[Peace] at HP: Pocan, Amash Invoke War Powers as Trump Mulls Pushing Yemen Into Famine

Mon Apr 3 16:56:23 UTC 2017

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58e25edde4b03c2b30f6a881

Pocan, Amash Invoke War Powers as Trump Mulls Pushing Yemen Into Famine
04/03/2017

The White House is scheduled to consider this week
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-pentagon-war-20170402-story.html>
 a proposal
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-weighs-deeper-involvement-in-yemen-war/2017/03/26/b81eecd8-0e49-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html>
from
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to directly engage the U.S. military in Saudi
Arabia’s war against the Houthis in Yemen, including a planned United Arab
Emirates attack on the port of Hodeida.

On Friday, March 31, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen warned
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-un-idUSKBN1722MW> against
a military attack on Hodeida:

“We as the United Nations are advocating that no military operations should
be undertaken in Hodeidah.”

He warned that military action on the port could “tip the country into
famine <https://www.bgov.com/core/news/#!/articles/ONONUN6JIJUZ>.”

Former U.S. officials have also warned
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/yemen-operation-uae-saudi-famine-port-trump-criticism.html>
that
this attack could push Yemen into famine:

There was an internal debate over the final year of the Obama
administration about whether the United States should support potential
future efforts by the coalition to take the Hodeidah port, but ultimately
the administration decided against it, said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top
USAID official. “From USAID’s perspective, we thought the US should
strongly oppose this,” Konyndyk, the former director of USAID’s Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance, told Al-Monitor… He said, “From our point of
view, it would be disastrous in terms of humanitarian impact if the
coalition were to disrupt the aid pipeline and commercial pipeline that
moves through that port...The view that we had at AID — among AID
leadership — was that if that port were to be lost, it would likely be
enough to tip the country into famine,” Konyndyk warned.

As Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker recently affirmed
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/congress-raise-alarm-us-confrontation-yemen-houthis.html>,
U.S. participation in this war has never been authorized by Congress:

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., made it clear he
doesn’t believe the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that
Congress passed in 2001 to counter al-Qaeda would apply to the Houthis.
“Certainly engaging in a war against a group outside of ISIS [the Islamic
State] is a step beyond the current authorization,” Corker told Al-Monitor.

A bipartisan group of House members is demanding that President Trump seek
Congressional approval before escalating U.S. involvement in Yemen’s civil
war. Reps. Mark Pocan [D-WI], Justin Amash [R-MI]; Ted Lieu [D-CA] and
Walter Jones [R-NC] are circulating a letter to the President that says
<http://thehill.com/policy/defense/326767-trump-signals-deeper-us-involvement-in-yemen>,
“Congress has never authorized the actions under consideration.” The letter
continues
<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/congress-raise-alarm-us-confrontation-yemen-houthis.html>
:

“Engaging our military against Yemen’s Houthis when no direct threat to the
United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would
violate the separation of powers clearly delineated in the
constitution...For this reason, we write to request that the Office of
Legal Counsel (OLC) provide, without delay, any legal justification that it
would cite if the administration intends to engage in direct hostilities
against Yemen’s Houthis without seeking congressional authorization.”

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution
<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp> in 1973 over
President Nixon’s veto to make it harder for the President to start or
escalate wars unilaterally. In the WPR, Congress gave itself additional
tools for preventing and challenging unilateral military action by the
President, like the ability of any Member to introduce a “privileged”
resolution - one that can’t be buried in committee, but can be forced to a
floor vote if its sponsors insist - to withdraw U.S. forces from a war that
hasn’t been authorized by Congress.

By invoking their war powers, Members of Congress can block the President
from unilaterally moving to engage in military action. It happened in 2013,
when 192 Members of the House
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/8/29/1234850/-162-Reps-Including-64-Democrats-Call-for-Debate-Vote-Before-War-With-Syria>
insisted
that President Obama come to Congress before bombing the Syrian government.
President Obama initially insisted that he didn’t need Congressional
approval, but he relented
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria>
when
enough Members of Congress complained. He didn’t concede
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria>
the
point as a theoretical, Constitutional, legal matter, but he conceded it
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria>
as
a practical, political matter, and ultimately that’s what we care about.

If enough Members of Congress complain now - in particular, if enough
Members of the House sign the Pocan-Amash-Lieu-Jones letter now - we can
force Trump and Mattis to back down from taking this catastrophic step
unilaterally, and force them to seek Congressional authorization before
proceeding, which would mean they would have to make their case to the
broad U.S. public, not just to the elite foreign policy establishment. And
that’s a much higher burden of proof, because the broad public is much more
skeptical of wars of choice than the foreign policy establishment is. We
don’t actually need to get Trump and Mattis to concede the theoretical,
Constitutional, legal point that they need to come to Congress for
authorization, though that certainly would be very nice. We just need them
to concede the point as a practical, political matter. Just like President
Obama did
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria>
in
August 2013. All we need is for more Members of Congress to join the
complaint right now.

You can urge your Representative to sign the Pocan-Amash-Lieu-Jones letter
here
<http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/call-yemen-war-authorization-letter>,
here
<http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/help-repmarkpocan-justinamas?r_by=1135580>
, here
<https://www.fcnl.org/updates/ask-your-rep-put-the-brakes-on-yemen-war-715>,
or here <http://www.codepink.org/dont_escalate_war_in_yemen>.

I can’t promise you that we can stop this catastrophe. But we used this
exact same mechanism less than four years ago and were successful in
stopping U.S. military action. Given that the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Yemeni children hang in the balance, isn’t it worth a try?
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