Cluster Bombs To Ukraine: War Anxiety Rises Among Democrats

Biden’s decision to send banned weapons to Ukraine won’t change the war. But it’s starting to alienate progressives

By Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd, Salon

President Biden may have crossed a new red line for the Democratic Party when he announced he would send banned cluster munitions to shore up Ukraine’s slow counter-offensive against Russian troops.

Last week, 19 House Democrats, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., signed a letter to Biden warning that his decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine “severely undermines our moral leadership.”

This time it’s not just left-leaning activists in CODEPINK and the Peace in Ukraine Coalition who recoil at Biden’s escalation in Ukraine, but congressional Democrats who previously stood by their president. These are the same Democrats who voted to approve more than $100 billion in Ukraine spending, approximately half of which went for weapons and military assistance with no accountability.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., ranking member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told Politico, “The decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine is unnecessary and a terrible mistake. …The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death and expensive cleanup generations after their use.”