The Green New Deal

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand with Senator Sanders and with Senator Murphy as a cosponsor of the legislation before us, S.J. Res. 7, which would remove U.S. Armed Forces from Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.

There were 56 Senators who voted in favor of this resolution just a few months ago, in December, or at the end of the last Congress. That vote was, of course, a victory for the Constitution and for the separation of powers, to say nothing of prudence, of peace, and of justice. The House of Representatives passed its own version of this resolution earlier this year. Now it is back to us. Now it is our turn. Now it is our job to get this passed. We have the opportunity today to reassert Congress's constitutional role over declaring war and over putting American blood and treasure on the line.

In this particular case, the evidence is clear that we ought not be involved in this unconstitutional, unjustified, and, ultimately, immoral war. The Yemeni war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, including those of countless innocent civilians. It has created countless refugees, orphans, widows, and it has also displaced countless families. The numbers are nothing short of staggering.

Since 2015, more than 6,000 civilians have died, and more than 10,000 have been wounded. The majority of these casualties--over 10,000 of them--has been as the result of airstrikes led by the Saudi-led coalition. In one attack last year, the Saudis dropped a U.S.-made bomb on a schoolbus that killed 40 young children on a school trip and wounded another 30 children in addition to that.

Yemen is now facing rampant disease and mass starvation. An estimated 15 million people do not have access to clean water and sanitation, and 17 million don't have access to food. Photographs from Yemen depict malnourished children who have every rib in their tiny bodies exposed and jetting out as manifestations of their starvation. Over 85,000 children have died of starvation since 2015.

In short, the situation in Yemen has become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and the United States has been abating the horrors of this war. Indeed, our country has actually made the crisis worse by helping one side bomb innocent civilians. I don't say that lightly. It is with great soberness that I raise this very real and very serious accusation.

So it begs the question: How did we get entangled in this crisis to begin with? How did we get involved? Why and how and under what circumstances did this become our war to fight?

In March of 2015, Saudi Arabia launched a war against the Houthi rebels. Shortly after the Houthis ousted the Saudi-backed government in the capital city of Sanaa, the Obama administration--without consulting Congress, of course--authorized U.S. military forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting that war. U.S. military support has continued ever since then, for the last 4 years, including with midair refueling, surveillance, reconnaissance information, and target selection assistance. In other words, we have been supporting and, in fact, have been actively participating in the activities of war. We are involved in this conflict as, no less, cobelligerents.

Some of my colleagues have argued to the contrary and have suggested that we are somehow not involved in this war in Yemen. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that isn't true. We know that this argument falls dead flat on its face. As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis himself acknowledged in December of 2017, just a little over a year ago, our military has been helping the Saudis with target selection assistance or with ``making certain they hit the right thing.''

In other words, we are helping a foreign power bomb its adversaries in what is, undoubtedly, indisputably, a war. Previously, we were helping them even with midair refueling assistance--that is, helping Saudi jets that were en route to bombing missions and other combat missions on the ground inside of Yemen. If that doesn't constitute direct involvement in a war, I don't know what does.

Other opponents of our resolution claim somehow that our involvement in Yemen is constitutional, that it is lawful under the War Powers Act of 1973. It is true that under the War Powers Act, the executive branch is authorized to use Armed Forces in cases of emergencies and in other certain, rigid, well-established time constraints. Yet, you see, the conflict in Yemen does not constitute a threat to the safety of American citizens, and our involvement has far surpassed any emergency time allotted under the War Powers Resolution.

The Houthis, while, perhaps, no friends of the American people, make up a regional rebel group that does not itself threaten American national security. In fact, the longer we fight against it, the more we give reason to it to hate America and to embrace the opportunists who are our true enemies in the region--those who make up the regime in power in Iran. The more we prolong the activities that destabilize this region, the longer we harm our own interests in terms of trade and broader regional security.

The War Powers Act also states that the assignment of U.S. Armed Forces to coordinate and to participate in the hostilities of a foreign power, of a foreign country, itself constitutes a conflict of war. Some have argued that we have not been engaging in hostilities and, therefore, somehow, have not violated the War Powers Act. This claim falls flat in several respects.

First, the claim itself is categorically untrue. As we heard before, we are literally telling the Saudis what to bomb, what to hit, and what and whom to take out.

Second, these opponents are relying on an old, 1976 memorandum that is internal to the executive branch and internal to the Department of Defense itself that was written by a lawyer within the Department of Defense. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. It defers to a Department of Defense lawyer's memorandum from 1976 that uses an unreasonably, unsustainably, indefensibly slim definition of the word ``hostilities.'' This definition may or may not have been relevant then. I don't know. I was only 5 years old at the time it was written. Yet we no longer live in a world in which ``war'' means exclusively two competing countries that are lined up on opposite ends of the battlefield, in two columns, and that are engaged in direct exchanges of fire across the same ground. That is not how war is waged anymore.

War activities, of course, have changed dramatically since 1976. Like bell-bottoms and so many fads of that era, this is a dynamic that has changed today. Our war in today's America increasingly relies on high technology and on high-technology solutions. Our wars have involved cyber activity, reconnaissance, surveillance, and high-tech target selection. These, by the way, are the precise activities that we ourselves are undertaking in Yemen. It is not just that we are involved somehow on the sidelines. These activities themselves constitute war.

Even aside from this overly narrow, cramped, and indefensible definition of the word ``hostilities'' and separate and apart from the definition of the word ``hostilities,'' under the War Powers Act, we ourselves do not have to technically be involved in hostilities in order to trigger the responsibilities of the Congress under the War Powers Act in order to make sure that the legislative branch actually does its job to declare war or to authorize the use of military force under the War Powers Act and under the Constitution. The War Powers Act, in fact, is triggered so long as we are sufficiently involved with the armed forces of another nation when those armed forces of another nation are themselves involved in hostilities, which they indisputably are.

The Saudi-led coalition directing the activities in the civil war in Yemen against the Houthis is undeniably involved in hostilities. We are undeniably assisting the coalition in those movements, in those activities, in those acts of war. We, therefore, by definition under the plain language of the War Powers Act itself, are subjected to the terms of the War Powers Act. The Saudis are, without question, involved in those hostilities. We can't doubt that. No one here can credibly claim to the contrary.

Finally, some argue that this resolution might somehow harm or undermine or hurt our efforts to combat terrorism in the region specifically with regard to al-Qaida and ISIS. Importantly, however, this resolution explicitly states that the resolution would not impede the military's ability to fight these terror groups. In fact, U.S. involvement in Yemen has, arguably, undermined the effort against al- Qaida's affiliates. The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2016 found that the conflict between the Saudi-led forces and Houthi insurgents has actually helped al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as it is often described, and ISIS' Yemen branch to ``deepen their inroads across much of the country.''

It appears that our involvement in Yemen accomplishes no good at all, only harm--and significant harm at that. Recent events are bringing that into an even clearer light. In October, there was the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Then, just the week before last, news broke that the Saudis tortured a man while he was detained there in 2017. He had dual citizenship in the United States and Saudi Arabia. Shortly before that, a report also came out that suggested that Saudi Arabia had transferred American-made, American-manufactured weapons to al-Qaida-linked fighters and to other militant groups. In other words, the Saudis are likely using our own weapons in violation of our own end-user agreements with them, by the way, to commit these atrocities of war. That is not OK.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not an ally that deserves our unwavering, unquestioning, unflinching support. It is not an ally that deserves our support or our military intervention, especially when our own security--the safety of the American people--is not on the line, and I haven't heard anyone in this body maintain otherwise.

Indeed, perhaps we ought not be supporting this regime at all. At a bare minimum, we ought not be deferring unflinchingly to this regime, and we ought not be fighting an unjust war on its behalf half a world away, putting at risk not only U.S. treasure but also, potentially, U.S. blood and the blood of countless innocent civilians who are in the line of fire as a result of this. To the contrary, to continue supporting them in this war would be bad diplomacy and would undermine our very credibility on the world stage.

Look, regardless of where you stand on this war, these decisions matter, and we ought to take them seriously. In fact, each and every one of us has sworn an oath to take things like this seriously.

The Constitution puts the war-making power--the power to declare war--in the hands of Congress. There was a good reason for this. It has everything to do with the fact that Congress is the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals, and our Founding Fathers wisely understood that it was dangerous to allow the powers of government to accumulate in the hands of the few or in the hands of one person.

One of the reasons they put the war-making power in the hands of Congress is they wanted to make a strong break away from the system that had evolved in our old system of government, the one involved in our old capital based in London, where the chief executive himself had the power unilaterally to make war.

This was a decided break from that tradition. There were other traditions that we continued, that we adopted. Many of our rights, our liberties, our processes in government were patterned after the British model. This one was not. It was deliberately the choice of the Founding Fathers not to continue with that tradition, and that is why we and only we can declare war.

You see, it is not that we are flawless. It is not that we are any smarter than people in other branches. Quite to the contrary, it has only to do--and everything to do--with the fact that we are more accountable to the people at more routine intervals.

When you put the power to declare war or authorize the use of military force in Congress, you guarantee that this decision will be made carefully and deliberately in full view of the American people. Public debates have a way of bringing the American people into the discussion, into the deliberation.

You see, there is no such thing as a clean war. There is no such thing as a war that is detached from moral peril, from moral consequences, from grave and heartbreaking results in which innocent men, women, and children lose their lives or are subjected to the worst privations known to human beings.

It is for that very reason that we owe it to those affected by war-- not just the brave men and women who fight for us and protect us but for people all over the world and for the good name of the United States to be protected--that as we publicly debate the moral consequences of war, the grave implications that war has for our country and others involved in the conflict are the business of all of the American people and should never be reserved for one person.

We need to carefully weigh the risks and merits of engaging in any conflict in an open and in an honest manner. So instead of placing this power in the hands of a King or even just in the executive branch generally where it can be used unilaterally to declare war, the Founders placed it here in Congress, knowing that we are more accountable to the people than the other branches, and the power would be less likely to be abused here.

There is a lot at stake. There is a lot at stake whenever the lives of American military personnel are placed on the line and whenever the lives of innocent men, women, and children are on the line, too-- precious lives, each of immeasurable worth. These decisions result in the shedding of blood, the shedding of blood that will be on our hands if we fail both to exercise our constitutional prerogatives and to take that very responsibility very seriously.

Over the last 80 years, we have tragically seen what happens when the muscle of the legislative branch begins to atrophy as a result of the failure of those who occupy these very seats to exercise their legislative muscle. When we fail to exercise that power that the Constitution entrusts to us, entrusted to us in that document to which each of us has taken an oath, we imperil the entire system and the safety of our country. We also cheapen the moral certainty with which our Armed Forces need to be able to proceed in order to make what they do right and legally and morally justifiable.

So today, I respectfully and with all the passion and energy I am capable of communicating urge my colleagues once again to vote to end our involvement in this unauthorized, unjustified, unconstitutional, and immoral war.

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