If Biden can’t stand up to Saudi Arabia, then Congress should, and now
The administration has been sluggish in its pledge to withdraw material support to the Kingdom and help end the blockade in Yemen.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Program at CIP and a senior adviser to the center’s Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). His previous books include And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995), a critique of U.S. arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations.
From July 2007 through March 2011, Mr. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he served as the director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Bill Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.
He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the PBS Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets. He blogs for the Huffington Post, the Hill, and Medium.
The administration has been sluggish in its pledge to withdraw material support to the Kingdom and help end the blockade in Yemen.
A shift in spending toward urgent priorities like addressing the possibility of future pandemics would be a far better investment in “national security.”
The breadth of support for blocking the bomb sale shows that opposition to uncritical military support for Israel is growing.
Selling war and death should be no joy for any country, so halting it is a goal well worth fighting for.