‘We’ve all accidentally sold weapons’: Truss mocked for
‘inadvertent’ illegal arms sales approval
(Main) Saudi Arabian F-15SA fighter jets © Reuters / Faisal Al Nasser
(Top right) UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss © Reuters / Toby Melville
UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has been ridiculed online after claiming the government had accidentally granted two military export licenses for Saudi Arabia, despite pledging to freeze weapons sales to Riyadh.
Truss was forced to apologize to the Court of Appeal on Monday for the “two inadvertent breaches,” revealing that she had launched an urgent departmental inquiry into the “errors.”
The UK suspended arms sales to the Kingdom in June after the court ruled that ministers had acted unlawfully by not determining whether weapons could be used against civilians in the war in Yemen. As a result, the government stated that no new licenses would be issued to Saudi Arabia while a review is conducted.
Truss’ rather comical admission has been seized upon by many people on social media. Jacobin Journalist Dawn Foster joked:
Dawn Foster✔
@DawnHFoster
You can accidentally use your housemate's coffee instead of your own but I'm struggling to see how you manage this https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1173878174058536960 …
Jon Stone✔
@joncstone
Liz Truss apologises for ‘accidentally’ illegally approving the sale of more arms to Saudi Arabia https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/saudi-arabia-yemen-war-uk-weapon-exports-court-liz-truss-a9107916.html …
Fellow journalist and author Laurie Penny:
Laurie Penny✔
@PennyRed
Don’t be too hard on Liz Truss. We’ve all accidentally sold weapons to Saudi Arabia a few times.
Just the other day I got a bit carried away on eBay and found I’d bought three cheap dresses and an aircraft carrier. These things happen. We’re all human.
Others joked that the problem must be the “one-click ordering system” the UK government has set up.
Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, which brought the original legal challenge, said: “If the government cannot be trusted to follow its own rules, or an order from the Court of Appeal, then it must immediately end all arms exports to the Saudi regime.”
Before the court ruling in June, 40 percent of arms made in the UK were sold to Saudi Arabia.
While humor is badly needed on this blog, and I don't do enough of it, at the same time, I have been complaining for years about the USA providing weapons to more than one side of a conflict. It seems obvious that arms sales are very poorly regulated, and I suspect much of it is completely clandestine. At any rate, the order from the Court of Appeals appears to be taken as a bit of a joke.
What a shame that weapons manufacturing and sales are such a huge part of the budget of countries like USA, UK, France, Russia, Turkey, etc., etc. Surely, in the 21st century, we can find ways to use the trillions of dollars spent on weapons to actually do some good. Perhaps instead of fighting over access to oil we could partner with those countries to find ways to vastly improve poverty levels, get rid of diseases, and stop child sexual abuse.
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