The Biden administration has released about half of the shipment of heavy bombs it has withheld from Israel since May over concerns the IDF would use them in densely populated areas of Gaza, a US official tells The Times of Israel.
In May, the White House announced a decision to withhold a shipment of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs, with US President Joe Biden threatening to freeze additional offensive weaponry if Israel launched a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah where over one million Palestinians were sheltering at the time.
Then talk to your congressman. Ultimately Biden can do a little more then delay. It’s up to Congress to end it.
He has veto powers. He hasn’t used them.
He can also enforce that law that says no weapons for war criminals.
With all the “the president can’t do that!” Bullshit on here you’d think he was a ceremonial figurehead and not the senior most leader of a co-equal branch of government.
Which the Congress and the house would eagerly and quickly override. They are the ones who control it. Every single Republican would vote to override it and campaign on it daily. And far too many Democrats would do the same.
It takes 2/3’s and do you really think the DNC would after their own-party president just said “no”?
In addition to being POTUS, which is far from powerless, he’s also one of the single most (if not the single most) influential democrats in the DNC.
If he can’t get the dems in congress to respect his veto he has no business being president. Period.
If they were doing all this for Biden’s sake, no. Problem is. They aren’t doing this on Biden’s behalf. It’s a nearly century long project in the middle east. That far predates JRB’s entry into politics. There are those with personal, financial, religious, and military reasons who when faced with a choice, would throw him under the bus for their own reasons.
He’s got plenty of powers. I never said he didn’t. Unilaterally ending aid to Israel isn’t one of those.
Couldn’t have put it more immaturely if I tried. I’m not a fan of politics. But I at least have an understanding of how things work. Everything is easy when you’re an armchair quarterback. Why oh why did we let these people struggle to keep diverse coalitions together for decades. When we could have just put you in and be done.
That you? (yes it’s you.)
It’s convenient for you that you went on about vetos and not enforcing actual laws. Which is entirely Biden’s obligation. You know. The one that makes it illegal to sell or transfer US made weapons to, you know, people actively engaged in warcrimes…?
(sorry, I had to go look them up… for some reason I kept confusing the Hatch Act, probably because Pelosi is in the news for a blip…)
The Foreign Assistance Act; which prohibits any assistance to any entity “country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”
Arms Export Control Act which says both empowers the president to enforce it unilaterally, as well as insist how the exports are to be used… and Israel is definitely violating that.
Leahy Law, which is actually 2 laws that do more or less the same thing (but DoD and State department restrictions) baring funding to units that are committing “Gross Human Rights Violations” we know that the IDF is doing things that qualify, as a matter of policy. The entire IDF should be barred from receiving aid under these laws. (and no, we also know that the government of Israel doesn’t give a fuck about it.)
There’s more. Biden’s own CAT policy is supposed to prevent “arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law;” which is so blatantly obvious that Israel is doing.
So, he could, you know, enforce actual US law- laws that have been passed by congress and are on the books. he’s the POTUS, that’s part of the job. (and one might argue, an obligation, not a privilege.)
The arms export control act gives him that power, actually.
Nice ad homenim. very persuasive.
If biden can’t even get his own party to do the moral, ethical and legally-obligated thing… how do you expect him to get the republicans? further to the point, Biden is an avowed (christian) zionist. He’s not just not enforcing the law…he’s actively breaking it by facilitating and expediting new shipments, some of which without congressional approval.
I never said otherwise. And I’ll say it again there’s very little he can do realistically Beyond delay. That you think that this is some big gotcha moment. Some big turnaround in the debate is pretty absurd. Hilarious even.
No. What’s hilarious is how agitated you’re acting. You and I might classify it as a war crime and genocide. That’s right we agree. I just have a better grasp of what can and is being done and will be done.
The problem is, the groups and bodies in our government that are supposed to make that proclamation/decision aren’t. And I would say they’re wrong in not doing that. And until they do do that. He would first need to petition them to actually classify and treat it as such. Before he would have any right under law to do any of that. Which I would argue that he should do.
I’m not saying that it’s right or just. I’m simply saying that there are requirements under law for these things aren’t met. And you and I both having a conniption fit over the fact that it obviously is unfortunately doesn’t change anything.
None of these laws and Powers are really available to him until that point. It’s b*******. But then so as much of politics. Believe me if things were as easy as armchair quarterbacks think it is. The world would be a Utopia. A perfect place. Not everything is unfortunately as simple as it should be or As It Seems.
Imagine being upset about genocide.
Imagine being so bad at trolling. That that was your best reply.