Until recently, the US relationship to Saudi Arabia has been one of those things that we’re not allowed to do anything about. There’s death and taxes, and the US is joined at the hip to Saudi Arabia. There’s nothing to do.
But the world has changed. We’re at a discontinuity now, and nobody knows what’s on the other side of the discontinuity. President Obama slams Saudi Arabia in an interview in the Atlantic. A big bipartisan group of senators is poised to pass legislation that would limit the sovereign immunity of the Saudi government from lawsuits over the 9/11 attacks. Here’s Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, describing how the world has changed:
‘Very bluntly, they no longer have us in an energy straight jacket,’ said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to growing domestic oil production that has made the United States less reliant on the Saudis. He added that the American government now knows more about Saudi Arabia’s historical funding of extremist groups and that ‘Americans are also increasingly concerned about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.’
And now, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have introduced a bipartisan bill that would place new conditions on US military aid to Saudi Arabia. Like so many Washington initiatives, the actual text of the bill is not revolutionary. It doesn’t say you can’t transfer weapons to Saudi Arabia anymore. It just adds a step to the existing notification process. The new step is the president has to certify that Saudi Arabia is acting to protect civilians from its military actions — for example, in Yemen — as it is required to do under international law and US law anyway — and the president has to certify that Saudi Arabia is cooperating with the US against ISIS/Al Qaeda terrorism.
What’s revolutionary is that Murphy and Paul are formally challenging the taboo against publicly asking questions about the US military relationship to Saudi Arabia and inviting other senators to join them.
The Murphy-Paul bill is supported by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Peace Action and Just Foreign Policy. You can email your Senators here and call them here.
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