The importance of the leadership of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez to efforts to end the Saudi war in Yemen on the bill that funds the Pentagon and its contractors [“NDAA”] cannot be overstated. It should be the subject of a thousand dissertations. Menendez is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Thus, to simplify a bit, Menendez is “the top foreign policy Democrat in the Senate,” the same slot Joe Biden was occupying when Biden led the Senate in voting for the Iraq war. Menendez, in contrast, voted against the Iraq war. But unfortunately for Americans and Iraqis, Biden, not Menendez, was the top foreign policy Democrat in the Senate when Biden led the Senate in voting for the Iraq war.
The history of Yemen war powers in the Senate is this: when Menendez was against us, we were losing. But when Menendez was with us, we were winning.
In March 2018, Menendez voted against the Bernie Sanders-Mike Lee-Chris Murphy Yemen War Powers Resolution to end the war, and we lost the vote. But in December 2018, Menendez voted in favor of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution, and we won the vote. When Menendez was with us, every single Senate Democrat was with us.
Even when Menendez voted against us in March 2018, he did something that crucially helped us. The main reason we lost the March 2018 vote was that New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced a competing bill that drained Democratic support from the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution. Shaheen wanted her bill to be considered by the Senate “side-by-side” with the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill. If Shaheen had gotten her way, the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill would probably have lost in March 2018 by a bigger margin, because more Democrats would have felt that they had enough political cover to vote against the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution because they were voting for the Shaheen bill.
Menendez, as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, blocked Shaheen’s plan for the side-by-side vote. Menendez said he would only agree to Shaheen’s demand for a side-by-side vote if Murphy’s office agreed. But Murphy’s office didn’t agree. Menendez extended this courtesy to Murphy’s office because Murphy was an original co-sponsor of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution, Murphy is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Murphy’s office was perceived as having helped lead the charge since early 2016 to try to do something about the then-already catastrophic Saudi war in Yemen when hardly anybody in Congress was doing anything meaningful to try to stop the carnage.
It mattered that we lost the March 2018 Sanders-Lee-Murphy Yemen war powers vote narrowly rather than decisively. In Washington losing a vote narrowly and losing it decisively are two very different political events. When you lose a vote narrowly, people take the message that a similar vote in the future could go the other way. In June 2016, we narrowly lost a vote in the House on ending the U.S. transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. The narrow loss convinced a bunch of people that it was possible to do something about U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Congress. The narrow loss on the cluster bomb vote is also why Paul Ryan never allowed another clean vote on the House floor on U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen for the next two and a half years, as long as he remained Speaker: because he was afraid he could lose any such vote.
But it also mattered that we lost the March 2018 vote narrowly rather than decisively because the March 2018 vote, taken together with the June 2017 vote on the Rand Paul-Chris Murphy resolution of disapproval on the sale of Raytheon bombs to Saudi Arabia, revealed a crucial fact: a majority of Senators had voted against U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen at least once. That suggested that as of March 2018, a majority of Senators were ready to vote against the war, if they had the right vehicle to do so in the right circumstances.
In March 2018, Menendez and then-SFRC chair Bob Corker believed that the Shaheen bill was the right vehicle for the Senate to vote against the war, because they believed that the Shaheen bill was a bill that Trump would sign. Rather than cut off U.S. participation in the war, it required that the Secretary of State – at that time, Rex Tillerson, not yet Mike Pompeo – certify that the Saudis were working to reduce Yemeni civilian casualties from their bombing and were easing the Saudi blockade of food, medicine, and fuel that was starving Yemeni children to death. Because Menendez then believed that the Shaheen bill was pragmatically the right vehicle, Menendez opposed the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill in March 2018. After the Saudi regime murdered Jamal Khashoggi, Corker said that he had previously “laid down on the train tracks” for the Saudi government. Corker was referring to his militant opposition to the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill in March. That was the context in which Menendez thought that the Shaheen certification bill was more realistic than the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill to end the war: the context in which the top foreign policy Republican in the Senate was “laying down on the train tracks” for the Saudi government, by his own later admission.
But when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “certified” that the Saudis were working to reduce civilian casualties even after the Saudis bombed a bus full of school children and claimed it was a “legitimate military target,” Menendez became a supporter of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy bill. The fact that the Saudi regime brutally murdered a Washington Post columnist who was a U.S. resident and blatantly and arrogantly lied about it certainly did not help their case with Menendez. But the school bus bombing and the Pompeo certification were sufficient to convince Menendez that stronger Congressional action was necessary, particularly after it was reported that the Pompeo certification had been successfully urged by a former Raytheon lobbyist now working for the State Department as a liaison with Congress, who claimed that the certification was necessary to ensure Congressional approval of future weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. By that point, Menendez was already using his power as the top Democrat on SFRC to put a hold on those weapons sales. When Menendez saw that report, it must have made him livid.
Since Menendez supported the Sanders-Lee-Murphy Yemen War Powers Resolution in December 2018 and since, it’s very plausible that Menendez will now support the Adam Smith-Ro Khanna-Adam Schiff-Pramila Jayapal Yemen War Powers Amendment that passed the House on the Pentagon funding bill, with only five Democrats voting no [the “#Famine5”] - because the basic idea of the Smith-Khanna Yemen War Powers Amendment is the same as the Sanders-Lee-Murphy Yemen War Powers Resolution. The Smith-Khanna amendment seeks to cut off all U.S. participation in the Saudi bombing of Yemen in the form of intelligence sharing for targeting Saudi airstrikes and in the form of provision of spare parts for Saudi airstrikes. The Smith-Khanna amendment therefore complements Menendez’ own efforts to cut off U.S. participation in the Saudi bombing of Yemen by cutting off weapons sales.
It’s also plausible that Menendez will support the Smith-Khanna amendment because Menendez talks to Murphy. It was because Menendez talks to Murphy that Menendez shut down the Shaheen side-by-side. For three and a half years, Murphy’s office has been a crucial inside validator of the outsiders’ critique of the Saudi war in Yemen. In Washington foreign policy circles, Murphy is perceived as a responsible insider, not as one of the reckless sans-culottes with their pitchforks, screaming at the gate. If Murphy encourages Menendez to support the Smith-Khanna amendment, Menendez will listen.
Let us pray for mercy and forgiveness from the Lord of Hosts. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has given us inside validators to make the pitch for justice and mercy to the powerful behind closed doors in Washington.