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TWO House Republicans and two Democrats submitted a bill on Wednesday evening to halt US military assistance to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen. Other lawmakers have already conveyed their support for the measure, Congressional aides told Foreign Policy (FP).
The bill requires “the removal” of US forces from the war in Yemen unless and until Congress votes to authorize the American assistance. For more than two years, the United States military has provided aerial refueling tankers and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition waging war against Houthi rebels.
“We aim to restore Congress as the constitutionally mandated branch of government that may declare war and retain oversight over it,” two sponsors, Democrats Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, wrote in a letter to colleagues that was obtained by FP.
Although the bipartisan bill is unlikely to secure a majority in the House, it underscores growing concerns over Saudi Arabia’s handling of the war that is now at a stalemate on the battlefield. And it reflects growing unease at Congress over the US role there, following previous attempts by lawmakers this year to rein in arms sales or other military assistance to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and their Gulf partners backing the Yemeni government.
Both Republicans and Democrats have accused the Gulf coalition of delaying or blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen and criticized the Saudi-led states for bombing raids that have hit schools and hospitals and killed and wounded large numbers of civilians. As a result of the war, more than 7 million people are on the verge of starvation in Yemen, United Nations officials say, and the country faces an unprecedented cholera outbreak that has spread at an alarming rate in only seven months.
“It’s beyond time for the country to stop conducting refueling for missions over Yemen,” Khanna, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told FP in an email.
“Congress and the American people know too little about the role we are playing in a war that is causing suffering for millions of people and is a genuine threat to our national security,” he said. 
The two Republican co-sponsors of the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, are both Conservatives who have called for upholding Congress’s constitutional authority to declare war.
Pocan, the Wisconsin Democrat, said it was time for Congress to end the US role in “this senseless, unauthorized conflict. “
The authors of the bill also argued that assistance to the coalition bombing in Yemen was harming US security interests by creating conditions that enabled al Qaeda and Islamic State to bolster their presence in the country.
The proposed legislation will help “in reducing a genuine threat to national security posed by the expansion of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and promises to assist in ending the senseless suffering of millions of innocent people in Yemen,” according to the text of the bill.
The bill cites a 2016 State Department report on terrorism in Yemen, which found that al Qaeda and Islamic State militants have benefited from the country’s “security vacuum” and exploited sectarian tensions between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels.
The bill does not seek to end US counterterrorism operations — including drone strikes — against al Qaeda or Islamic State branches in Yemen, which date back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
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01/10/2017
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