Amendment introduced in US Defense Budget Bill to suspend sale of arms to Israel

In United States, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has introduced an amendment to the US Defense Budget Bill which would suspend the transfer of US$735 million worth of Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) to Israel. JDAMs are kits that convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions.

The amendment was introduced alongside six others, including one to block arms sales to the Saudi Arabia, allegedly involved in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and an amendment concerning the US relationship with Colombia.

Ocasio-Cortez’s office announced that the amendment concerning the sale of weapons to Israel was meant to block the transfer of the same kind of Boeing weaponry that the Israeli government used to kill 44 Palestinians in one night in al-Rimal, an Israeli airstrike on Hamas, led to a building collapse killing 44 Gazans.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, Gilad Erdan criticized Ocasio-Cortez for her new amendment, stating he would expect a Congressperson to understand that Israel is defending its citizens against Hamas.

“Your amendment further legitimizes their heinous attacks against innocent civilians, as well as antisemitic lies,” Erdan wrote on Twitter. “Israel is a world leader in the fight against terrorism, and our partnership has helped prevent terrorist attacks against American citizens,” the ambassador added.

Biden administration approved the sale of US$725 million in JDAMs to Israel in May as Israel and Gaza fought in Operation Guardian of the Walls, according to The Washington Post. Congress was officially notified about the sale about a week before the fighting broke out.

During the fighting, US President Joe Biden expressed support for Israel, saying “my expectation and hope is this will be closing down sooner than later, but Israel has a right to defend itself.”

The congresswoman, along with a number of other House Democrats, including Rashida Tlaib, introduced a similar resolution shortly afterward.

“For decades, the US has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights. In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions,” said Ocasio-Cortez in a statement in May. “At a time when so many, including President Biden, support a ceasefire, we should not be sending ‘direct attack’ weaponry to the then Prime Minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence.”

The resolution in May was endorsed by over 70 organizations, including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

US military-industrial complexes the biggest beneficiary of Afghan war

Brown University’s Costs of War Project released a new report Monday, detailing post-9/11 spending by the Pentagon. The study found that of the over US$14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since the start of the war in Afghanistan, one-third to one-half went to private military contractors.

The report, authored by William Hartung of the Center for International Policy, said US$4.4 trillion of the total spending went towards weapons procurement and research and development, a category that directly benefits corporate military contractors. Private contractors are also paid through other funds, like operations and maintenance, but those numbers are harder to determine.

Out of the US$4.4 trillion, the top five US weapons makers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman — received US$2.2 trillion, almost half. To put these huge numbers into perspective, the report pointed out that in the 2020 fiscal year, Lockheed Martin received US$75 billion in Pentagon contracts, compared to the combined US$44 billion budget for the State Department and USAID that same year.

Besides getting paid for weapons and research, US corporations profit from private contractors that are deployed to warzones. The most notorious private security contractor previously employed by the Pentagon is Blackwater, the mercenary group whose employees massacred 17 people in Iraq’s Nisour Square back in 2007.

Besides armed mercenaries, the Pentagon employed private contractors for just about every task in US warzones. Demonstrating the Pentagon’s reliance on contractors, at the end of the Trump administration, only 2,500 US troops were left in Afghanistan, but over 18,000 Pentagon contractors were still in the country.

The report explained how China is the new justification for military spending. “The most likely impact of the shift towards China will be to further tighten the grip of major weapons makers like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon Technologies on the Pentagon budget,” the report reads.

United States biggest arms seller

Over the years it is being said that the United Sates creates most of the conflicts around the world but very few people are able to understand the underlying motive. It is the lust to keep its arsenal factories running at highest capacity utilization.

My second blog posted on 26th June highlighted this aspect. One of the latest reports by Reuters provides the latest numbers, though these pertain to 2011 and a lot has changed lately.

The report says that during 2011 the US arms sales touched record level US$66.3 billion, mainly because of $33.4 billion sales to Saudi Arabia alone. Other key buyers included United Arab Emirates and India.

The US sales were nearly 78 per cent of the global arms sales, which rose to $85.3 billion during 2011. The previous US record sales of $38.2 billion were achieved during 2008.

While Washington remained the world’s leading arms seller, nearly all other major suppliers, except France, recorded decline in sales during 2011. France signed arms sales valued at $4.4 billion in 2011, up from $1.8 billion a year earlier.

Russia, the world’s number two arms dealer, saw its sales nearly halved to $4.8 billion in 2011. The four major European suppliers — France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy — saw their collective market share drop to 7.2 per cent in 2011 from 12.2 per cent a year earlier.

Saudi Arabia emerged the biggest arms buyer among developing countries, concluding $33.7 billion weapons deals in 2011, followed by India with purchases of $6.9 billion and the United Arab Emirates with $4.5 billion. A point worth laughing is ‘Iran is fueling arms sales especially to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’.

The three major beneficiaries of the arms sales were Boeing, United Technologies and Lockheed Martin. The sale of $33.4 billion to Saudi Arabia comprised of 84 Boeing F-15 fighters, dozens of helicopters built by Boeing and Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

The sale of $3.49 billion to the United Arab Emirates comprised of Lockheed Martin Corp’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, an advanced missile shield and $940 million for 16 Chinook helicopters built by Boeing.

The United States seems to be following a unique strategy whereby extreme volatile situation in created in the Middle East and imposition of economic sanctions on Iran. This helps in keeping crude oil price high. However, all these petrodollars are bagged by selling arms to oil rich countries.

The only point of concern is that the arms sales are on the rise due to growing animosity among the Muslim countries, especially Arabs vs. Iran. In the past Iraq assaulted Iran and the war continued for a decade.

During this war Saudi Arabia and Kuwait gave billions of dollars to Iraq to wipeout Iran from the global map. The stage is being prepared once again for a better coordinated assault on Iran but all remain shy of the nuclear capabilities of Iran. Though, Israel keeps on talking about attacking Iran, threat of nuclear war makes all jittery.