{"id":211631,"date":"2022-05-16T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=211631"},"modified":"2022-05-15T03:51:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T02:51:09","slug":"the-bizarre-unanimous-dem-support-for-the-40b-war-package-to-raytheon-and-cia-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/05\/the-bizarre-unanimous-dem-support-for-the-40b-war-package-to-raytheon-and-cia-for-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package to Raytheon and CIA: “For Ukraine”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Video Transcript: “The US Anti-War Left Is Dead–The Squad’s $40b War Vote Just Killed It.” Many Dems voting YES have long denounced exactly these sorts of bills. What happened?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks to a group of supporters during a rally at the U.S. Capitol on August 03, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

14 May 2022 – <\/em>After Joe Biden announced his extraordinary request for $33 billion more<\/a> for the war in Ukraine \u2014 on top of the $14 billion the U.S. has already spent just ten weeks<\/em> into this war \u2014 congressional leaders of both parties immediately decided the amount was insufficient. They arbitrarily increased the amount by $7 billion to a total of $40 billion, then fast-tracked the bill for immediate approval. As we reported on Tuesday night<\/a>, the House overwhelmingly voted to approve the bill by a vote of 388-57. All fifty-seven NO votes came from Republican House members. <\/em>Except for two missing members, all House Democrats \u2014 every last one, including all six members of the revolutionary, subversive Squad \u2014 voted for this gigantic war package<\/a>, one of the largest the U.S. has spent at once in decades.<\/p>\n

While a small portion of these funds will go to humanitarian aid for Ukraine, the vast majority will go into the coffers of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the usual suspects. Some of it will go to the CIA for unspecified reasons. The extreme speed with which this was all approved means there is little to no oversight over how the funds will be spent, who will profit and how much, and what the effects will be for Ukraine and the world.<\/p>\n

To put this $54 billion amount in perspective, it is (a) larger than the average annual<\/em> amount that the U.S. spent on its own war in Afghanistan ($46 billion), (b) close to the overall amount Russia spends on its entire military for the year ($69 billion), (c) close to 7% of the overall U.S. military budget, by far the largest in the world ($778 billion), and (d) certain to be far, far higher \u2014 easily into the hundreds of billions of dollars and likely the trillion dollar level \u2014 given that U.S. officials insist that this war will last not months but years<\/a><\/em>, and that it will stand with Ukraine until the bitter end.<\/p>\n

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Voice of America, Apr. 6, 2022<\/p><\/div>\n

What made this Democratic Party unanimity<\/em> so bizarre, even surreal, is that many of these House Democrats who voted YES have spent years vehemently denouncing exactly these types of war expenditures. Some of them \u2014 very recently \u2014 even expressed specific opposition to pouring large amounts of U.S. money and weaponry into Ukraine on the grounds that doing so would be unprecedentedly dangerous, and that Americans are suffering far too severely at home to justify such massive amounts to weapons manufacturers and intelligence agencies. Here, for instance, is the shocking-in-hindsight warning<\/a> of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on March 8 \u2014 just two months<\/em> before she voted YES on this $40 billion weapons package:<\/p>\n

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Just as stridently, her progressive House Democratic colleague, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), appeared on <\/a>Democracy Now<\/a><\/em> on February 8 to discuss the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, and he explicitly and repeatedly demanded that no lethal arms be sent by the U.S. into Ukraine. Indeed, Khanna, while repeatedly denouncing Putin’s aggression, heaped praise on former President Obama for long resisting bipartisan demands<\/a> to send lethal arms to Ukraine \u2014 based on Obama’s oft-stated belief<\/a> that Ukraine is and always will be a vital interest to Russia, but will never be to the U.S.<\/em> \u2014 and argued that such a move would be dangerously escalatory:<\/p>\n

I certainly join [House progressives] in the concerns of having increased aid, lethal aid, into that area. That will only inflame the situation.<\/strong> I also join them in the concern that we need restraint, that the last thing the American people want is an escalation which could lead us to some long war in Ukraine with Russia, that that\u2019s a very dangerous situation<\/strong>, and no one in this country \u2014 or, very few people in this country would want that. There\u2019s a reason President Obama didn\u2019t send lethal aid into Ukraine and had a greater restraint in his approach.<\/strong> So, I do think we should do everything possible not to escalate the situation, while having the moral clarity that Putin is in the wrong in this case\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The arguments Khanna was endorsing from House progressive leaders came in the form of a January 26 press release<\/a> from co-caucus-leaders Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). The progressive duo argued: \u201cThere is no military solution out of this crisis \u2014 diplomacy needs to be the focus.\u201d Then they added this: \u201cWe have significant concerns that new troop deployments, sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions, and a flood of hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal weapons will only raise tensions and increase the chance of miscalculatio<\/strong>n. Russia\u2019s strategy is to inflame tensions; the United States and NATO must not play into this strategy.\u201d Just over three months later, both Lee and Jayapal voted not <\/em>for a “flood of hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal weapons,\u201d but to flood Ukraine with tens of billions<\/em> of dollars in lethal weapons.<\/p>\n

One would think that when a member of Congress engages in such a remarkable and radical shift in their position, they would at least deign to provide some explanation for why they did so. In the case of the Squad and dozens of House progressives, one would be very wrong. On Friday morning, I emailed and\/or texted the press representatives of the five Squad members who have said nothing about their vote (only Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), in a doozy of a statement discussed below, bothered to explain), and directly texted both Omar and Khanna. Other reporters also have requested statements. More than seventy-two hours after they cast this enormously consequential war vote, they still have refused to explain themselves or even issue a cursory statement as to why they supported this (see update below)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This vote, and their silence about it, is particularly confounding \u2014 one could, without hyperbole, even say chilling \u2014 given how rapidly Democrats\u2019 rhetoric about Ukraine is escalating. As we noted on Tuesday, many leading Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), have begun speaking about this war not only as an American proxy war \u2014 which it has long been \u2014 but as \u201cour war\u201d that we must fight to the end in order for \u201cvictory\u201d<\/a> to be ours, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) vows<\/a> that there be \u201cno off ramps\u201d to end the war diplomatically, since the real goal of the war is regime change in Moscow<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Even worse, the eighty-two-year-old House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), now in his twentieth<\/em> term in Congress, went to the House floor on Friday to twice <\/em>say that “we are at war\u201d \u2014 meaning the U.S is now at war with Russia<\/em> \u2014 and that it is therefore inappropriate to heavily criticize our president<\/a>:<\/p>\n