SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tom cotton
Republicans Funded by Arms Industry Fume Over Biden Threat to Withhold Bombs From Israel
"What did we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor?" asked Sen. Lindsey Graham. "We dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities."
May 09, 2024
Congressional Republicans funded by the arms industry lashed out Wednesday over U.S. President Joe Biden's belated threat to withhold American weaponry from Israel if it launches a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza city of Rafah, which is currently facing a humanitarian nightmare.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from pro-Israel interests and the weapons industry during his 2020 reelection campaign, declared that Biden's threat "put our friends in Israel in a box."
"What did we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor?" Graham, who previously encouraged Israel to "level" Gaza, said in a Fox News appearance late Wednesday. "We dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities... What is Joe Biden doing? He's making it impossible for allies throughout the world to trust us, he's making it hard on Israel to win."
Lindsey Graham: What do we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor? We dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese cities pic.twitter.com/kh7RU4flDw
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 9, 2024
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) echoed Graham, falsely claiming that Biden has "imposed an arms embargo on Israel" and endorsed "a Hamas victory against Israel." Lockheed Martin, one of the world's biggest weapons manufacturers and a major beneficiary of Israel's war on Gaza, was the fourth-largest contributor to Cotton's campaign committee in 2020, the last time the senator ran for reelection.
The notion that Biden's threat to withhold future weapons deliveries to Israel undercuts the country's ability to assail Gaza was contradicted by a U.S. official who toldThe Washington Post that "the Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections."
Earlier this week, numerous media outlets reported that the Biden administration opted to delay a shipment of thousands of Boeing-made bombs over concerns about Israel's impending assault on Rafah. On Tuesday, Israeli ground forces entered Rafah and seized control of the city's border crossing with Egypt, imperiling humanitarian aid operations there.
Biden, who has approved more than 100 weapons sales to Israel and billions of dollars in additional aid since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, falsely said Wednesday that Israeli forces "haven't gone in Rafah yet," raising questions over the practical implications of his threat to withhold U.S. weapons in the case of a ground invasion.
But Republicans nevertheless fumed over Biden's approach, showing no concern for the humanitarian catastrophe that Israel's military—armed to the teeth with American weapons—has inflicted on Gaza.
In a letter to the president on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—both major recipients of arms industry cash throughout their careers—wrote that delaying weapons deliveries "risks emboldening Israel's enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States."
Johnson and McConnell, along with most congressional Democrats, supported a sprawling foreign aid package last month that authorized around $17 billion in military assistance for Israel. Reutersreported that Lockheed Martin and RTX—formerly Raytheon—both "stand to profit" from the measure.
Raytheon's PAC donated $18,500 to McConnell's 2020 reelection campaign.
Contrary to the position of congressional Republicans, progressive foreign policy analysts and anti-war organizations said Biden would be adhering to U.S. law if he halts weapons deliveries to Israel. Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits U.S. military assistance to any country that is impeding the provision of American humanitarian aid—something Israel has done repeatedly.
"Enforcing our laws and making clear that the U.S. will not transfer offensive weapons to support a disastrous military operation that endangers millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza is vital," Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War, said in a statement Wednesday.
"U.S. law gives the president ample power to ensure that no more U.S. arms go to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's brutal war in Gaza," said Haghdoosti. "With a crucial cease-fire deal within reach, added pressure from the Biden administration can help end this war and create a path to a sustainable peace for people in Israel and Palestine. We once again urge the president to use every tool available to him to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of all hostages."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Tom Cotton: The Nation's Very Worst Veteran
At a time when the United States needs to be careful and clear-headed about how it responds to the Middle East crisis, Cotton’s cheerleading for devastating military action against Iran is deeply unhelpful.
May 08, 2024
The next time you see a politician’s lawn sign or hear a politician’s voice, saying, “Vote for a Vet,” you need to remember two things:
First, there are good veterans and there are bad veterans. The bad ones go all the way back to Benedict Arnold, a Revolutionary War turncoat whose name has become a handy shorthand for traitor. In more modern times, bad vets include Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated John F. Kennedy, preventing the president from pulling American troops out of Vietnam, as he had planned, a murderous act that led to 58,000 American deaths in that war; Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber; and Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer. That names a few.
Second, remember this: Probably the worst, most dangerous vet currently occupying a seat in the United States Congress is Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas. His latest bit of warmongering is a threat to the International Criminal Court, which has been investigating the way Israel is pursuing its war in Gaza. "Target Israel and we will target you," reads the letter, leaving zero doubt that he would love to make life difficult for the Court. Cotton not only signed it, but led in putting that threatening letter together, signed by 11 other senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
At a time when calmer voices are expressing something approaching alarm about the dangers of a possible wider war in the Middle East... Cotton has predictably thrown caution to the winds.
And this wasn't the first time that Cotton has led senators far senior to himself in seeking confrontation. Years ago, when President Barack Obama was negotiating a deal with Iran about nuclear weapons, Cotton intervened by putting together a letter to the Iranian mullahs, essentially warning them off the deal. In the Senate, an institution where seniority is everything, how did the youngest senator—at age 37 and with only two months of seniority—manage to persuade 46 other senators, with a total of 4,775 months of seniority (390 years), to join him in this bold venture? Was it the power of his intellect and his Harvard degrees? Was it his status as a combat veteran? Or was it the incipient aura of some future presidential candidacy?
None of this should come as a surprise, because Cotton clearly announced his fierce ideology in his maiden speech in the Senate. Cotton’s intense demeanor and appearance, right out of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look”) was fully on display from that moment on. He delivered that maiden speech on March 15, 2015—a date that brings to mind another Julius Caesar reference, “Beware the Ides of March.” It was a grim piece of our-enemies-are-coming-for-us rhetoric, painting a dark picture of America’s “retreat” and declining status in the world, raising concern about increasing threats from Russia and China and a list of other nations. To react to those threats, Cotton set out national goals of “global military dominance” and “hegemonic strength,” and he made absolutely clear where he stood on defense spending: America needs more—a lot more.
Cotton built the career leading to that speech with an impeccable academic and military resume. He earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, followed by a law degree from Harvard Law School. He has also checked the warrior box: After 9/11, he left the practice of law and spent nearly five years as an infantry officer, including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. His time in combat boots does not appear to have soured him on war. That consistent bellicosity, plus his proven knack for making headlines, makes him especially scary. “He is my least favorite congressional veteran, maybe in history,” said Danny Sjursen, a former army major who also saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, taught history at West Point, and became as staunchly antiwar as Cotton is pro-war. “I mean, he’s that bad.”
As his leadership in that letter to Iran's mullahs demonstrates, the Arkansas Republican has had a fixation on Iran from his first moments in the Senate. Now, at a time when calmer voices are expressing something approaching alarm about the dangers of a possible wider war in the Middle East, and Iran gets mentioned often as a backer of terrorists, Cotton has predictably thrown caution to the winds. He has fired volleys of criticism at President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for being soft on Iran. Soft, of course, is a beloved word of Republican politicians. They emerge from the birth canal yelling, “You’re soft on national security,” or “You’re soft on crime.” Cotton is no exception.
The Iran letter was not the only time Cotton made headlines. In 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck until he died, protests broke out around the nation and the world. To Cotton and others, the sporadic violence arising from those protests was serious business. Cotton had long ago made clear his views on the issue of race relations. During his Harvard days, he had written a review of a book about race for the conservative Harvard Salient. Cotton claimed to have seen real progress on the issue of race, and all America really needed to do was to just quit talking about it so much. “If race relations are better now than at any time in our history and would almost certainly improve if we stopped emphasizing race in our public life, what would the self-appointed ‘civil rights leaders’ have to do with themselves? For this reason, they continue to make hysterical and wholly unsubstantiated claims that inflame public opinion and create a gnawing cynicism in the American people.”
His attack on the International Criminal Court, which is trying to investigate whether Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, is terrifying.
Suddenly, in 2020, that progress seemed to have ground to a halt with the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests. So Cotton weighed in loudly with an immediately controversial op-ed in the New York Times about the looting and violence that had broken out at a limited number of the protests. “A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants,” Cotton wrote. “But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.” His solution: Invoke the Insurrection Act and call in the military.
Cotton’s op-ed, under the headline that the Times chose, “Send in the Troops,” caused an immediate uproar inside the Times. Dozens of staffers complained, many of them tweeting this line: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” It didn’t take long for the paper’s leadership to issue an unusually earnest apology for not vetting the piece more carefully: “After publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” In the uproar, the paper’s opinion editor, James Bennet, acknowledged that he had not even read Cotton’s op-ed during the editing process and admitted that it was the Times that had invited the senator to write the piece. A few days after the op-ed ran, Bennet resigned from his senior position at perhaps the most powerful newspaper in the country. Cotton clearly has the power to shake things up.
At a time when the United States needs to be careful and clear-headed about how it responds to the Middle East crisis, Cotton’s cheerleading for devastating military action against Iran is deeply unhelpful. His attack on the International Criminal Court, which is trying to investigate whether Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, is terrifying. He is someone to be watched carefully, as Julius Caesar felt about Cassius. “He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP Senators Threaten ICC: 'Target Israel and We Will Target You'
"You have been warned," wrote 12 Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
May 06, 2024
Just over a week before the International Criminal Court issued a statement condemning threats against the institution, a dozen Republicans in the U.S. Senate sent a letter to the ICC's prosecutor warning him against pursuing charges against Israeli officials over war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.
The letter, dated April 24 and reported exclusively by Zeteo on Monday, explicitly threatens U.S. retaliation against the ICC if it issues arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top Israeli officials.
"Target Israel and we will target you," reads the letter, which was led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a notorious war hawk, and signed by 11 others, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The letter specifically threatens to sanction ICC employees and associates and bar them and their families from entering the United States, which is not a party to the ICC.
"You have been warned," states the letter, which invokes the American Service-Members’ Protection Act—a 2002 law informally known as "The Hague Invasion Act."
As Zeteo explained, the law "authorizes the U.S. president 'to use all means necessary and appropriate' to bring about the release not just of U.S. persons but also allies who are imprisoned or detained by the ICC."
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who delivered the infamous GOP response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address earlier this year, told Zeteo that the letter is "not a threat," but "a promise."
Read the letter from 12 Republican senators threatening ICC chief prosecutor @KarimKhanQC with "severe" consequences for him, his family & staff if he goes ahead with an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. "You have been warned."
Oh and subscribe to Zeteo too: https://t.co/pVvXi4IB6C pic.twitter.com/aXfKH03T16
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 6, 2024
The 12 Republicans sent their letter days before the office of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan released a statement warning that its "independence and impartiality are undermined... when individuals threaten to retaliate against the court or against court personnel" as they conduct their investigations.
"Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offense against the administration of justice under [Article] 70 of the Rome Statute," the statement added. "The office insists that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence its officials cease immediately."
While the ICC statement did not mention any individuals or governments by name, it is apparent that its message was directed at least in part at Republican lawmakers in the U.S.
The Biden White House and Netanyahu have also spoken out against the ICC amid reports that it is considering arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and other senior officials.
"We've been really clear about the ICC investigation," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters late last month. "We do not support it. We don't believe that they have the jurisdiction. And I'm just gonna leave it there for now."
Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza—a death toll that could surge if Israel moves ahead with its planned ground invasion of Rafah. Women and children account for up to 70% of those killed by Israel's military thus far.
Like the U.S., Israel is not a party to the ICC, but the court says it has jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories. In 2021, the ICC launched a probe into alleged war crimes in the territories, including Gaza.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular