U.S. Representatives Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have introduced an amendment to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would effectively block the transfer of the cluster munitions to Ukraine, announced by U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on July 7. The amendment reads:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no military assistance shall be furnished for cluster munitions, no defense export license for cluster munitions may be issued, and no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred.”
Rep. Jacobs wrote in a Twitter thread July 7, “Cluster munitions keep killing long after their initial use with the potential to injure and kill civilians for generations, something we have seen in many other post-war contexts like Cambodia and Vietnam. Cluster munitions also prevent successful rebuilding and economic recovery in the countries where they’re used.”
Rep. Omar posted on her website, “Cluster munitions are illegal under international law. A total of 123 countries have ratified the convention to ban their use under all circumstances—including nearly all our allies. I was recently in Vietnam where I heard firsthand how innocent civilians continue to be killed by US cluster munitions a full fifty years after the conflict ended. Tens of thousands of explosives are found every year there.” Omar, who up to now has supported the British-U.S.-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, asserted, “We have to be clear: if the US is going to be a leader on international human rights, we must not participate in human rights abuses.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on July 10 that he will co-sponsor the Jacobs-Omar measure to block President Biden from sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. “I will be the Republican co-sponsor on the NDAA amendment …to stop the transfer of cluster bombs. These cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine and will not build a more stable country. Children will be left without limbs and without parents because of this decision if we do not work together in a bipartisan fashion to stop it,” Gaetz wrote in a tweet. “ Cluster bombs are features of the world’s bloodiest and most inhumane wars, and some of the longest. It’s hardly the cornerstone of a path to peace.”
The July 10 Antiwar.com reports, “Other lawmakers, including Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), have also voiced their opposition to the transfer of these bombs.”
The opposition to the deployment of cluster bombs is not the final battle, but as Schiller Institute leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche told her colleagues, in mobilizing for international peace actions on August 6, the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, “The decision by President Biden to send cluster bombs to Ukraine… is, from any point, the biggest blunder, because it mobilizes many, many more forces than probably Biden or the people who pushed him to do this, did imagine.”
