Antiwar.com Blog

“We are deeply disappointed that House leadership has again prevented a debate and vote on ending U.S. participation in the famine-inducing Saudi-led war in Yemen. We remind the House leadership that under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, “‘introduction of United States Armed Forces’ includes the assignment of member of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged…” U.S. refueling of Saudi-UAE planes bombing Houthi targets in Yemen meets that definition.

We thank Reps. Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, Mark Pocan, Walter Jones, and the other co-sponsors for their leadership in diligently seeking a debate and vote on the U.S. role in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We applaud their effort for bringing unprecedented and long-overdue discussion and attention to this matter and we continue to urge Democratic and Republican Representatives to co-sponsor H.Con.Res.81.

We call for the introduction of companion legislation to H.Con.Res.81 in the Senate. We will not rest until unauthorized U.S. participation in the famine-inducing Saudi war in Yemen has ended.”

Yemen Peace Project
Win Without War
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Peace Action
Just Foreign Policy

Here are two items this morning from FP: Foreign Policy (foreignpolicy.com), which provides a daily summary (Situation Report, or SITREP) of news items related to the U.S. military and foreign policy. Together, they represent the very definition of insanity.

Item 1: The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday said US taxpayers are on the hook for about $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize the country’s nuclear arsenal. That huge number takes into account the replacement of nuclear-capable submarines, ICBMs, and new aircraft for the Air Force.

Continue reading “The Definition of American Insanity by William J. Astore”

On a recent Friday at the Afghan Peace Volunteers‘ (APV) Borderfree Center, here in Kabul, thirty mothers sat cross-legged along the walls of a large meeting room. Masoumah, who co-coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School” project, had invited the mothers to a parents meeting. Burka-clad women who wore the veil over their faces looked identical to me, but Masoumah called each mother by name, inviting the mothers, one by one, to speak about difficulties they faced. From inside the netted opening of a burka, we heard soft voices and, sometimes, sheer despair. Others who weren’t wearing burkas also spoke gravely. Their eyes expressed pain and misery, and some quietly wept. Often a woman’s voice would break, and she would have to pause before she could continue

“I have debts that I cannot pay,” whispered the first woman

“My children and I are always moving from place to place. I don’t know what will happen.”

“I am afraid we will die in an explosion.”

“My husband is paralyzed and cannot work. We have no money for food, for fuel.”

“My husband is old and sick. We have no medicine.”

Continue reading “From the Ground Up by Kathy Kelly”

Horrible events like yesterday’s attack in New York capture our attention. The mainstream media focuses non-stop on every imaginable aspect of such events. Unfortunately there is little attention to tragedies of a far greater magnitude in places like Yemen which are largely due to our interventionist foreign policy. The US government has partnered with Saudi Arabia to completely flatten Yemen, with thousands of innocents killed in the process. We should pay attention to tragedies at home, but also tragedies overseas that are being perpetrated by Washington in our name. More in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

On a Sunday morning more than two weeks after four U.S. soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger, Rep. Walter Jones sat at the desk in his North Carolina office, doing what he’s done more than 11,000 times in 14 years: signing letters to families of the dead troops.

That is how Martha Waggoner begins her Monday Associated Press article relating the regret United States House of Representatives Member Walter Jones (R-NC) feels for voting in 2002 for the US invasion of Iraq and how he has channeled that regret into actions Jones calls “penance” that include sending letters to families of troops killed in the Iraq War and other US military actions overseas.

Read the complete article here.

In addition to sending these letters, Jones, who is a member of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Advisory Board, has pushed for Congress to undertake its constitutional responsibility of debating and voting on the starting or continuing of US military actions overseas, such as the Afghanistan War that Jones has worked hard to end, instead of leaving the decision to use military force to the executive branch.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

This Letter to the Editor appeared in The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, October 15, 2017.

If the writers of the Constitution were alive today, they might well ask: Where’s Congress? They gave our representatives and senators the power to decide about going to war as a check on presidents. Congress has not declared war since 1941 though we have become an empire waging endless wars by other names.

Continue reading “Politicians Need To Answer War Questions”