“Many Americans would be surprised to learn that his administration has brokered more arms deals than any administration of the past 70 years, Republican or Democratic,” said William Hartung, a senior advisor to Secure Assistance Monitor, a progressive group that tracks arms sales.
Apr. 19
2016, 3:29 p.m.
IN THE
2002 speech against the Iraq War that helped propel him to the presidency, then-state Sen. Barack Obama
denounced not just the looming invasion of Iraq, but also human rights abuses
by our “so-called allies” in Saudi Arabia:
Let’s fight
to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the
Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and
tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that
their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the
ready recruits of terrorist cells.
And he
spoke out against the U.S.’s role as weapons supplier to the world:
Let’s fight
to make sure … that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the
countless wars that rage across the globe.
Thirteen
years later, Obama is making his fourth trip to Riyadh, having presided over
record-breaking U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia while offering only muted
criticism of the kingdom’s human rights violations.
And don’t
expect the president to speak up while he’s there. Obama last traveled to
Saudi Arabia in January 2015, cutting short his trip to India after the passing
of the former Saudi king, Abdullah ibn-Abdulaziz al-Saud. During that visit,
Obama was criticized for not speaking out against
the flogging of prominent Saudi blogger and dissident Raif Badawi. In 2014,
Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting
Islam” and “going beyond the realm of obedience,” with the first flogging
session taking place weeks before Obama arrived.
In January,
after a record-setting year for Saudi beheadings, Saudi
authorities set off protests by executing Shia cleric and regime critic
Nimr al-Nimr. U.S. response was muted. The State Department merely said the
execution “risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently
need to be reduced” – and then fell silent on the repression of the
following protests.
Last year,
amazingly enough, Saudi Arabia became the head of the 47-member U.N. Human
Rights Council. When a State Department spokesman was asked for his reaction,
he responded: “Frankly, we would welcome it.
We’re close allies.”
Obama
administration officials have not offered on-the-record explanations for why
Saudi human rights abuses don’t play a greater role in U.S. policy. But in the
trove of documents released from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
private email server, Clinton acknowledges that the U.S. government holds the
Saudis to a different standard.
In one email chain, dated June 22, 2011, aide Cheryl
Mills forwarded Clinton a New York Times opinion column in which Maureen Dowd mused that it would
“have been thrilling” if Clinton, on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia, had
“smacked around the barbaric Saudi men who force women to huddle under a
suffocating black tarp.” Clinton asked Mills what she thought about the column
and Mills remarked that “we/DOS/USG may have different standards we apply when
it is pushing Saudi.” “No doubt about that!” Clinton responded:
Obama’s
visit this week will be taking place in the shadow of an ongoing U.S.-supplied,
Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes have killed thousands of
civilians.
Since the
Saudi coalition began its campaign last March, it has relied on U.S.-produced aircraft, “smart bombs,” guided missiles, and internationally banned cluster bombs. A recent report from Human Rights Watch, for
instance, found evidence that the coalition used American bombs in a March 15
attack on a market in northwestern Yemen where nearly a hundred civilians were
killed. As Iona Craig reported in November, Yemen’s
architectural history is also being destroyed by bombs sold to Saudi Arabia by
the United States.
According
to a new poll released earlier this month, 82 percent of Yemenis between the ages of 18 and 24
now view the United States as an enemy.
On
Wednesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a
bill blocking arms transfers unless the State Department
certifies that Saudi military is taking every “feasible precaution to reduce
the risk of harm to civilians.”
But arms
sales in general – and specifically to Saudi Arabia – have been a consistent
element of Obama’s tenure.
“Many
Americans would be surprised to learn that his administration has brokered more
arms deals than any administration of the past 70 years, Republican or
Democratic,” said William Hartung, a senior advisor to Secure Assistance
Monitor, a progressive group that tracks arms sales.
The primary
vehicle for international arms transfers is the Pentagon’s Foreign Military
Sales (FMS) program; in 2015, the FMS program hit a record high of $46.6 billion.
The Saudis
have been major clients. “During the first six years of the Obama
administration, the United States entered into agreements to sell over $190
billion in weapons and training to Saudi Arabia. And in 2015, the administration
announced its intention to sell another $22 billion to the kingdom, parts of
which have yet to be embedded in formal agreements,” Hartung said.
To put that
in context, in his first five years as president, Obama sold $30 billion more weapons than President Bush
did during his entire eight years as commander in chief.
Saudi
Arabia maintains a huge network of D.C. lobbyists, public relations experts,
and a subsidized think tank to promote its cozy relationship with Washington.
And as Lee Fang reported in December, it launched a particularly massive
new charm offensive shortly after beginning its air and ground assault in
Yemen.
Murphy
expressed hopes that Obama would press the Saudi king on his conduct in Yemen.
“Right now, the Saudis’ focus on Yemen is distracting them from the war against
violent extremists,” Murphy said in a statement emailed to The
Intercept. “And personally, I hope President Obama takes this
opportunity to have a frank discussion with Saudi Arabia about their continued
backing for religious and educational institutions around the world that
promote sectarianism and intolerance.”
But many
activists are losing hope that the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia will
change.
“The
reality is the U.S. foreign policy establishment including the State Department
and Pentagon are happy with the Saudi relationship,” said Stephen McInerney,
executive director of the Project On Middle East Democracy. “In order to change
course, meaningfully, it would take real leadership and investment in doing so,
and President Obama — although his instincts might be that the Saudis are
problematic in a number of ways — he hasn’t shown any serious desire to bring
about a change of policy.”
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Photo: Saudi King Salman meets President Obama in January 2015.
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