The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package

Those old enough to remember when President Clinton's penis was a big news item will also remember the "Peace Dividend," that the world was going to be able to cash now that that nasty cold war was over. But guess what? Those spies didn't want to come in from the Cold, so while the planet is heating up, the political environment is dropping to sub-zero temperatures. It's deja vu all over again.

The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package

Postby admin » Tue Jun 07, 2022 1:33 am

The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package to Raytheon and CIA: "For Ukraine"
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?
by Glenn Greenwald
May 13, 2022

After Joe Biden announced his extraordinary request for $33 billion more for the war in Ukraine — on top of the $14 billion the U.S. has already spent just ten weeks into this war — 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, the House overwhelmingly voted to approve the bill by a vote of 388-57. All fifty-seven NO votes came from Republican House members. Except for two missing members, all House Democrats — every last one, including all six members of the revolutionary, subversive Squad — voted for this gigantic war package, one of the largest the U.S. has spent at once in decades.

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. To put this $54 billion amount in perspective, it is (a) larger than the average annual 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 — easily into the hundreds of billions of dollars and likely the trillion dollar level — given that U.S. officials insist that this war will last not months but years, and that it will stand with Ukraine until the bitter end.

[x]
Ukraine War Likely to Last Years, Top US Military Officer Says, by VOA [Voice of America], Apr. 6, 2022

What made this Democratic Party unanimity 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 — very recently — 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 of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on March 8 — just two months before she voted YES on this $40 billion weapons package:

[x]
Ilhan Omar
@IlhanMN
The consequences of flooding Ukraine with billion dollars in US weapons, likely not limited to just military-specific equipment but also including small arms = ammo, are unpredictable & likely disastrous.
Specially when they are given to paramilitary groups w/out accountability.
11:08 AM, Mar 8, 2022, Twitter for iPhone


Just as stridently, her progressive House Democratic colleague, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), appeared on Democracy Now 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 to send lethal arms to Ukraine — based on Obama's oft-stated belief that Ukraine is and always will be a vital interest to Russia, but will never be to the U.S. — and argued that such a move would be dangerously escalatory:

I certainly join [House progressives] in the concerns of having increased aid, lethal aid, into that area. That will only inflame the situation. 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’s a very dangerous situation, and no one in this country — or, very few people in this country would want that. There’s a reason President Obama didn’t send lethal aid into Ukraine and had a greater restraint in his approach. 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….


The arguments Khanna was endorsing from House progressive leaders came in the form of a January 26 press release from co-caucus-leaders Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). The progressive duo argued: “There is no military solution out of this crisis — diplomacy needs to be the focus.” Then they added this: “We 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 miscalculation. Russia’s strategy is to inflame tensions; the United States and NATO must not play into this strategy.” Just over three months later, both Lee and Jayapal voted not for a "flood of hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal weapons,” but to flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in lethal weapons.

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.

This vote, and their silence about it, is particularly confounding — one could, without hyperbole, even say chilling — given how rapidly Democrats’ 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 — which it has long been — but as “our war” that we must fight to the end in order for “victory” to be ours, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) vows that there be “no off ramps” to end the war diplomatically, since the real goal of the war is regime change in Moscow.

Even worse, the eighty-two-year-old House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), now in his twentieth term in Congress, went to the House floor on Friday to twice say that "we are at war” — meaning the U.S is now at war with Russia — and that it is therefore inappropriate to heavily criticize our president:



As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has spent decades pointing out, there is nothing more dangerous to humanity than a war between the two nations with the planet's largest nuclear stockpiles. One might think that those who just voted to dangerously escalate such a war would at least deign to explain themselves, especially those who have repeatedly made recent statements violently at odds with the YES vote they just cast. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has thus far said nothing about this House vote, warned in The Guardian in early February, that while Putin is immoral and tyrannical, the West bears some blame for provoking this war with reckless NATO expansion and, more importantly, warned of the grave and unpredictable dangers of having the U.S. pursue a strategy of fueling the war rather than trying to solve it diplomatically.

So exceptional is this headlong rush into this war that even The New York Times — usually loyally supportive of U.S. war policies and the Democratic establishment — published a highly unusual news article about the House vote which repeatedly and harshly criticized Congress for being too frightened to ask questions or express skepticism about Biden's war policy. The NYT took the members of Congress voting YES in both parties to task for being cowed into submission, meekly falling into line. The headline of the article told the story — “House Passes $40 Billion More in Ukraine Aid, With Few Questions Asked" — as the Paper of Record all but called these YES-voting members of Congress cowards and abdicators:

The escalating brutality of the war in Ukraine has dampened voices on both the right and left skeptical of the United States’ involving itself in armed conflict overseas, fueling a rush by Congress to pour huge amounts of money into a potentially lengthy and costly offensive against Russia with few questions or reservations raised….[L]awmakers in both political parties who have previously railed against skyrocketing military budgets and entanglements in intractable conflicts abroad have gone largely silent about what is fast becoming a major military effort drawing on American resources….

That total — roughly $53 billion over two months — goes beyond what President Biden requested and is poised to amount to the largest foreign aid package to move through Congress in at least two decades….But stunned by the grisly images from Ukraine and leery of turning their backs on a country whose suffering has been on vivid display for the world, many lawmakers have put aside their skepticism and quietly agreed to the sprawling tranches of aid, keeping to themselves their concerns about the war and questions about the Biden administration’s strategy for American involvement…..

And as Mr. Biden’s requests to Congress for money to fund the war effort have spiraled upward, leaders in both parties have largely refrained from questioning them…..The result has been that, at least for now, Congress is quickly and nearly unanimously embracing historic tranches of foreign aid with little public debate about the Biden administration’s strategy, whether the volume of military assistance could escalate the conflict, or whether domestic priorities are being pushed aside to accommodate the huge expenditures overseas.


Perhaps the most remarkable part of this surreal episode is the statement issued by Rep. Bush, ostensibly explaining and justifying her YES vote. If you are able to discern some sort of cogent explanation from this statement, it means that you have better reading skills than I. While Rep. Bush at least deserves credit for bothering to try to explain her vote — in contrast to her fellow Squad members who have thus far refused to do so — by far the clearest and most significant part of what she says are her admissions of the horrible and dangerous parts of this bill, for which she just voted YES. Behold these admissions:

Additionally, at $40 billion, this is an extraordinary amount of military assistance, a large percentage of which will go directly to private defense contractors. In the last year alone, the United States will have provided Ukraine with more military aid than any country in the last two decades, and twice as much military assistance as the yearly cost of war in Afghanistan, even when American troops were on the ground. The sheer size of the package given an already inflated Pentagon budget should not go without critique. I remain concerned about the increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation.


Imagine saying this about a bill — recognizing how wasteful and dangerous it is — and then snapping into line behind Nancy Pelosi and voting for it anyway to ensure Democratic Party unanimity in support of this war. Credit to Rep. Bush for candor, I suppose.

One person whose name has not yet appeared in this article is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). That is because we published on Wednesday a comprehensive video report on Rumble, documenting how AOC's YES vote on this war package so violently contradicts virtually everything she has ever claimed to believe about questions of war, militarism and military spending. AOC, needless to say, has not bothered to reconcile this vote with the drastically divergent body of statements she has uttered her entire adult life because her blind followers do not demand anything of her, let alone explanations for why she does what she does (which is why she knew she could, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, attend the Met Gala — the nation's most gluttonous celebration of capitalist excess and celebrity culture — and attended to indoors by a team of masked servants while she and her boyfriend remained comfortably and glamorously unmasked, and then show total contempt for her fans by hilariously spray-painting a banal, inoffensive phrase on the back of her designer gown, knowing this would make them not only accept her behavior but celebrate her heroic subversiveness).

The full video about how the Squad and AOC just permanently killed whatever was left of the U.S. left-wing anti-war movement can be seen on our Rumble page, or watched on the video player below. A full transcript of that video appears below for subscribers only.

Only two months ago, those who observed that this was not a war between Russia and Ukraine, but really a proxy war between Russia and the U.S./NATO, were vilified as Kremlin propagandists. Now, U.S. leaders openly boast of this fact, and go further, claiming that the U.S. is actually at war with Russia and must secure full victory. That there is not a single Democratic politician willing to object to or even question any of this speaks volumes about what that party is, as well how dangerous this war has become for Americans and the world generally.



The following is a full transcript from the most recent episode of my System Update video program on Rumble, entitled: The US Anti-War Left is Dead. The Squad's $40b War Vote Just Killed It.:

Glenn Greenwald: Hey everyone this is Glenn Greenwald. Welcome to a new episode of System Update, here on our home on Rumble. I want to examine the latest conduct and career trajectory of a particular member of Congress named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York's 14th Congressional District. As a Democrat, she's affectionately known to most of us with her endearing nickname, AOC.

And the reason I want to examine AOC’s most recent behavior and how it reflects her career trajectory is not because she is and herself is an important and influential political figure. In fact, the exact opposite is true. She's really become basically a nonentity in Congress. She has almost no effect on the enactment of legislation, on political debate. She really has kind of disappeared into this bizarre cultural celebrity where she still wields a lot of cachet on social media. But in terms of any actual role in the political landscape, she is essentially a non-entity.

But I nonetheless want to examine not just her behavior, but the behavior of her fellow members of the so-called ‘Squad’ over the last 48 hours, because I think it reflects a great deal about the political movement that has followed her, which is the movement in the United States that, accurately or not, likes to call itself the political left.

Now, to set the stage for that examination, I want to just briefly explain what happened. Most of you already probably know, but there was a vote last night in the House of Representatives on whether to send an additional $40 billion of American money to fuel the war in Ukraine. And I will explain exactly what happened there. But AOC's role in that vote is particularly interesting to me, in part because I've actually followed AOC’s career for a long time.

Many of you may not know that when she was running in 2018 as a challenger to the long-time Democratic incumbent Joseph Crowley, who was a favorite of Nancy Pelosi's, he was part of the House leadership, he was one of those members of Congress who barely anyone knew his name, and yet he exercised an inordinate amount of power. He's one of those guys who only operated in the backrooms of the Capitol through lobbyist money and the like. I don't think a single one of his constituents would have known him if they had bumped into him on the street. In fact, they barely even bothered to pretend that he lived in his district. He was one of those kinds of people who exercised a great deal of power, completely separate and apart from the lives of his constituents, who had more or less won reelection every year because nobody would challenge him as a Democrat and the Democrats automatically won.

And suddenly AOC challenged him in 2018 and no one even paid any attention to her. Even on the left, she was a completely unknown political figure. Very few people paid attention to that race. I actually was one of the people who paid attention to that race, and I can't take credit for that. It was because of my very talented colleague at the time, Ryan Grim, who's the Washington Bureau Chief of The Intercept, and who pays close attention to the happenings of left wing politics.

I remember very well in the middle of 2018, he messaged me and said, there's a woman who's challenging a long-time corporate incumbent in Queens, and I think you should look into her because I think you would like her and find her interesting. And he was right. I looked into her at the time. She was really positioning herself, much like Bernie Sanders did in 2016, not as a Democrat, but as somebody who wanted to challenge the establishment wings of both parties on the ground, that they were actually had far more in common than they had differences, and that the only way to achieve anything politically was to challenge the political ruling class, the establishment wings and both political parties, which has been a prong of my worldview for a long time.

And so to hear someone like her who clearly had political talent, regardless of what else you thought about her when you looked at her articulating this worldview, it actually did generate a lot of interest on my part and her campaign, and ultimately support for her campaign. And because of my interest in her campaign, I think a lot of people have forgotten about this, I actually interviewed her. She gave me all the time I needed. I think it ended up being a one hour long interview. It was a very in-depth interview that covered a wide range of topics.

And you can get the tenor of what that interview was for the very first part:

GG: Hi, I'm Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. And my guest today is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a first time candidate running in the Democratic Party primary challenging the ten term Democratic congressman, incumbent Joseph Crowley, in New York's 14th Congressional District, which covers Queens and the Bronx. Thanks so much for taking the time out from the campaign trail to talk to me today.

AOC: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Glenn.


Glenn Greenwald: She was so delighted to talk to me. I don't think she would be now. But do you see how she exuded such charm and such glee, just to thank me for joining her for an interview? And so we covered a lot of ground. One of the things she told me was when I asked her whether she would support Nancy Pelosi as House speaker or leader of the Democratic caucus and Steny Hoyer as her lieutenant, despite being in that position for many, many terms, she told me absolutely not. She thought it was urgent that there be a change in leadership and that she would not vote for either of them.

And the first thing she did when she got to Washington after winning that race was vote for Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker and Steny Hoyer for House Majority Leader, even though they both did have or Pelosi at least had a challenge, albeit one from the right, but one from a younger generation. She was very critical of identity politics, telling me that she thought identity politics is often a deceitful and fraudulent way that the ruling class could recruit people who look different because they were of a different race or gender or sexual orientation.

And in fact, they were just there to create the facade of diversity, in reality, their function was to carry for status quo policies. She called them Trojan horses. We talked a lot about foreign policy. So I've been watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's political trajectory and campaign for quite a long time, as you can see, going back. Now, what happened over the last couple of days was amazing. Back in April, on April 28th, Joe Biden sent a request to Congress asking for $33 billion more to send to the war in Ukraine. And by which but by which I mean, he wants $33 billion to send to the coffers of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the CIA to purchase military equipment and weapons, including ones that the United States is low on because we've depleted our stockpile by sending so much weaponry to Ukraine.

So we wanted an additional $33 billion on top of the $14 billion we've already spent just ten weeks into this war. It was only February 24th when Russia invaded. So after just ten weeks of this war, Biden was asking for $33 billion, on top of $14 billion he's already spent, which is a total of $47 billion.

And the amazing part about that is US officials are saying that they both predict and obviously hope that this will be a war that resolves itself not in a matter of months, but years. So this this $48 billion, is just the first partial investment in this war. If it's true that it'll go on for years, we're easily going to blow past hundreds of billions of dollars and probably get to a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars fairly quickly for a war that we claim isn’t ours, in a country where people in Washington, including a Barack Obama, have been saying for many years, Ukraine is a vital interest to Russia, but not a vital interest to the United States. Why would it be? It has no geostrategic importance to the United States. It has no resources that the United States needs. It was Obama who always said, of course, we would never confront or risk war with Moscow over the borders of eastern Ukraine or Crimea because it matters so much to them, but not very much to us.

And so Biden's request for $33 billion more on top of the 14 billion was extraordinary. And the reaction of the establishment wings of both parties was completely identical and united. They looked at it and they said, $33 billion, that's not enough. We want to give $40 billion. And they very quickly united and agreed on $40 billion. They created an accelerated legislative path to ensure that it passes very quickly so it can get to Biden's desk, so we can send another $40 billion in military equipment and the like, some of which are humanitarian aid and economic reconstruction, but most of it for military equipment to continue to fuel the war in Ukraine without any discussion, as I noted in my article of yesterday, about who benefits.

How do American citizens benefit from this war in Ukraine? Or from the $47 billion that Biden was proposing to spend already ten weeks into the war. What benefits do American citizens get from that? No debate or discussion of that at all. But the Congress just immediately said 33 billion isn’t enough. Let's just arbitrarily throw $7 billion on top of it. And the two parties were in such agreement that they didn't even need to debate it. They were just eager and ready to vote.

Now. Just to give you an idea for how things are proceeding, the since the war began, the Biden administration every 2 to 3 weeks has just been announcing seemingly random but very significant amounts that it intended to send to Ukraine pursuant to an authorization that quietly occurred in Congress at the beginning of the war for $3.5 billion that Biden was authorized to spend. So you see the pattern there. February 26 Biden approves $250 million in military aid. March 16th, three weeks later, Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine. March 30th. Two weeks later, Ukraine to receive an additional 500 million in aid from the U.S. April 12. Two weeks later, U.S. to announce 750 million more in weapons for Ukraine. May six, Biden announces a new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine.

What actually happened was after that $3.5 billion was quickly depleted and exhausted the House and then the Senate went back in early March and authorized another $13.6 billion for the government to spend in Ukraine, which is how he got to $14 billion that's already gone and spent out the door less than three months into this war.

Now. Here you see from The New York Times on April 28 that reported on Biden's request for $33 billion more. Some additional background basically saying that he's seeking $33 billion. And as I said, the House immediately said, we want to give you more, $40 billion. And last night, because of the accelerated schedule. When does anything in Congress happen that quickly? You have Biden on April 28th asking for the first time for $33 billion.

Less than two weeks later, May 10th, the House passes the $40 billion bill. And is going to now send it to the Senate. And here you see the CNN report on that vote. And this is the part that's extraordinary. The Democratic led House of Representatives voted 368 to 57 on Tuesday evening to pass a roughly $40 billion bill to deliver aid to Ukraine as it continues to face Russia's brutal assault.

There CNN editorializing, justifying it. But that's the breakdown of the vote. All 57 votes in opposition. 57 House members voted no. We don't want to send $40 billion more to Ukraine under these conditions. All 57 of the ones who said no were Republicans, which conversely means that not a single Democrat, not one in the entire House of Representatives, including the Squad and AOC and Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush and Anna Pressley, and none of them, Jamaal Bowman, none of them voted no against this $40 billion.

It was a unanimous yes in defense of this war policy. Now, here's The New York Times report that provides additional background about what is happening politically, where the two parties are completely united in lockstep support for this war. Now, the beginning of the war, there was a narrative that congealed that more or less everybody with very few, very few exceptions, a handful of dissidents who were instantly dismissed as Russian agents or pro-Kremlin propagandist or trade traitors that more or less everybody accepted, which is that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was its fault and its fault only. The US and NATO played no role in that invasion in provoking it, and that Russia was the aggressor, and the wrong party, and Ukraine was the completely innocent victim.

Now, even if you're somebody who believes, and a lot of people I respect believe that storyline, even if you're somebody who believes that and was horrified as any healthy, decent person would be by the images we were seeing about the results of the war, they weren't anything unusual, aberrational for every war contains that level of atrocity, but the media decided to show it to us as opposed to hide it from us, which normally happens with the war the US or its allies fight. In this case, we were seeing constant imagery. We were getting very angry, very upset, a lot of emotion.

I did a video right at the beginning in that first or second week saying because of this intense emotion that's being generated around the war, it's very likely, in fact almost inevitable that the US government will not only be able to escalate its role in the war, but almost will be forced to by this extreme sentiment, anger over Russia and this kind of extreme solidarity with Ukraine. I was recently in the US about 7 days ago and in the places I visited I saw way more Ukrainian flags in front of homes flying on rooftops in front of businesses than I did American flags. That's how strong these emotions are. And it was inevitable that it would lead to a rapid escalation.

And I just showed you from a financial perspective how quickly U.S. investment in this war has escalated. We're now sending far more heavier weaponry. We're far more involved with boasting about how we're helping the Ukrainians target Russian assets. And now we're about to spend another $40 billion.

So our our role has rapidly escalated. But very few people have been willing to debate any of this because that early intensity, of calling anybody who is even a little off key or a traitor or treasonous or a Russian agent like Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson and many other people, just for asking whether we should be involved in this war, whether we're doing enough to diplomatically resolve it, created a climate where no one wanted to debate it.

And so this escalation has all been happening very quietly, even though it's incredibly significant. So here's The New York Times after yesterday's House vote. Very bipartisan vote, passing $40 billion more, kind of giving a sense of the politics that's prevailing in Washington:

“The escalating brutality of the war in Ukraine has dampened voices on both the right and left, skeptical of the United States is involving itself in armed conflict overseas.”


So very few antiwar voices in either the right or the left skeptical of the U.S. escalating involvement in this war on the other side of the world, in a country that Washington has always said is not a vital interest, United States. This dampening is

“fueling a rush by Congress to pour huge amounts of money into a potentially lengthy and costly offensive against Russia with few questions or reservations raised.”


This is the The New York Times aptly describing in a news article the climate in Washington. Both parties are fully on board for escalation. Very few people are questioning it, and we're rushing headlong with very few questions being asked or reservations raised. Quote:

“Under pressure to present a united front as Putin’s forces carried out a campaign of atrocities across Ukraine, lawmakers in both political parties who have previously railed against skyrocketing military budgets and entanglements in intractable conflicts abroad, have gone largely silent about what is fast becoming a major military effort drawing on American resources. The House on Tuesday night passed a $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine. That total, roughly $53 billion over two months, goes beyond what President Biden requested and is poised to amount to the largest foreign aid package to move through Congress in at least two decades.”


Now. Before I put the issue of how much money the United States is already spending ten weeks into this war into critical context. Let me just emphasize that unlike other U.S. wars where we rushed into them, we got American popular support, both parties on board. Very little questioning allowed in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya, in Syria, only for the population, two years later or four years later, it is six years later, to start to ask, Wait a minute, this war is still going on. All this money is flying out the door. Who's benefiting from this? And then ultimately regretting it.

At least in those wars, the US was fighting countries that really weren't very powerful, that couldn't threaten the United States in any way. This war is so different and so much more dangerous because the country were now vowing to destroy and defeat, basically admitting we're at war with them, albeit for the moment in a proxy war, has the single largest nuclear stockpile on the planet, even larger than the United States. A completely new level of danger when the United States is directly engaging Russia.

And the fact that there's virtually no debate, just in and of itself should be extremely disturbing no matter what your views are on this war. Now, to put the money in into context. The passage of this $40 billion expenditure to Ukraine means that as the US, as The New York Times says, it now means that just over two months we spent roughly $53 billion.

First of all, the overall annual U.S. military expenditure is $770 billion. That's how much the US spends on its military. That's three times more than the second highest military spender, which is China. And it's more than the next 13 countries combined. So we spend almost a trillion dollars every year in our military. We're getting close to 10% of our overall military budget for ten weeks of war in a war that we're not even fighting in in Ukraine. Close to 10% of the military budget overall into this war just after ten weeks.

What's it going to be after a year? What percentage of our of our military budget will be poured into this war after a year or two years or five years? This $53 billion that we've already now allotted is more than the average amount that the United States spent every year for its own war in Afghanistan, its own war in Afghanistan. On average, the United States, during the 20 year course of that war, spent $46 billion in defense of its own war. We're spending $53 billion not in a year, but in ten weeks on this other war in Ukraine. At least the war in Afghanistan had some kind of a pretense of self-defense. The argument at the beginning was we're going to fight in Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, which enabled them to attack the United States on 911. They wouldn't turn them over when we demanded it. So in our own self-defense, we had to go and root out Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. That was at least a war of self-defense, ostensibly.

And even there, we didn't spend nearly as much as we're spending on this war in Ukraine that nobody can cast as self-defense. No one thinks the Russian invasion of Ukraine poses a threat to the United States or a threat to the security of American citizens. And yet we're spending soon to be vastly more than our own war in Afghanistan.

On top of that, this $53 billion that we've already spent just ten weeks into the war is close to the total amount that Russia spends every year on its entire military budget, which is $69 billion, roughly. So here we are trying to depict Russia as this grave existential threat, this rogue nation, like comparing it to Nazi Germany and Hitler ready to take over all of Europe, when in reality, the U.S. not only spends more than 10x what Russia spends on its military each year, but we're close to exceeding in just ten weeks, spending on this war Russia spends on its entire military. That's how gargantuan these sums are, even though they've received almost no debate, even though nobody's asking what's the impact on American citizens who are suffering so much at home.

Now, the Times adds:

This vote comes at a time when the two parties have been unable to reach agreement to invest in domestic programs. They include the extension of a tax credit that pulled millions of American children out of poverty and even a pandemic response package to control the spread of the coronavirus. As Republicans, some Democrats raised concerns that such spending could exacerbate inflation and increase the federal deficit. As Mr. Biden's request to Congress for money to fund the war effort have spiraled upward. Leaders of both parties have largely refrained from questioning them. Instead, the packages have swelled to accommodate the two parties competing priorities, with Republicans adding money for military assistance and Democrats insisting that be matched by an equal addition for humanitarian aid.


Now let's look at the specific votes of certain members of Congress. Here's the roll call vote from the last night's approval of $40 billion more, $7 billion more than even Joe Biden requested. And let's look at some of the yes votes here. You see the title of the bill, Additional Ukrainian Supplemental Appropriations for Act of 2022. You have 368 yes votes, 57 nays, five not voting. Among the yeas, voting for $40 billion to send to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the CIA. There's money for the CIA in this bill, of course, is Ayanna Pressley, the member of the squad, the progressive revolutionary leftist representative from Massachusetts, and Ilhan Omar, the hard core anti-imperialist representative from Minnesota. And Cori Bush, who rode in on a protest movement in Ferguson against the police and American white supremacy and American power, and there's she gets to leave the same thing, a hardcore critic of American imperialism in the Middle East. And there's Jamaal Bowman, part of the squad. And here we have the aforementioned AOC.

All yes votes. At a time when Americans are living below the poverty line by the millions, unable to buy insulin for their diabetes, forced to ration their own insulin in a way that often endangers their lives (diabetics because the cost of insulin is too high and there's no government programs to help them.) 30 million Americans without health insurance. Parents unable to send their kids to college. Thousands of tens of thousands of businesses, small businesses still shut down because of the lockdowns of COVID Americans suffering in all sorts of ways. There a supply chain problem that's preventing Americans from even buying baby formula.

All of these members of the squad who claimed to run for office in devotion to the interest of the American working class and the American poor just voted yes to send $40 billion more to Raytheon and the CIA for the war in Ukraine. They share the exact same view as Marco Rubio in and Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity and all of the traditional warmongers in both parties, Adam Smith and Adam Schiff and Kevin McCarthy and all of them, Mitch McConnell.

She's on board with this, not just those people, but this policy. It's mind boggling. And the amazing thing is not one of the six members of the squad, not one, has come out and explained their vote. Why did they vote for something so seemingly antithetical to their alleged political worldview and ideology?

And the reason they haven't had to is because virtually nobody on the left cares that they did it. The left has almost, and my by the left, I mean the sort of faction that calls itself the left. Real leftists don't consider them the left. But for all intents and purposes, the American left is defined by and led by Bernie Sanders and AOC and the Squad. Those people are just they have nothing to say about this escalating war in Ukraine, that the Democratic president and the bipartisan unified wing of Congress are increasingly leading the United States into. And so they just got to vote with no explanation.

Now, the idea that AOC is a fraud, that she routinely violates her own claimed ideology, that she's completely petrified of standing up to any real power in Washington, that she's only willing to have gestures of dissent when it makes no difference. This is very well established. I'll give you a couple of examples. Back in May of 2021, Nancy Pelosi demanded $2 billion more for the Capitol Police, even though the squad and other people in her party had spent 2020 chanting Defund the Police, Defund the Police, and posting All cops are bastards, and the police are white supremacist, and agents of white supremacy for the police that protect the members of Congress. Nancy Pelosi wanted $2 billion more to enhance the surveillance authorities and the weaponry of the Capitol Police and the Squad told left wing activists who are working against this bill, you know, the people who actually believed them when they were chanting defund the police and thought like, of course, you're not going to go chant, defund the police and then spend $2 billion more on the police, the ones that protect you while defunding, the ones that protect working class people and people who don't have private security and are in Congress, of course, are not going to do that. So the squad said, yeah, we as a group, all six of us are going to vote no on Nancy Pelosi's bill.

The reason they committed to voting no was because they thought the votes there are no there are no votes wouldn't matter. They thought it would pass anyway because Pelosi would get enough votes from Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in order to make sure it passed. Once the squad realized that if they followed through on their vow to vote no, Pelosi's demand would be thwarted. The bill wouldn't pass. Three of them, including AOC, switched at the last minute, their yes vote to present. And so the bill passed by one vote, 213 to 212. Had the three of them who vowed to vote no made good on their word, it would have failed.

So here you see, they were willing to vote no as long as it didn't matter and made no difference. And Pelosi got what she wanted anyway so they could tell the latter. Look, we tried to stop it, but we couldn't. Once they realized they really had the power to stop it, they were too scared to anger Pelosi. Three of them exactly. The number needed to switch their votes from yes to present. And it enabled Pelosi to get what she wanted.

You might recall the even more pathetic episode in September of 2021, when the House is going to vote on funding for Israel's Iron Dome. In fact, the House already funds Israel's Iron Dome. But there was they had used part of it because Gaza was shooting rockets. They wanted to replenish their stockpile. And Israel, instead of using their own money, which is quite ample, to buy their own supplements for the Iron Dome, even though many Israeli citizens live better lives than many, many Americans, they turn to the United States. They ask the United States to give them supplemental funding, billions of dollars.

Obviously, it's been a long time cause on the left to support Palestinian rights and oppose Israeli occupation. So, of course, everyone assumed AOC was going to vote no. She did vote no. And then at the last minute, she changed her vote yet again to present. And then she proceeded to weep. Openly wept on the House floor. Had to be comforted by one of her colleagues. As though the real victim in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is AOC. But there you see again, she was going to vote no until she realized that it made people angry and then she again switched her vote to present.

And then who could forget the magical moment last year in September 2021 when Americans were still locked down, schools were still closed because of the pandemic. People were still forced to wear a mask. People were getting fired for not getting the vaccine. She decided to attend the Met Gala. The most, flamboyant and gluttonous display of celebrity glitter and glamor and wealth that the United States has to offer.

And she wore a gown, a very expensive, beautiful designer gown. And she has so little respect for her own followers that she figured I'll just spray paint some leftwing slogan on the back, tax the rich and my idiot followers will actually believe I've done something subversive by attending, that I'm not here to, you know, have drinks with Beyoncé and wallow in the the glamor of celebrity culture. I'm actually here to to fight for them for our socialist agenda by saying tax the rich on the back, as though the liberal celebrities at the Met gala would have been offended in any way.

But what was amazing was here you see that she and her boyfriend, while they were getting ready for the Met gala, were not wearing masks. There she is. There's her face, totally unmasked. Indoors, not outdoors, indoors. And this team of servants are all tending to her, to her gown, to her hair, to her makeup, to her nails, to her her feet, her toes. They have to wear masks. But she does not, because she's at the top of the caste system and she likes it that way.

So all of this has shown for a long time when AOC is. That's why I was saying I don't want to look at what AOC did just to further show that AOC is a fraud. Everyone knows that already. No one no one needs to hear that. But what it does show is the state of the American left and how the only place where dissent is permitted to be heard and where you find no votes against U.S. war policy in Ukraine is on the American right. If you want to go on television and oppose the US role in Ukraine, there's only two places you can go in prime time. The 8:00 program on Fox News hosted by Tucker Carlson, the 10:00 hour hosted by Laura Ingraham. There's a couple other Fox shows like Jesse Waters and Dan Bongino, who also have some dissent.

But for prime time, it's just those two shows. I wish that weren't the case. I wish there were more places in the media even where hosts support the policy, but were willing to air dissent. But they don't. So the the no votes all came from. The American right from House Republicans. The only places on TV you can go to hear dissent over the escalating involvement of the US war in Ukraine is on a couple of Fox News shows and the American left is cheering the Squad, remaining silent as they send $40 billion more to Ukraine.

Now, let's look at what AOC has said over the course of the last four years of her career about the kinds of things that she just voted for. Here in June of 2019. You see from the Hill the headline, “Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez back the end Forever War Pledge.” That was when Donald Trump was president. She was very anti-war.

Here in June 2021, just last year, Ocasio-Cortez slams Congress for, quote, “senselessly boosting the defense budget every year.” So even with Biden in the first few months of his presidency, she was masquerading as an opponent of inflated increases in the defense budget each year at the expense of the welfare of American citizens. Here she is on the House floor urging support for an anti-imperialism anti- militarism bill that she had presented. Listen to what she said. This is a mere six months ago:

AOC: Speaker I rise today to offer amendment 40 to reduce the pentagon budget by 10%. During a time when our country is withdrawing from foreign wars, when COVID 19 and its fallout is one of the greatest threats that we face when record levels of unemployment, housing and health care crises are among us, the United States should be reducing its military spending by at least 10% and prioritize the very needs of our communities here at home.

Today, we can cut the defense authorization by 10% without any need to deny our servicemembers or their families any of the support that they need. And in doing so, we can free up to $77 billion to go towards fighting the COVID 19 pandemic and much more. Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.


Glenn Greenwald: So this view, and her speech barely caused a ripple because this is just standard left wing doctrine for decades. The US spends far too much on its military more than every other country in the world as they went through, a lot of that is just skimmed and wasted, goes to fill the coffers of Raytheon and and Boeing executives. And they get hundred million dollar pay packages at the expense of the ordinary American who gets nothing. It causes wars to be fought. It motivates wars. This is standard liberal left, liberal thought for forever until like two months ago. Now this, you only hear from House Republicans under the banner of America First. Why are we going to give all our resources to Ukraine when so many Americans are suffering at home, where the American government, our priority is supposed to be taking care of American citizens, not filling the coffers of Raytheon and the weapons industry in the CIA and helping to fight a war in Ukraine.

That was what AOC was saying six months ago. You won't hear that from her or any other leftist. Now, all you hear this from are people on the MAGA movement, on the American right, the 57 House Republicans who just voted no based on this rationale and a couple of hosts on Fox. Here when she was running for the Democratic nomination, the Unknown AOC. The thing that attracted me to our campaign, this is part of her campaign website and campaign proposal:

In times when we're told that there's not enough money, Republicans and corporate Democrats seem to find the cash to fund a $1.1 trillion fighter jet program or a $1.7 trillion nuclear weapon ‘modernization’ program. The costs are extreme. The Pentagon's budget for 2018 is $700 billion. All to continue fighting an endless war on terror and refighting the Cold War with a new arms race that nobody can win.

America should not be in the business of destabilizing countries. While we may see ourselves as liberators, the world increasingly views us as occupiers and aggressors. Alexandria believes that we must end the “forever war.”


Where is that? Alexandria. Now when the Democratic Party that she pretended she was running to oppose wants to send an amount so mammoth that even New York Times is alarmed by the lack of questioning and scrutiny and debate over it. She and her Squad united with those Democrats with a large sector of the House Republicans, the pro-war establishment wing of the House Republican caucus, with most of the Senate Republicans, like I said, like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham and all of those people Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, all the people who are very traditional advocates of the Reaganite foreign policy that Donald Trump ran against in 2016.

This is what she's on board with, a complete reversal of everything she's pretended to believe in for years. And the reason for this is because the Democratic Party can only see the rest of the world through its very stunted, narrow, self-serving, partisan prism. In 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. And the Democrats believed that they were entitled to win that race, that this was the queen that they had been grooming for decades to assume the throne of American power.

And a game show host that they regarded as a con man and a fraud, beat her. And instead of accepting responsibility because they themselves had nominated one of the most distrusted, disliked, hated political candidates in modern American history in Hillary Clinton, instead of accepting responsibility because their ideology of neoliberalism caused the Democratic Party to collapse under Obama, and ushered in, Trump only didn't try and run on it in the form of the avatar of neoliberalism in Hillary Clinton. Instead of accepting any responsibility, they decided to blame everybody else. WikiLeaks. New York Times. Jill Stein. But especially, Putin and Russia. That was the main villain.

And so Democrats have been feeding on anti-Russian antipathy and hatred for six years now. And this is finally their chance to destroy Russia, not for any geostrategic reasons, not because they think they're doing anything to protect Ukraine. How can you think you're protecting Ukraine by pouring $40 billion worth of extremely destructive weaponry onto their soil to ensure that the war lasts years instead of months, while your government is blocking diplomatic attempts to end the war, you're not protecting Ukrainians. You're not fighting for democracy or any of those other things. You're just taking vengeance on a country and a leader that you hate because you believe that he helped the Democratic Party lose an election in 2016 by revealing authentic emails about Hillary Clinton.

But whatever else is true, what this shows is that there is no viable antiwar left in the United States. None. Zero. It doesn't exist. And anyone who thinks that's hyperbole or anyone who thinks that's an overstatement. I'm willing to listen to arguments like, well, Noam Chomsky and some leftist actual leftist are out there saying the opposite of what AOC is saying. They're saying that the policy AOC is supporting and funding is one of the most reckless and dangerous policies the US has pursued in decades.

But these are leftists with no political power. The political left, the United States as it exists is Bernie Sanders and AOC and the squad and the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. All of whom just voted. All of whom. For $40 billion more in what is sure to be an increasingly escalating involvement in a very dangerous war that the United States is now the primary power in terms of fueling.

Whatever else you want to say about that, you may agree with it. You may disagree with it. It's a complete abdication of everything the left has ever claimed to believe in. And that's because in 2018 and in 2020, the leaders of the left, Bernie Sanders and AOC, told the left that unlike what they had been telling them for years, that it's the Democratic Party and the bipartisan establishment in Washington, in the US security state that is their enemy.

Their enemy became only one thing and one thing only Donald Trump and his movement. Therefore AOC and Bernie instructed their about this flock, your only ethical duty is to snap into line behind the Democratic Party, to integrate into it, to do your politics within it, and to express your undying and unconditional loyalty to it. And that is all the left is. It's a brand. It's something that podcasters and YouTubers use to kind of distinguish themselves from Rachel Maddow, or Chuck Schumer, to let people who are voting Democrat every two years, like they're told to, feel like they're a little bit cooler than their MSNBCs-watching, Pelosi-loving Mom.

But what it really is, it’s just an arm of the Democratic Party. And so whatever the Democratic Party does, the left does as well. And that's why you see the squad voting for a policy that could not be more antithetical, could not be more violently at odds with the values and ideology and political worldview that they have spent their entire adult lives claiming to believe in.
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