like Boeing or
Lockheed Martin. After a deal is reached, the State
Department is required by the Arms Export Control
Act to notify Congress. After the notification is
received by Congress, they have
15 or 30 days to
introduce and pass
a Resolution of Joint Disapproval to block the
issuance of the export license. The amount of days
depends on how close the United States is with the
country buying the weapons.
For Israel, NATO
countries, and a few others, Congress has 15 days to
block the sale from going through. Anyone familiar
with Congress’s arduous way of doing things may
realize that 15 days is not really enough time to
carefully consider whether selling millions/billions
of dollars in weapons is in the political interest
of the United States.
What does this
time frame mean for advocates against arms sales? It
means that they have a tiny window of opportunity to
reach out to members of Congress. Take the most
recent and controversial $735 million Boeing sale to
Israel as an example.
The story broke
only a few days before those 15 days were up.
Here’s how it happened:
On May 5, 2021
Congress was notified about the sale. However, since
the sale was commercial (from Boeing to Israel)
instead of government-to-government (from the United
States to Israel),
there is a greater
lack of transparency
because there are different procedures for
commercial sales. Then on May 17, with only a few
days left in the 15-day period Congress has to block
a sale, the
story of the sale
broke.
Responding to the sale on the last day of the 15
days, a joint resolution of disapproval was
introduced in the House on May 20. The next day,
Senator Sanders
introduced his legislation
to block the sale in the Senate, when the 15 days
were up. The export license was already approved by
the State Department that same day.
The legislation
introduced by Senator Sanders and Representative
Ocasio-Cortez to block the sale was virtually
useless as time had run out.
However, all is
not lost, as there are several ways a sale can still
be stopped after the export license is granted. The
State Department can revoke the license, the
President can stop the sale, and Congress can
introduce specific legislation to block the sale at
any point up until the weapons are actually
delivered. The last option has never been done
before, but there is recent precedent to suggest
that it might not be totally pointless to try.
Congress passed a
bipartisan joint resolution of disapproval in
2019 to block an arms
sale to the United Arab Emirates.
Then President Donald Trump vetoed this resolution
and Congress didn’t have the votes to override it.
However, this situation showed that both sides of
the aisle can work together to block an arms sale.
The convoluted and
tedious ways arms sales go through raise two
important questions. Should we even be selling
weapons to these countries in the first place? And
does there need to be a fundamental change in the
procedure of selling weapons so that Americans can
have more of a say?
According to our
own
law,
the United States should not be sending weapons to
countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia (among
others). Technically, doing so goes against the
Foreign Assistance Act, which is one of the main
laws governing weapons sales.
Section 502B of the
Foreign Assistance Act says that weapons sold by the
United States cannot be used for human rights
violations.
When Saudi Arabia dropped that Lockheed Martin bomb
on those Yemeni kids, no argument could be made for
“legitimate self defense.” When the primary target
of Saudi airstrikes in Yemen are weddings, funerals,
schools, and residential neighborhoods in Sanaa, the
United States has no legitimate justification for
their use of US manufactured weapons. When Israel
uses Boeing joint direct attack munitions to level
residential buildings and international media sites,
they are not doing so out of “legitimate self
defense”.
In this day and
age where videos of US allies committing war crimes
are readily available on Twitter or Instagram, no
one can claim that they don’t know what US-made
weapons are used for around the world.
As Americans,
there are important steps to be taken. Are we
willing to put our efforts into changing the
procedure of arms sales to include more transparency
and accountability? Are we willing to invoke our own
laws? More importantly: are we willing to put our
efforts into drastically changing our economy so
that Yemeni and Palestinian parents who put every
ounce of love into raising their children do not
have to live in fear that their whole world could be
taken in an instant? As it stands, our economy
benefits from selling tools of destruction to other
countries. That is something Americans must realize
and ask if there is a better way to be a part of the
world. The next steps for people who are concerned
about this newest arms sale to Israel should be
petitioning the State Department and asking their
members of Congress to introduce legislation to
block the sale.
Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK's Yemen campaign
coordinator and Peace Collective coordinator
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