Donald Trump’s Signing of the 2019 NDAA Will Lead to More Dead Yemeni Children

By Derrick Broze

Donald Trump recently made it clear he will not accept any limitations on the U.S. military’s logistical support of the war in Yemen.

On August 13, Donald Trump did what every president does, every single year, without question – he signed the annual military budget bill, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019. Some readers may recall that since 2011, the NDAA has included a provision which allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without a right to trial. Many of you may remember that President Obama had no problem signing the NDAA 2012 in 2011, which legalized the indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of ties to terrorism. The indefinite detention provision is still contained in the NDAA, and has been approved by Congress every year since it first passed.

Donald Trump continued this trend by signing the NDAA 2019. However, Trump made it clear that there were certain provisions in this year’s bill that he would not abide by. “In a 15-page signing statement issued Monday night, President Trump revealed that he intends to ignore many of the myriad provisions of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the $716 billion military spending bill,” Anti-War.com reports.

Trump explicitly says he will not follow provisions which he believes get in the way of certain “military missions” or are not consistent with his “constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.” Trump also says he will not provide more information on civilian casualties from overseas conflicts because, apparently, the military should not have to share too much information with Congress. Trump also opposes a ban on military cooperation with Russia and a call for the creation of a White House position to investigate election meddling.

Finally, Trump seemed to suggest he would not allow any limits on the Yemen War and would oppose the idea of providing an assessment on possible war crimes to Congress. Despite the fact that most of the American public and the corporate media had never heard of the “civil war” in Yemen until actor Jim Carrey drew a picture of a school bus full of children being bombed, the conflict has raged since 2015. According to the corporate media, the conflict is a traditional civil war between different political factions in the nation, but deeper research indicates that this is another attempt at regime change by Saudi Arabia and Western forces. However, that is a story for another day.

40 innocent children killed on a bus in Yemen.
Our ally.
Our missile.
Our crime. pic.twitter.com/yQ7FULulj2

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) August 17, 2018

For the moment let’s acknowledge that Saudi Arabia launched their own military intervention in the form of drone attacks and airstrikes. The campaign is supported with weapons and money from the U.S. government. The aforementioned school bus full of children? On August 9th, the US-Saudi coalition dropped a 500-pound, laser guided MK-82 bomb manufactured by Lockheed Martin, on a bus full of kids driving in Dahyan in Saada province of Yemen. The bomb killed 51 people, including 40 children. Reportedly, the US State Department and the Saudi defended the act as a “legitimate military operation.”

These types of attacks are not unusual in this conflict. Recently, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the war in Yemen was now the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” with more than 22 million people in need of help. Guterres told a conference that there are millions of people without access to clean drinking water and at risk of a cholera epidemic.

Of course, this matter is only made worse by the fact that Republicans rejected an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill which would have put restrictions on U.S. financial support for the bombing campaign. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said the amendment “would cut off United States’ support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s war in Yemen until the Secretary of Defense certified that the coalition’s air campaign is not violating international law and U.S. policy related to the protection of civilians.” Now we can’t have the politicians cut off the lifeblood to the Military Industrial Complex, can we?

Of course, we the people can cut off their source of revenue by finding ways to avoid paying taxes. Otherwise, the cold hard reality is that there will be more dead people. There will be more buses of dead children; hospitals, schools, funerals, and weddings being bombed, and more people who have a justifiable anger towards the U.S. government and military.

Derrick is the founder of TCRN, where this article first appeared.