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Antiwar.com Original
President Donald Trump has sparked considerable controversy by threatening to veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act – a behemoth bill authorizing $740 billion in U.S. military expenditures – for the first time in its nearly 60-year history. However, one peace group on Friday warned against making the NDAA all about Trump, reminding Americans of some of the grave consequences of spending more on militarism than the 10 next countries combined.
The US Senate on Friday voted 84-13 in favor of the latest NDAA and sent the bill the desk of the president, who said he might not sign it into law because it does not repeal liability
“Our government should not sell a single bullet to the UAE, much less billions of dollars in deadly military equipment.”
Following the Senate’s failure earlier this week to block President Donald Trump’s $23 billion weapons sale to the United Arab Emirates, President-elect Joe Biden is facing pressure from anti-war organizations and activists to put a stop to the deal upon taking office to prevent further U.S. complicity in the slaughter of civilians in Yemen and Libya.
Announced last month after Trump claimed credit for brokering a “peace deal” between the UAE and Israel, the agreement would send 50 F-35 fighter jets, more than a dozen Reaper drones, and billions of dollars worth of munitions to the UAE part of the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition whose assault on Yemen has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Two Democrats Help Senate Kill Effort to Stop Sale of F-35s and Drones to UAE
Foreign Affairs Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump and Foreign Affairs Minister of the United Arab Emirates Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House on September 15, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
Most Senate Republicans and a pair of Democrats teamed up on Wednesday to vote down resolutions aiming to block the Trump White House’s lame-duck sale of $23 billion worth of F-35s, Reaper drones, and missiles to the United Arab Emirates, ignoring warnings that providing the Middle East nation with more high-tech weaponry would further implicate the U.S. in mass murder of civilians.