Marianne Williamson on Foreign Policy : Apr 14, 2019
Return moral principles to our foreign policy

Mike Gravel on War & Peace : Apr 9, 2019
End military aid to Saudi Arabia; no support for Yemen war

The United States government serves as a salesman of death around the globe. The only way to clamp down on the military-industrial complex, the greatest enemy of the American people, is a hard line against selling weapons abroad.

The United States should:
• End all aid to Saudi Arabia.
• End all material and logistical support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
• Prohibit American companies from selling arms abroad, including to non-state actors.

Elizabeth Warren on War & Peace : Mar 27, 2019
No intervention in Yemen; but intervention in Gaza OK

• Her Peace Action voting record is 84% and she was one of the first five Senators to cosponsor the Yemen War Powers bill in March 2018 [requiring Congressional authorization to arm the Saudis in Yemen].
• In 2014 she supported Israel's invasion of Gaza that left more than 2,000 dead, and blamed the civilian casualties on Hamas.
• She opposed a bill to criminalize boycotting Israel and condemned Israel's use of deadly force against peaceful Gaza protesters in 2018.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Feb 19, 2019
End Syrian conflict; pull out U.S. troops

• Foreign Policy: Use diplomacy to end Syrian conflict. Pull out troops, but in different way from Trump. Cut U.S. support in the conflict in Yemen, hold the Saudi crown prince "accountable" for crimes.
• Sanders would pull U.S. troops from Syria, but said he would do it in a different, less "erratic" way than Trump recently announced. He believes diplomacy with Russia and Iran can turn things around in Syria.
• He also believes the president did not have the right to launch airstrikes against the Assad regime and that war powers must get more rigorous oversight and/or approval from Congress.
• A longtime anti-war activist, Sanders voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2002.
• He regularly called for the U.S. to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
• In both Afghanistan and Syria, Sanders has said that he believes the U.S. should remain involved, though with no ground troop presence.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Feb 5, 2019
Our Saudi allies give US-made weapons to Al Qaeda in Yemen

How can the President say nothing about Yemen, where the worst humanitarian crisis in the world is currently taking place, brought on by a Saudi-led war that the United States is supporting? Just yesterday, a CNN report detailed how our Saudi and Emirati allies have been giving U.S.-made weapons to Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Yemen, and have also fallen into the hands of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. This war is a disaster, which is why the Senate passed my resolution last December calling on the president to end our support for it, and why colleagues in both the House and Senate re-introduced that legislation last week. Yet the president did not even mention it.

John Delaney on War & Peace : Feb 4, 2019
Withdraw military aid from Saudi forces fighting in Yemen

• Foreign policy: Supports punishing Saudi crown prince for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Delaney strongly supports the Senate vote declaring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Delaney has also praised the Senate's decision to withdraw military aid from Saudi forces fighting in Yemen.
• He has not spoken publicly about Trump's decision to withdraw American forces from Syria.

Cory Booker on Foreign Policy : Feb 1, 2019
Re-examine relationship with Saudi Arabia

• A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Booker has grown increasingly critical of the Trump administration's policy in Saudi Arabia, especially after the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
• Booker believes it's time to "re-examine" the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and previously voted against arms sales to the kingdom.
• Booker has also criticized U.S. policy and airstrikes in Syria, and believes the 2001 military authorization passed by Congress after the 9/11 terror attacks should not be used to justify continued action in Syria.
• Booker believes Trump's planned withdrawal of troops from Syria is "reckless and dangerous" but also voted against a Senate resolution that warned against a hasty withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

Kirsten Gillibrand on War & Peace : Jan 16, 2019
End military aid to Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen

• Gillibrand co-sponsored legislation that would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen.
• She has written that Saudi Arabia is using American weapons to "terrorize Yemeni civilians."
• In regards to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Gillibrand wrote that the U.S. should hold "the Saudi government to account."
• It is not clear where she stands on whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman personally was responsible for the killing.

Tulsi Gabbard on War & Peace : Jan 14, 2019
End US support for Saudi-led conflict in Yemen

• In general, Gabbard believes the U.S. should be less involved in foreign conflicts and have a smaller troop presence in many places around the world. She has specifically called on the U.S. military to pull out of Afghanistan.
• Gabbard also opposes US military presence and action in Syria.
• The congresswoman believes U.S. action around the world often benefits extremists. She also has argued that Democrats and others should not back away from the term "Islamic extremists."
• Gabbard has said the US is complicit in a humanitarian disaster by giving support to the Saudis, because they have cut off aid to large parts of the Yemeni population while battling rebels there.
• She also sent a controversial tweet that was highly critical of Trump following news that the U.S. was standing by Saudi leadership despite intelligence implicating the kingdom's crown prince in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Gabbard believes Saudi Arabia is a hub of anti-Western extremism.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Nov 25, 2018
Withdraw US support for Saudi-led war in Yemen

SANDERS: I do. When we brought this up in March we ended up with 44 votes--only 5 Republicans. I think we now have a chance to get a majority of the Senate. I think people are looking at the horrific humanitarian disaster now taking place in Yemen. There was a recent report that over the last number of years some 75,000 children have died of starvation. This is a country dealing with cholera, with a terrible level of famine. This war was never authorized by the US Congress in violation of our constitution. And you got the Khashoggi incident which says that we have a Saudi government led by a despotic ruler who killed a political opponent in cold blood. Add that all together. I think the American people & Congress are now saying let us end our support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy : Sep 21, 2017
1991: We give $7B to feudalistic dictatorships in Mideast

Tulsi Gabbard on War & Peace : May 27, 2017
Opposes fighting in Afghanistan & Syria; end arms to Saudis

Mike Pence on Immigration : Feb 5, 2017
Obama certified 7 Muslim countries compromised by terrorism

PENCE: Pres. Trump has made it clear he's going to put the safety and security of the American people first. And using a list of countries that the Obama administration and the Congress have certified were compromised by terrorist influence, seven different countries, is consistent with the President's commitment to do just that.

Q: But on this travel ban, no Egypt, no Saudi Arabia. No Pakistan, no Afghanistan. Why weren't those countries included? Because you wanted that Obama talking point.

PENCE: Well, no. It was done because both the Congress and the prior administration identified seven countries, one in Syria, torn asunder by civil war, and the other six--these are countries that do not have the internal systems in place so that we can be confident today that, when people present themselves for access to the United States, that they are who they say they are.

Donald Trump on Foreign Policy : Oct 4, 2016
FactCheck: Japan should defend itself, including with nukes

Is that true? Yes, the quotation is accurate, but it's out of context. From "The Guardian" of 4/2/16:

Trump told a crowd he was sanguine about potential hostilities between North Korea and its neighbors. He said that if conflict between Japan and nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out, "it would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do". "Good luck," he added. "Enjoy yourself, folks." According to Trump: "The case could be made to let [Japan] protect themselves against North Korea, they'd probably wipe them out pretty quick." Trump previously suggested that South Korea and Japan should have their own nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton on Foreign Policy : Sep 26, 2016
Honor treaties with South Korea & Japan: our word is good

CLINTON: Let me start by saying, words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. It is essential that America's word be good. And so I know that this campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders across the globe. I've talked with a number of them. But I want to--on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say that, you know, our word is good.

Hillary Clinton on Foreign Policy : Sep 26, 2016
For long-term US policy against nuclear proliferation

Clinton: Donald has said he didn't care if other nations got nuclear weapons, Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. It has been the policy of the US to do everything we could to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. His cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons is deeply troubling. That is the number-one threat we face. It becomes particularly threatening if terrorists ever get their hands on any nuclear material. A man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes.

Donald Trump on Homeland Security : Sep 26, 2016
We defend Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia: they need to pay

CLINTON: I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. It is essential that America's word be good. On behalf of a majority of the American people, I want to say that our word is good.

TRUMP: And as far as Japan is concerned, I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world.

Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy : Feb 4, 2016
Encourage Saudis and Iran to work together, despite distrust

SANDERS: I concede that Secretary Clinton, who was secretary of State for four years, has more experience in foreign affairs. But experience is not the only point, judgment is. In terms of Iran and in terms of Saudi Arabia, of course they hate each other. That's no great secret. But John Kerry, who is I think doing a very good job, has tried to at least get these people in the room together because both of them are being threatened by ISIS.

John Kasich on Foreign Policy : Jan 14, 2016
Supports Saudi Arabia but knock it off with radical clerics

John Kasich on Foreign Policy : Jan 14, 2016
We need coalition of Arab countries, like Bush-41 did

Barack Obama on Homeland Security : Jan 13, 2016
We spend more on military than next 8 nations combined

1. $581B United States
2. $129B China
3. $81B Saudi Arabia
4. $70B Russia
5. $62B United Kingdom
6. $53B France
7. $48B Japan
8. $45B India
9. $44B Germany

The "next eight nations combined" add up to $532 billion annual military expenditures. Compare that to the U.S.'s annual total of $581 billion, and Pres. Obama is accurate. (Sen. Rand Paul said in 2015 the same statement about "the next ten countries combined," and we rated his statement "loosely accurate", but Obama could have gone up to "the next nine nations combined" adding in South Korea's $34B). Obama's point was the same as Paul's: the U.S. has by far the strongest military on earth, and we need not increase military spending to maintain our military dominance.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Dec 19, 2015
Tell Qatar and Saudi Arabia that they must fight ISIS

John Kasich on War & Peace : Nov 29, 2015
No-fly zone 1st priority, but ok with more aid for refugees

KASICH: I don't mind if we give some humanitarian aid to the Jordanians or the Saudis if need be, but I've been for this no-fly zone so that we can have a sanctuary for people to be safe. And it was the Kurds and perhaps the Jordanians who could defend it. But the Russians have now deployed S-400 air defense system that threatens our ability to move around. The only thing you can do with that air defense system is to take it out. And of course that's very serious.

Q: You would take out a Russian air defense system?

KASICH: No, I think that we should proceed with moving forward on a no-fly zone. And I think we should proceed by putting boots on the ground and a coalition with Europeans and with our friends in the Middle East like we had in the first Gulf War to destroy ISIS once and for all.

Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy : Nov 14, 2015
Moral responsibility to reach out to Syrian refugees

SANDERS: I believe that the US has the moral responsibility with Europe, with Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia to make sure that when people leave countries like Afghanistan and Syria with nothing more than the clothing on their back that, of course, we reach out. Now, what the magic number is, I don't know, because we don't know the extent of the problem. But I certainly think that the US should take its full responsibility in helping those people.

Q: Gov. O'Malley, you have a magic number. I think it's 65,000.

O'MALLEY: I was the first person on this stage to say that we should accept the 65,000 Syrian refugees that were fleeing the sort of murder of ISIL, and I believe that that needs to be done with proper screening. But accommodating 65,000 refugees in our country today, people of 320 million, is akin to making room for 6.5 more people in a baseball stadium with 32,000.

Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy : Oct 11, 2015
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar should take charge in Syria

SANDERS: Well, it failed. I mean, the president acknowledged that. Syria is a quagmire inside of a quagmire. I think what the president has tried to do is thread a very difficult needle. And that is keep American troops from engaging in combat and getting killed there. And I think that is the right thing to do. So I think we continue to try to do everything that we can, focusing primarily on trying to defeat ISIS. But I am worried about American troops getting sucked into a never ending war in the Middle East and particularly in, you know, Iraq and Syria. I don't think the United States can or should be doi

Donald Trump on Foreign Policy : Sep 28, 2015
Reimbursement for US military bases in rich countries abroad

Trump then got into a specific example: Saudi Arabia, one of the more important US allies in the Middle East. Saudis "make a billion dollars a day. We protect them. So we need help. We are losing a tremendous amount of money on a yearly basis and we owe $19 trillion," he said.

Walking back trade deals and agreements that allow the US military to operate overseas is easier said than done. But Trump has tapped into a powerful anti-Washington populist sentiment.

Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy : Sep 13, 2015
Address humanitarian crisis in Syria with allies in region

SANDERS: I think it's impossible to give a proper number until we understand the dimensions of the problem. What I do believe is that Europe, the United States and, by the way, countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, must address this humanitarian crisis. People are leaving Iraq, they're leaving Syria with just the clothes on their backs. The world has got to respond. The United States should be part of that response.

Q: When it comes to Syria, how much of the problem is the United States' fault, of policy, whether Bush in Iraq or Obama in Syria?

SANDERS: Look, I voted against the war in Iraq; much of what I feared would happen, in fact, did happen: Massive destabilization in that region. The issue now is not who is at fault. The issue is now what we do. And what we do is bring the region together.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Aug 30, 2015
Middle Eastern countries must contribute to fight ISIS

John Kasich on Foreign Policy : Jan 15, 2015
Criticizes Saudis for extremism in Sunni-Shia split

As Saudi Arabia has courted international controversy--by launching a bloody war in Yemen last year and embarking on a steep increase in executions for minor or political crimes-- the country has also ramped up its efforts to influence the American policy debate. Still, one of the main goals of Saudi outreach is to promote the idea that the country serves as a strong ally to U.S. efforts in Syria, a point referenced by Kasich. The truth, however, is that Saudi shifted much of its military from striking ISIS targets in Syria to focus on the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Oct 12, 2014
Get Saudis & regional powers involved with fighting ISIS

SANDERS: ISIS is a brutal, awful, dangerous army and they have got to be defeated. But this is not just an American problem. This is an international crisis. This is a regional crisis. And I think the people of America are getting sick and tired of the world and the region, Saudi Arabia and the other countries saying "hey, we don't have to do anything about it. The American taxpayer, the American soldiers will do all the work for us." Most people don't know is that Saudi Arabia is the 4th largest defense spender in the world, more than the U.K., more than France. They have an army which is probably seven times larger than ISIS. They have a major air force.

Q: Sure. But they have shown no sign at all that they want to go in and neither have the Jordanians.

SANDERS: The question that we have got to ask is why are the nations in the region not more actively involved? Why don't they see this as a crisis situation?

Barack Obama on War & Peace : Oct 22, 2012
Supported "Iron Dome" defense shield for Israel

OBAMA: When I went to Israel as a candidate, I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable. And then I went down to the border towns of Sderot, which had experienced missiles raining down from Hamas. And I saw families there who showed me where missiles had come down near their children's bedrooms, and I was reminded of what that would mean if those were my kids, which is why, as president, we funded an Iron Dome program to stop those missiles. So that's how I've used my travels when I travel to Israel and when I travel to the region.

Donald Trump on Energy & Oil : Mar 16, 2011
It's incredible how slowly we're drilling for oil

It's not the market [raising the price], it's OPEC. They set the price of oil. If they did it in this country, it would be called illegal.

I think it's incredible that we're going slow on drilling. I think it's beyond anything I've ever seen that we're going slow on drilling.

there are always going to be problems. You're going to have an oil spill. You clean it up and you fix it up and it'll be fine.

I have people in the business and they say it's almost impossible to get a permit to drill. So you can imagine how hard it is to get nuclear and other things but they say it's almost impossible. If you look at natural gas, we're the Saudi Arabia times 100 of natural gas--but we don't use it.

Barack Obama on Budget & Economy : Nov 17, 2009
OpEd: Stimulus trillions must be borrowed, printed, or taxed

Servicing the $11.5 trillion debt is a huge annual expenditure in the federal budget. Those who hold our debt, including foreign countries like China and Saudi Arabia, must be paid first. Last year we spent more than $400 billion to service our debt. Is that what the president meant by "change"?

Where is all of this money going to come from? It can come from only three places. Government borrows it, government prints it, or government taxes the people for it. So far the administration has done the first two. We've borrowed massive sums from foreign countries & we've also simply printed money. Economists call this practice "monetizing the debt," and it's not something we hear much about. Higher taxes won't be far behind.

Mike Gravel on Homeland Security : May 2, 2008
Foreign arms sales funnel money back to defense industry

Hillary Clinton on Tax Reform : Feb 21, 2008
Rescind tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year

Barack Obama on War & Peace : Feb 11, 2008
Humanitarian aid now for displaced Iraqis

A: If we are doing this right, if we have a phased redeployment where we’re as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, then there’ not reason why we shouldn’t be able to prevent the wholesale slaughter some people have suggested might occur. And part of that means we are engaging in the diplomatic efforts that are required within Iraq, among friends, like Egypt, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but also enemies like Iran and Syria. They have to have buy-in into that process. We have to have humanitarian aid now. We also have two-and-a-half million displaced people inside of Iraq and several million more outside of Iraq. We should be ramping up assistance to them right now. But I always reserve the right, in conjunction with a broader international effort, to prevent genocide or any wholesale slaughter than might happen inside of Iraq or anyplace else.

Joe Biden on War & Peace : Aug 19, 2007
Leaving Iraq will cause generation-long regional war

Barack Obama on War & Peace : Oct 12, 2004
Terrorists are in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran

KEYES: That’s the fallacy, because you did make an argument just then from the wisdom of hindsight, based on conclusions reached now which were not in Bush’s hands several months ago when he had to make this decision.

Bernie Sanders on War & Peace : Jun 17, 1997
1990: Opposed authorizing all-out war in Kuwait with Iraq

From the very beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis, I was of the belief that the US could push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait without having to resort to war. Diplomacy, economic boycott, isolation, financial leverage: we had many means for reversing the invasion. I was not only opposed to the war because of the potential destruction and loss of life, but also because I believe it IS possible for the major countries of this planet, and a virtually united world community, to resolve crises without carnage. If this matter could not be solved without massive bombing & killing thousands of people, then what crisis could ever be solved peacefully?