 Welcome back to Code Pink Radio. I'm your host, Marcy Winograd, and with me is Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink to talk about an article that we wrote together, entitled, Stop Biden from Sending Cluster Bombs to Ukraine, and you can read all about it at the codepink.org blog. In this article, we discussed efforts in Congress to block the shipment of these internationally banned weapons. Cluster munitions are shells that contain hundreds, if not thousands of subunitions, small bombs that can be dropped by aircraft or fired by a ground-based weapon system to indiscriminately cover an area as wide as several football fields. Depending on likes these weapons, why? Because they can strike multiple targets. They think somehow this is going to miraculously help Ukraine in its counteroffensive that's been slow going. Human rights groups, prominent Democrats are coming out to denounce this decision. For a week up until Biden made the announcement official, there were lots of whispers that were leaked reports that he might do this. He wasn't, we weren't sure, but ultimately he did approve setting these bombs that have been banned by over a hundred countries. I was actually, you know, maybe I was naive, but I was surprised that he actually went ahead with this announcement. I'm wondering what your reaction was. I wasn't surprised at all, Marcy, because he's been going back on everything that he says. You know, he gets so much pressure from the hawks in his own party, from the Republican hawks, from Zelinsky himself, who says, you know, we're not making the progress we wanted to in this counteroffensive because you're not sending us enough weapons quickly enough. So, you know, he gets all that kind of pressure and let's face it, he has been backtracking on every other kind of weapons that he has said no to. So I wasn't surprised about it. I am surprised. I mean, it is nice that there has been a reaction from some of the Democrats who have been going along with him on everything else. But, you know, it's a little bit too little, too late. I don't know how you feel about it. Maybe, Marcy, you could talk about what the reaction among Democrats has been. Sure. Well, I like to be optimistic a little too late. Well, it's a little, at least, and we've got a build on that. And that's when we'll talk about that in a minute. I was, you know, heartened to see that there were voices on the Sunday talk shows. Tim Cain, who is Hillary Clinton's vice presidential candidate from Virginia, he was on Fox News denouncing Biden's decision. Barbara Lee, she went on CNN to say, look, this is Barbara Lee talking as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. I, Barbara Lee, was instrumental in making sure that these cluster munitions were banned. But there is, of course, a loophole that allows for the president to say, this is a vital national security interest. We've got to send these weapons. But getting back to the Democrats, you know, the 19 Democrats signed a letter talking about how this decision by Biden to send cluster munitions that have been banned by so many countries, including 18 NATO countries, is undermining US moral leadership in the world. Well, I'm not sure that the US has any moral leadership to begin with, but I guess that's the safe line for Democrats who oppose this decision. And then, you know, yesterday, I looked at the Washington Post and there was an op-ed by Tim Cain again. Is this guy running for president? I'm wondering, Tim Cain and former Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Oh, no, I think that was Leahy and Merkley. Oh, you're right. Excuse me, Leahy and Merkley, Merkley of Oregon. Leahy was instrumental in pushing through a ban on landmines. So it's getting some attention and it's also raising questions about NATO unity during the the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. I also think it's important to point out that the New York Times had its own editorial today, denouncing the decision. And it goes back to, quote, the Secretary-General of the UN at the time, Ban Ki-moon, who said that the ban expressed the world's collective revulsion at these abhorrent weapons. So I think it is good that there's been this backlash and that there are a few countries within the NATO membership that have spoken out. I also know that there is an amendment that has been introduced by Sarah Jacobs and Ilhan Omar to the National Defense Appropriations Act. And we will know this week whether that gets axed or whether it stays in. But that is an important amendment to try to get more members of Congress to try to reverse Biden's decision. Yes. So the National Defense Authorization Act is the military budget. Basically, it's called the NDAA. And now we're looking at a nine hundred and twenty billion dollar NDAA military budget. This amendment, you know, tons of amendments are introduced. We know we've seen them introduced and then they're discarded. Some of them actually do hit the floor for a vote. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us at Code Pink and listeners, anyone who supports peace and abhors the use of these antipersonal personnel weapons to ask their House representatives to co-sponsor this bill. I understand that there are multiple organizations and human rights organizations that are making this request. So we'll see what happens. I know that Jim McGovern, who shares the House Rules Committee, he was one of the first Democrats to co-sponsor this amendment. So, you know, any dissension on this, I think, is welcome, right? Yeah, sure. Let's remember the House is now in the hands of the Republicans. So, you know, they're unfortunately not joining in in this opposition. In fact, I haven't heard anything from that group of far right Republicans that have been opposing the weapons to Ukraine. I haven't heard them speak out about this. But I think, Marcy, all of this is important to put in the perspective that we don't want to just stop this horrific weapon from being sent to Ukraine. We want to stop the war and that this is another example of how dangerous the escalation is. And that we also know that while these weapons might continue to kill civilians for many years to come, they're not going to change the configuration on the battlefield. And so we really need to keep pushing for ceasefire and peace talks. Yes. And just to back up a little when you mentioned this far right group in the Republican Party, I think they're the Freedom Caucus or they're that, you know, they were the outgrowth of the Freedom Caucus. Actually, I saw a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Green. Hey, she's not my friend, OK? But she was she could have been a member of Code Pink denouncing this in her tweet saying this has nothing to do with national security. This is abusive, it's further escalation and so forth. So perhaps more and more will speak out within the Republican Party, though we know that the Republican leadership in the Senate and in the House have been in support of sending these weapons. Let's talk about cluster cluster munitions for a minute. You know, the background and why there's so much outrage. So just to to run down the background and the timeline, this is what it looks like in 2008, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates issued an order to phase out by 2018 cluster munitions with an unexploded ordinance rate of greater than one percent. OK, in 2011, Obama affirms this policy. 2017, Trump disregards that policy for 2018. He says there will be no deadline for phasing out cluster munitions that fail to explode. Congress then passed legislation forbidding the export of cluster bombs that lead behind more than one percent of their sub munitions or what they call done. So they talk about a dud rate. However, as we see here, Biden saying, hey, we've got to send these abhorrent weapons to Ukraine because this will help the counter offensive. And he uses he invokes this exclusive national vital national security with your action, Medea, is this a vital national security? Well, it's ridiculous to say that sending cluster munitions is in the national security, because if the US did care about international law and being part of the having some moral grounding, it would be sticking to this treaty that one hundred and twenty three countries have signed. But I also think that we have to recognize that while the US keeps crossing these lines, one of the excuses they're using is that Russia and Ukraine have both already used cluster munitions. And that is true. Oftentimes, administration officials will cite Russia using them and will fail to say that Ukraine has been using them as well. The human rights groups have condemned both parties for using them. But this will lift it to another level in terms of the amounts that are being sent. They're talking about hundreds of thousands of these. So while it's never an excuse to be saying, well, my opponent is doing this so I can, too, we should also recognize that it takes it to new levels. And, you know, we really should be thinking about what is the Ukrainian government contemplating in terms of the future? Because it will be Ukrainian citizens, Ukrainian children that will be killed by these bombs. So it's a very, very short sighted thinking. Absolutely. And just to clarify, so these bombs that fail to explode and what there are millions that fail to explode the tiny bombs in Laos when the US use cluster munitions there. These bombs, they litter the landscape of several football fields, civilians step on them. Children might pick them up thinking they're toys only to have their limbs severed. This goes on and on. And and the cleanup operations drag on if they happen at all. Right. Yes. And I have been in several areas where cluster munitions were used and it could be many decades ago, like in the case of the demilitarized zone around North Korea that is still unusable for farming and dangerous for people. Or I was in southern Lebanon after the Israelis just littered the whole area of southern Lebanon with these cluster munitions. In fact, that was one of the reasons that led to the to the ban. And farmers in that region are still being hurt as children are being hurt from these. So whether we talk about Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, or we talk about other areas of the world, including Afghanistan, the the suffering goes on and on. Yes. And, you know, on on a hopeful note and some may disagree or listening on a hopeful note, this is one more wedge that divides NATO. People say, oh, NATO, I've heard this. People will say, oh, NATO is a defensive alliance. That's not true. Look at what NATO did. There's NATO has left a trail of blood in Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo. It's hardly a defensive alliance, nor is it an alliance of those who support who necessarily support democracy. Look at some of the outliers like Turkey or Hungary and their leadership. Italy. So what is NATO other than an arms cartel? I'm not really sure. But this is one wedge, along with other wedges, you know, the whether or not NATO will admit Ukraine. There's lots of pushback on that, whether or not NATO will admit Sweden pushback from Turkey and Hungary on that. So what do you think? What is a spell for the future of NATO? Well, I think there are all kinds of potential as well as a present divisions in NATO. Certainly the governments of the NATO countries and the media like to portray it as one happy family that's fighting the fight for global democracy. But internally, we see many divisions. We see countries from Turkey, Greece, Hungary that don't abide by the sanctions against Russia. We see internally up movements in places like Italy, Czech Republic having a lot of internal opposition to the inflation that has been caused by this war. We see opposition internally in NATO countries to this push to keep sending spending more and more money on militarism as this has exploded with the Ukraine war. And so this is one more issue, you know, these 23 NATO countries that have signed the ban, it's not only that they're not supposed to use these weapons, it's that they're not supposed to cooperate with the using of these weapons. And so this brings up an issue for them in how are they going to deal with the transport and the use of these munitions that the US is supplying? So I think you're right, Marcy, this is one more example of divisions within NATO, which for us, I think in those of us who want to see a cooperative and peaceful world, we think these divisions are actually a good thing, the more that there is opposition within NATO to this very aggressive, dangerous alliance, the sooner we can move towards a world where our alliances are for cooperating and not for killing each other. Yes, you know, I can't underscore that statement vociferously enough. Not only as we've discussed, are we looking at splits in NATO, but I feel that regardless of whether this amendment by Omar and Jacobs to ban the use of cluster bombs, this amendment to the military budget hits the floor, regardless of whether it gets a vote or not. It is already starting to we see the wall crumbling around the White House in defense of this escalation in Ukraine. I think there are moral high ground, if you want to call it that, in justifying continuous weapons to throw gasoline on the fire and refusal to support a ceasefire, mass silence on the part of the Democrats and the Republicans for a ceasefire. I think that this may be a turning point. I have to be hopeful because it's very hard to say, yeah, we got to keep sending these cluster munitions to Ukraine to harm civilians decades from now. Well, you're right, Marcy. I think the fact that public opinion shows more and more Americans wanting to see an end to this war and questioning the over one hundred and ten billion dollars we've spent so far. The elections coming up, the candidates, whether it's Republicans, Democrats or Greens who have come out and made this an issue already in their talking points. And the fact that the CIA director, William Burns, recently went to Kiev to talk to Zelinsky about how are we going to end this war? And lastly, Marcy, the fact that it's been revealed that there have been what they call track two talks, which means informal talks, not official among high ranking or former US and Russian officials about how to move towards negotiations. And in one of those meetings, the foreign secretary Lavrov of Russia himself was a part of it. Those are hopeful signs. And that's why it's so important that people join us in peace in Ukraine at Code Pink in building up this groundswell, because the more our representatives here from us, the American people, the more likely they're going to be pushing for a solution. Absolutely. So at this juncture, let me just invite everybody to visit our website at peace in Ukraine.org. Of course, visit us at code pink.org as well. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of course, that wasn't the beginning of the war. We know a civil war led up to this, but following that invasion, Code Pink launched the peace in Ukraine coalition. And now we are working with over 100 organizations. Massachusetts Peace Action, Veterans for Peace, the Roots Action, World Beyond War, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, on and on to say, stop the fighting, stop the flow of weapons. It's not going to reach. It's not going to help us, right? It's only going to escalate this war. We need to cease fire without any precondition. So here people say, oh, yeah, I'm for peace. Russian troops out of every square mile of Ukraine. And that's not that's not a negotiation. That's a maximalist demand. OK, you can make that demand. You make it as a negotiating table, but you at least start talking, right? So that's what we're talking about as a peace in Ukraine coalition. Check it out. Media Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink. Thank you so much for joining us on Code Pink Radio today terrific to have you with us. Great talking to you, Marcy. Bye bye. Bye bye.