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
war powers
What the US Air Force Doesn't Want You to Notice on Election Night
As the warring ruling class seems to be pushing for nuclear brinkmanship, on this election night let us not be distracted.
Nov 05, 2024
Much significance will happen at the end of Election Day, and a countdown will begin at 11:00 p.m. PDT on November 5th. While everyone’s attention will be on who our next president will be, the U.S. The Air Force will test-launch an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with a dummy hydrogen bomb on the tip from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile will cross the Pacific Ocean and 22 minutes later crash into the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Air Force does this several times a year. The launches are always at night while Americans are sleeping.
This is what nightmares are made of—between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, and the result is that the Marshallese people have lost their pristine environment and face serious health problems. Our environment is threatened here as well. Not only did the indigenous Chumash people lose their sacred land to Vandenberg Air Force Base, but also America’s Heartland presently has around 400 ICBMs stored in underground silos equipped with nuclear warheads that are ready to launch at a hair trigger’s notice. Named “MinuteMen III,” after Revolutionary War soldiers who could reload and shoot a gun in less than a minute, ICBMs not only put Americans at risk of accident, but they put all life on earth in danger.
ICBMs are not viable for national defense. They are a relic of a bygone era having been invented by Nazi Germany, and their presence only escalates the risk of nuclear accidents or conflicts. A single launch could lead to a nuclear exchange that would annihilate cities, contaminate the environment, and cause irreversible harm to our planet’s ecosystem. Once an ICBM is launched, it cannot be recalled. I don’t want a nuclear strike or accident to happen. We can change course now, and our first step is to decommission the ICBM program also because it is a staggering financial burden to maintain.
Nuclear weapons only provide the terrifying threat of annihilation, either by command or by accident. Nuclear weapons and ICBMs only make the world less safe and strip us of security.
The U.S. plans to spend over $1.2 trillion on nuclear modernization over the next 30 years, which means new, larger nuclear bombs and new, larger ICBMs called Sentinels that will need to be tested. This massive investment in outdated technology diverts critical funds away from humanitarian needs like healthcare, education, and healing climate change—issues that directly impact our quality of life, and our children’s future.
I teach 4th and 5th graders Creative Writing. I adore children’s imaginations, but when my students were given the assignment to write about something important to them, they wrote lines that broke my heart. This is a wake-up call for us adults to face the reality we have made for our children.
“Such a shame, a perfectly good planet, trashed.” Claire, age 9.
“What would you think about no nature in the world? No trees, no butterflies, no birds or bunnies at all! Most important of all, no people. There would be no technology, no schools, no history, no entertainment; everything we have worked for would be wasted. What would you think about a beautiful world that basically had nothing? I think I would absolutely hate it.,” Brynn, age 9.
Other than destruction caused by industrial global warming and by war, which the children are all-too aware of, this child does not know what actually could turn nature and civilization to nothing in a matter of minutes; she doesn’t know about “nuclear winter” or how vulnerable we are to a nuclear accident. Most people don’t.
The claim is that nuclear weapons are deterrents, but it is diplomacy that creates alliances and peace. Nuclear weapons only provide the terrifying threat of annihilation, either by command or by accident. Nuclear weapons and ICBMs only make the world less safe and strip us of security.
As the warring ruling class seems to be pushing for nuclear brinkmanship, on this election night let us not be distracted. By decommissioning ICBMs, the U.S. could lead the world in reducing the nuclear threat and encourage other nations to do the same. For the sake of our health, environment, and the safety of future generations, it’s time to scrap the ICBM program. We owe it to our children to invest in a future that prioritizes peace and sustainability over destruction.
As it is we the people who possess the right of self-determination, we must confront the material reality of our homeland and face what it will take to protect it. Do we have the courage to change our country for the better and ensure our futures? Yes we do, and now is the time to take action.
“Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress,” said Daniel Ellsberg, U.S. military analyst, economist, and author of "The Doomsday Machine."
May we cancel this nightmare weapons program for once and for all and give our children the security that they deserve.
Tell Congress: Cancel Sentinel Missile Program—More Than 700 Scientists Agree: https://secure.ucsusa.org/a/2024-cancel-sentinel-letter
Learn more about the dangers of ICBMS and get involved. https://defusenuclearwar.org/eliminate-icbms/
Keep ReadingShow Less
What's Needed for True Peace in Yemen
A halt to the fighting in Yemen would be welcome news. But it won’t last without addressing the warring parties’ crimes against civilians.
Apr 15, 2023
The news that Saudi officials, who have been leading a bombing campaign in Yemen for eight years, met with the Houthi officials who control much of the country on April 9 to possibly renew a truce that ended in October is positive. But a renewed truce that does not address the harm that warring parties have caused to Yemen’s civilians will not be sustainable without accountability.
The talks come weeks after reports that Iranian officials might stop sending arms to the Houthis and that Saudi Arabia, which has ostensibly been involved in the conflict on behalf of the country’s ousted government, are looking for a way out. This has led international actors — including the UN Yemen mediator — to express optimism about the possibility of a truce, or even an official end to the war.
The absence of Yemenis civilians from these discussions demonstrates the lack of agency Yemenis have had in determining their own circumstances throughout the conflict. It also demonstrates international actors’ willingness to end the war without discussion of justice and accountability for the widespread harm that civilians have suffered.
The warring parties have caused nearly 20,000 civilian casualties and carried out widespread violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Today, two-thirds of the Yemeni population needs humanitarian assistance.
The conflict in Yemen has been marked by the involvement of a multitude of foreign actors.
While the full extent and nature of Iran’s relationship with the Houthis is not clear, Iran has provided the Houthis with large quantities of weapons, as well as political support.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became parties to the conflict in March 2015, leading a coalition of countries in the region that has launched airstrikes against the Houthis. The coalition has received significant support from powerful Western countries in the form of arms sales, especially by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
From 2015 to 2020, U.S. weapons agreements with Saudi Arabia amounted to over $64.1 billion, while the UK has sold over $23 billion in weapons to the country since the start of the war. The U.S. has also provided the coalition with in-air refueling and tactical support, while the UK has provided coalition forces with training. The U.S. has separately carried out airstrikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, also making it a party to the conflict.
The coalition’s airstrikes have caused most of the war’s accounted civilian casualties. They have destroyed and damaged civilian infrastructure, including homes, medical facilities, schools, markets, and water and food sources and infrastructure. Some of the coalition’s airstrikes may amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented cases of torture, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention by coalition forces, particularly by Saudi Arabia and UAE forces, and as well as Yemeni forces backed by the UAE.
The Houthis have fired mortars, rockets, and missiles into densely populated areas both in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia which have killed and wounded civilians, constituting other possible war crimes. They have also laid landmines in civilian areas across the country — including internationally banned antipersonnel landmines. The UN Group of Eminent Experts also detailed the Houthis’ widespread use of torture.
Both the coalition and the Houthis have blocked and impeded access to humanitarian aid. During the last truce, the Houthis refused to reopen the roads to Taiz, which have been blocked since 2015, to allow in critical humanitarian aid, despite a proposal from the UN special envoy.
Despite the severity and pervasiveness of the violations, there has been almost no accountability or reparations to victims or their families. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia successfully lobbied member countries of the Human Rights Council in 2021 not to extend its Group of Eminent Experts investigation — the only independent monitoring and reporting mechanism that had previously existed for Yemen.
Calls for a new and more robust investigative mechanism at the Human Rights Council since then have been largely ignored, including by powerful countries with major arms sales to Saudi Arabia, such as the U.S. and the UK.
Other countries have pointed to the Yemeni government’s National Commission of Inquiry, an ineffective domestic investigative body that lacks independence, to avoid establishing a much-needed investigation. Meanwhile warring parties’ promises to provide reparations for the civilian harm they’ve caused have been almost entirely unrealized.
Last fall, five months into the six-month truce, 50 civil society organizations wrote a joint letter stating that even with the truce in place, parties to the conflict had made “little to no progress… to address ongoing and widespread violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law or remedy the harm they have inflicted on civilians throughout the conflict.”
The letter called on the international community to “not stand by and allow” the vote to disband the monitoring group “to be the last word on accountability efforts for large scale human rights abuses and war crimes in Yemen.”
For there to be long-term peace in Yemen, the international community should advocate for the establishment of an effective, impartial, and independent investigative mechanism. And we must ensure that any truce includes a comprehensive transitional justice process that includes civil society, and reparations by warring parties to victims.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Congress, Do Your Job, End US Support for the War in Yemen
Online rally for Yemen this Saturday will stress the importance of action to end the war
Mar 24, 2023
Having just observed the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, the United States Senate is currently considering S. 316, a bill sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to repeal the anachronistic Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq, which date to 1991 and 2002. This action is long overdue, and part of a recent effort by Congress to reclaim its constitutional authority over matters of war and peace. The Biden Administration supports the measure, which is significant as Joe Biden, as a US Senator, voted for the 2002 AUMF, while he opposed the 1991 measure.
The Senate, and House of Representatives, should also soon take up legislation to end US participation in a current war, the tragedy in Yemen. March 25 will mark eight years since Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners including the United Arab Emirates began bombing Yemen with US military support. With the recent welcome deal, brokered by China, for Saudi Arabia and Iran to re-establish diplomatic ties, peace may be on the verge of breaking out in Yemen, but Congress still has work to do. Iran has agreed to stop arming the rebel Houthis in Yemen; momentum to end the suffering of the Yemeni people, who have endured the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe for eight long years, must be capitalized upon.
"While finally ending the war in Yemen is an urgent priority, there is also a broader need for the US to reset its foreign policy to focus on democracy and human rights."
Next month, the Senate will consider a bipartisan privileged resolution instructing the Secretary of State to prepare a report on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record under section 502(B) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. The bill, sponsored by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), could result in cutting off all US military assistance to the Saudis. Even if that isn’t achieved, it will still put political pressure on the Biden Administration to reassess its relationship with the US’s biggest weapons purchaser.
Even more significant is the imminent re-introduction of a Congressional War Powers Resolution to end all US support for the Saudi-led coalition’s military actions in Yemen. If passed, as it was in 2019 (before President Trump vetoed it), Congress could order the president to end U.S. participation in the catastrophic conflict, which the U.S. has enabled for eight years. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sponsored last year’s bipartisan bill, which wascosponsored by over 130 members of Congress.
Despite the current pause in bombings in Yemen since April 2022, there is nothing to prevent Saudi Arabia from resuming airstrikes, nor to permanently end the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen. The U.S. has enabled Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to subject the Yemeni people toover 25,000 air raids. Activists describe the Yemen War Powers Resolution as the most effective way for Congress to stop enabling the war on Yemen, which includes a devastating Saudi blockade.
Starvation and disease are a daily presence in Yemen;millions of children are malnourished andtwo-thirds of the country is in need of humanitarian aid. Saudi Arabia’s blockade drives the crisis. For example, almost no containerized goods have been able toenter Yemen’s principal port of Hodeida since 2017, depriving the Yemeni people of needed medical supplies and other essential goods.
To help draw attention to the need to end the catastrophe in Yemen, this Saturday, March 25 at 12 Noon ET, Peace Action, Action Corps, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Yemeni-American groups, and others from the US and UK will host an online rally to build momentum to end our countries’ military involvement in the war in Yemen. Confirmed US speakers include Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Dr. Shireen Al-Adeimi, Dr. Aisha Jumaan, and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, among others. Jeremy Corbyn, member of the British parliament and former Labour Party leader, will also speak.Amaani Yehya, Yemen’s first female rapper, will perform.
While finally ending the war in Yemen is an urgent priority, there is also a broader need for the US to reset its foreign policy to focus on democracy and human rights, including ending blank check support for Israel in its perpetual occupation of Palestinian territory, and to invest in smart diplomacy as China did in helping broker the Iran-Saudi agreement. The people of Yemen can’t wait, and Americans and people all around the world would benefit from a smarter foreign policy based on widely held American values.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular