Hillary Clinton’s State Department armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth

While Saudi Arabia and Boeing poured cash into the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton's State Department approved enormous sales of Boeing fighter jets to the kingdom.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, and the author of the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control among others, has written an article on the issue. It is appeared on the Foreign Policy In Focus. What follows is her article coupled with some ground realities. Stay tuned:

As Hillary Clinton emerges as the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, she’s receiving increased scrutiny for her years as secretary of state — and in particular her hawkish foreign policy. Many critics are focusing especially on her long relationship with Saudi Arabia.

On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a $29.4 billion sale of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by U.S.-based Boeing Corporation, to Saudi Arabia. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was “not a bad Christmas present.” These are the very fighter jets the Saudis have been using to bomb Yemen since March 2015. A year later, at least 2,800 Yemeni civilians have been martyred, mostly by airstrikes — and there’s no end in sight.

The indiscriminate Saudi strikes have claimed the lives of journalists and ambulance drivers. They’ve hit the Chamber of Commerce, facilities supported by Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, a wedding hall, and a center for the blind. The attacks have also targeted ancient heritage sites in Yemen. International human rights organizations are saying that the Saudi-led strikes on Yemen may amount to war crimes.

According to a new report published in The Intercept, During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton made weapons transfers to the Saudi government a “top priority”. And even while Clinton’s State Department was deeply invested in getting weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the weapons manufacturer Boeing. Christmas presents were being gifted all around.

Despite the brutal attacks on Yemen and its egregious domestic human rights violations, Saudi Arabia remains the number one U.S. ally in the Arab world. While the original U.S. interest was to secure Saudi’s vast oil reserves, today only 10 percent of oil used in the United States comes from the kingdom. Instead, U.S. dependence on Saudi oil has been superseded by U.S. dependence on weapons sales.

The most recent Saudi weapons deal was made in November 2015, a sale worth $1.29 billion that included 22,000 smart and general purpose bombs, and over 5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits to convert older bombs into precision-guided weapons using GPS signals. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency justified the sales, saying they helped “sustain strong military-to-military relationships between the United States and Saudi Arabia.”

It’s hard to exaggerate the enormity and high-tech nature of Saudi weapons purchases. Indeed, the deals this decade constitute the most enormous military sales in history.

According to a White House press release in 2014, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest U.S. Foreign Military Sales customer, with active and open cases valued at approximately $97 billion, as Saudi forces build capabilities across the full spectrum of regional challenges.” The weapons include F-15 bombers, Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, missile defense systems, missiles, bombs, armored vehicles, and related equipment and services. Weapons manufacturers such as Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and McDonnell Douglas have been unapologetically pushing these sales to offset military spending cuts in the United States and Europe.

While the U.S. government continues to provide massive amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia, on February 25 the European Union took the extraordinary step of voting for an EU-wide arms embargo to Saudi Arabia. While non-binding, it’s a powerful statement that will put pressure on all European governments.

Already, government committees in the United Kingdom have urged Prime Minister David Cameron to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia; Germany has pledged to review all future arms sales to the kingdom; and in Belgium the government has denied an export license to ship weapons to the country. Canadian activists are also pressuring their government in light of Canada’s $15 billion transaction with Riyadh for weaponized armored vehicles, the biggest manufacturing export deal ever struck in Canada.

U.S. activists must follow the example of their European allies and demand that the government stop supplying the Saudi rulers with weapons to bomb civilians in Yemen and repress its own citizens. Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extend its partners in crime, are unable to successfully interpret macro-level developments in the region and the bad news just keeps on coming.

First it was the Syrian ceasefire agreement that turned their regime-change fantasy into a nightmare. Then it was the European Parliament members who voted overwhelmingly for European Union arms embargo against Saudi Arabia in protest against its heavy bombing campaign in Yemen. Now the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has roundly condemned Riyadh for defying international calls to halt its airstrikes on Yemen.

Now the next best thing should be this: The United Nations should send its human rights experts to Yemen to investigate the Saudi war crimes as well as widespread human rights abuses with a view to preventing further deterioration of the situation in that war-torn country. Seeing that, the House of Saud is no longer able to justify the illegal war. Its bogus coalition has carried out a range of war crimes against the civilian population. The Arab country has been under military attacks by Riyadh since late March last year. At least 8,300 people, including 2,236 children, have been martyred so far and over 16,000 others have sustained injuries. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories. As a consequence, contrary to helping “democratize” the poorest country in the Middle East, the regime-change fantasy has sowed the seeds of House of Saud’s own destruction with increased global hatred, condemnation, and isolation.

However, the House of Saud and its allies continue to impose a complete blockade on Yemen in collaboration with US-NATO navies. The blockade is an intensification of criminal policies designed to isolate the population of Yemen, cripple its fragile economy, and provoke its people against the resistance movement of Ansarullah. There can be no dispute that collective punishment is illegal under International Humanitarian Law.

The air, sea and land blockade is but the terminal end of the Saudi-led closure policy. According to human rights groups, the blockade is condemnable, as it means the denial of a broad range of items deemed non-essential for a population largely unable to be self-sufficient in the face of the ongoing military aggression. In any case, the UN says the House of Saud has to stop airstrikes which are compounding the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. In roundly condemning the Saudis for defying international calls to halt airstrikes, the UN chief has clearly condemned Riyadh’s invasion and occupation, human rights violations and blockage, systematic bombing of civilians and genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes committed against humanity in Yemen.

It is past time for the UN to also send its experts to Yemen to help fulfill its international obligations, and ensure accountability for human rights violations and abuses by the House of Saud and its partners in crime. The UN has a clear mandate from the civil society to force the regime changers to change their failed policy and help prevent Yemen from falling into the abyss.

Unprovoked Saudi Arabia has been committing war crimes against the people of Yemen since last March. The UN is therefore implicated since it is yet to force Riyadh make peace with Yemen and lead the way to peace throughout the Middle East. By the way, don’t forget that Hillary Clinton’s State Department armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth and provided Riyadh with the munitions to commit crimes against humanity.

EA/ME