Wednesday’s over­whelm­ing U.S. House vote (248−177) in favor of a War Pow­ers res­o­lu­tion to end U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Sau­di-led war on Yemen was no doubt a win for peace activists. But the vic­to­ry was par­tial­ly under­cut by a lit­tle-noticed amend­ment intro­duced by Rep. Ken Buck (R‑Colo.) — passed with sup­port from 57 Democ­rats — that allows for con­tin­ued U.S. intel­li­gence shar­ing with Sau­di Arabia.

"This could undermine the intent of the bill to protect Yemeni civilians from U.S.-assisted Saudi bombing."

Remark­ably, 13 mem­bers of the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus (CPC), vot­ed to sup­port the amend­ment, a posi­tion to the right of the hawk­ish Demo­c­ra­t­ic Reps. Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Ste­ny Hoy­er (Md.). They are:

Katie Porter (Calif.)

Gil Cis­neros (Calif.)

Max­ine Waters (Calif.)

Ang­ie Craig (Minn.)

Anto­nio Del­ga­do (N.Y.)

Jared Gold­en (Maine)

Katie Hill (Calif.)

Steven Hors­ford (Nev.)

Andy Kim (N.J.)

David Loeb­sack (Iowa)

Joe Morelle (N.Y.)

Jim­my Panet­ta (Calif.)

Brad Sher­man (Calif.)

Nine of these rep­re­sen­ta­tives are freshmen.

The Buck Amend­ment states that the Pres­i­dent is able to share intel­li­gence with any for­eign coun­try pro­vid­ed that ​“the Pres­i­dent deter­mines such shar­ing is appro­pri­ate and in the nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests of the Unit­ed States.”

Accord­ing to Robert Naiman, pol­i­cy direc­tor for Just For­eign Pol­i­cy, which has been agi­tat­ing to end the Yemen War, ​“The Buck Amend­ment could be inter­pret­ed by the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion as Con­gres­sion­al per­mis­sion to con­tin­ue shar­ing intel­li­gence with the Sau­di régime that the Sau­di régime uses to car­ry out airstrikes against civil­ian tar­gets in Yemen in areas under the con­trol of Houthi forces. This could under­mine the intent of the bill to pro­tect Yemeni civil­ians from U.S.-assisted Sau­di bomb­ing, and under­mine the Con­sti­tu­tion’s pro­hi­bi­tion against U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in wars that have not been autho­rized by Congress.”

On the House floor, Buck claimed that his amend­ment was need­ed because the shar­ing of intel­li­gence has allowed Sau­di Ara­bia to reduce civil­ian casu­al­ties. ​“I want to make sure that we’re doing every­thing we can to avoid the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis there, at the same time we rec­og­nize the geopo­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of our rela­tion­ship with Sau­di Ara­bia,” said Buck.

Yet, the Unit­ed States has long been aware of civil­ian casu­al­ties in the war while con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the offen­sive. Accord­ing to a Reuters report in 2016, under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, State Depart­ment offi­cials pri­vate­ly expressed con­cern that the U.S. gov­ern­ment could be impli­cat­ing itself in war crimes for its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war. But this con­cern didn’t stop the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion from refu­el­ing the mil­i­tary coalition’s bomber planes, help­ing iden­ti­fy tar­gets and sup­ply­ing arms.

Jehan Hakim, direc­tor of the Yemeni Alliance Com­mit­tee, a group of Yemeni-Amer­i­can orga­niz­ers that ini­tial­ly formed to oppose Trump’s Mus­lim ban, tells In These Times that Buck’s asser­tion is a lie. ​“The res­o­lu­tion with the Buck Amend­ment will con­tin­ue to increase civil­ian casu­al­ties,” she says. ​“It’s been almost four years that we have been sup­port­ing the Sau­di led coali­tion and the rate of civil­ian casu­al­ties con­tin­ues to rise. I think the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve to know that the Sau­di-led airstrikes that have been backed and sup­port­ed by the Unit­ed States have def­i­nite­ly increased civil­ian casualties.”

The 13 mem­bers of the CPC who vot­ed in favor of the Buck Amend­ment did so despite the fact that the CPC whipped against it, and even Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man who has dis­tin­guished him­self as a lead­ing anti-Rus­sia hawk, told Demo­c­ra­t­ic offices he opposed the res­o­lu­tion. Peace cam­paign­ers say the CPC like­ly swayed these pow­er­ful Democ­rats — but not fresh­man who rode the ​“blue wave” to Congress.

“It’s real­ly dis­heart­en­ing to see that even with our new pro­gres­sive Con­gress there was a major­i­ty vote in accept­ing that amend­ment,” says Hakim. ​“It watered down the resolution’s intent to reduce harm on the ground.”

Rep. Ro Khan­na (D‑Calif.) has been fight­ing for two years to pass the res­o­lu­tion , which ​“directs the Pres­i­dent to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hos­til­i­ties in or affect­ing Yemen with­in 30 days unless Con­gress autho­rizes a lat­er with­draw­al date, issues a dec­la­ra­tion of war, or specif­i­cal­ly autho­rizes the use of the Armed Forces.” The res­o­lu­tion, how­ev­er, does not per­tain to mil­i­tary actions sup­pos­ed­ly used to com­bat al-Qaeda.

In addi­tion to the Buck amend­ment, the res­o­lu­tion suf­fered a blow when anoth­er pro­posed change failed to even reach a vote. Rep. Jim McGov­ern (D‑Mass.) was expect­ed to intro­duce an amend­ment that would have strength­ened Khanna’s bill by clear­ly stat­ing that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion must ​“remove Unit­ed States Armed Forces from hos­til­i­ties direct­ed at Houthi forces in or affect­ing the Repub­lic of Yemen.” Ulti­mate­ly, the McGov­ern amend­ment nev­er hit the floor over con­cerns that the mod­i­fied ver­sion of the bill would have a more dif­fi­cult time passing.

Less than two months after Wash­ing­ton Post jour­nal­ist Jamal Khashog­gi was bru­tal­ly killed by the Sau­di gov­ern­ment last Octo­ber, the Sen­ate vot­ed to end mil­i­tary aid to the king­dom, push­ing back against Trump’s broad asser­tion of war pow­ers. Khanna’s bill was blocked that same month by then-House Speak­er Paul Ryan (R‑Wisc.), who added a rid­er to the annu­al farm bill strip­ping Khanna’s bill of the War Pow­ers Act sta­tus it need­ed to move forward.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion claimed on Novem­ber 9 that the Unit­ed States has stopped assist­ing with mid-air refu­el­ing of bomber air­crafts — but has not pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient pub­lic evi­dence to prove this is the case. Mean­while, Trump claims the author­i­ty to reverse this deci­sion at any time.

The U.S.-Saudi war began in 2015 after Houthi rebels drove out the U.S.-backed gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Abdu Rab­bu Man­sour Hadi. Accord­ing to the Armed Con­flict Loca­tion and Event Data Project (ACLED), the death toll in Yemen has been severe­ly under­stat­ed. While some sources reg­u­lar­ly report a num­ber of 10,000 deaths, ACLED’s data sug­gests the num­ber is some­where between 56,000 and 80,000.

Accord­ing to ACLED, the U.S.-backed Sau­di-led coali­tion car­ried out 3,362 airstrikes in Yemen dur­ing 2018, and 420 of the bomb­ings were car­ried out on res­i­den­tial areas. In August 2018, a coali­tion bomb was dropped on a school bus, killing 54 peo­ple, 44 of them chil­dren. A 2018 Save the Chil­dren report esti­mates that 85,000 chil­dren under the age of 5 have starved to death as a result of the war.

Khanna’s bill will now head back to the Sen­ate to be vot­ed on once again. Last week, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion threat­ened to block the res­o­lu­tion and the Sen­ate vote might lead to the first veto of Trump’s presidency.

“We’re call­ing this a win because it’s a War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion,” says Hakim. ​“Yes, it is watered down, but we’re hop­ing the Sen­ate will pass the orig­i­nal res­o­lu­tion with­out the amend­ment. We are going to con­tin­ue to fight this until we are real­ly with­draw­ing support.”

Mar­co Car­tolano con­tributed research to this article.