Biden's hypocrisy and Democrats divide over cluster bombs to Ukraine.
After allegations that Israel used cluster bombs against civilians when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, then-Senator Biden is reported to have said that if those reports were accurate, Israel was in violation of its commitment to only use the American munitions for defensive purposes. According to the Washington Post, he said the United States should respond by cutting off the ability to get access to that kind of weaponry in the future.
But that was then and this is now.
Apparently Biden was against the use of cluster bombs before he was for them.
In February of 2022, then-press secretary for Biden, Jen Psaki answered a reporter’s question about the reported use of cluster bombs by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Q Thanks, Jen. There are reports of illegal cluster bombs and vacuum bombs being used by the Russians. If that’s true, what is the next step of this administration? And is there a red line for how much violence will be tolerated against civilians in this manner that’s illegal and potentially a war crime?
MS. PSAKI: It is — it would be. I don’t have any confirmation of that. We have seen the reports. If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime.
Of course even in 1982 Biden was certainly aware that cluster bombs are not primarily a defensive weapon and that they are indiscriminate in who they kill, often non-combatant civilians.
In a war taking place in Ukraine, it will be Ukrainian civilians who will suffer from the use of Biden’s cluster bombs.
With Biden’s about face on supplying cluster bombs to Ukraine and whether their use constitutes a war crime, he has deepened the divide within the Democratic Party.
Democrat Robert Kennedy Jr., a critic of the proxy war, recently pointed out Biden’s hypocrisy.
Yesterday Kennedy tweeted:
Kennedy has announced that he is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination and is polling between 15 and 20% of Democratic voters. That is a strong showing this early against a sitting Democratic president.
Kennedy has made starting talks to end the war in Ukraine a key part of his campaign.
Other Democratic Party leaders have also criticized Biden for sending cluster bombs to the war zone.
Reports Politico:
Key Democratic lawmakers are breaking with President Joe Biden over the controversial decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, arguing that providing the weapons, which are banned by more than 120 countries, cedes the moral high ground and will end up indiscriminately killing civilians.
Progressive Rep. Barbara Lee of California, the ranking member of the House panel that funds the State Department, tweeted she was “alarmed” at the move, while House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern said that while he supports helping Ukraine, sending cluster bombs represents a break with NATO allies such as the U.K., France, Germany and Spain.
Lee is running for the U.S. Senate in California to fill the seat of retiring Senator Diane Feinstein.
Republicans in Congress on the other hand are applauding the move.
The anti-war organization Code Pink has condemned the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine.
“When the United States was secretly waging war on Laos, the U.S. covered the country in cluster bombs that never detonated and were still killing civilians decades later.” Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK’s Co-Founder and author of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict continued, “Has the U.S. not learned its lesson?”