Congress Rejects Obama’s Veto of Justice Against Terrorism Act

Last updated on: March 26, 2017 at 10:29 pm by Kermit Zarley

Congress Rejects Obama’s Veto of Justice Against Terrorism Act 2017-03-26T22:29:45-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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Yesterday, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly voted against President Barak Obama’s veto of their Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). The vote was amazing: 97 to 1 in the Senate and 348 to 77 in the House. Has Congress ever so soundly rejected a presidential veto?

This act is now law. It allows the families who lost loved ones in the radical Islamists’ attack on the U.S., on September 11, 2001, which resulted in the death of about 3,000 Americans, to now bring lawsuits in U.S. courts against the nation of Saudi Arabia and its government officials. The reason is that 15 of the 19 Arabic men who orchestrated the four suicidal attacks that day were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Folks, this is scary. President Obama thinks Congress has made a huge mistake in first passing this bill and now overriding his veto of it. This is Congress’ only rejection of the president’s total of eleven vetoes.

The main reason this is scary is not only how Saudi Arabia will react to this U.S. law, which could have very hurtful repercussions for the U.S. both militarily in the Middle East and financially at home, but it sets an unprecedented move of opening the door for other nations to do the same to the U.S. This is President Obama’s main objection to this decision by Congress. The bottom line is that the president is mostly looking out for the overall good of the U.S., for which he is sworn to protect, and the Congress is looking out for individual human rights. That clash is the major theme of a book I’m writing on biblical eschatology.

Congress as been upset with Saudi Arabia’s poor record on human rights and reportedly some of its high-up government officials having ties to militant, radical Islam. How can you fault Congress for this? Yet President George W. Bush had very close relations with Saudi royalty, so he certainly would not have take up that mantel and thus would have done as President Obama. It looks like our two past presidents have let Saudi Arabia off the hook about this because of the overall good of the country, which would be the higher good compared to justice for families that suffered 9/11.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and CIA chief John Brennan strongly opposed the bill and thus supported President Obama’s veto of it. Brennan now says this new law has “strong implications” regarding national security. Indeed, nations could pass laws that would be against our soldiers helping to defend their countries and cause the U.S. to retreat and thus have no military presence in that nation whatsoever. This could change the landscape about who are U.S. allies.

It remains to be see what’s going to happen from this. Will Saudi Arabia eventually no longer be a U.S. ally? That would greatly hurt our fight against Islamic terrorism and our influence in the Middle East. What if the Saudi’s dump all their U.S. government treasury bonds? How will that affect U.S. financial markets? And what about their precious oil we used to depend upon so much? At least we’re no longer tied to Saudi Arabia due to oil like we used to be. There’s no telling what this new JASTA law might cause elsewhere in the world.

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