Kennedy said, ‘What happened to his conscience?’
Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has urged President Biden to “stop the ceaseless escalation” between the United States and Russia after he authorized the deployment of controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine.
“Last year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki referred to the deployment of cluster bombs as a ‘war crime.’ President Biden intends to dispatch them to Ukraine. Stop the never-ending escalation! “It is time for peace,” Kennedy tweeted.
“Biden was opposed to cluster bombs in 1982 as well, when he opposed their sale to Israel,” Kennedy, who announced his candidacy for President in April, wrote in a subsequent tweet. “What ever happened to his conscience?”
Kennedy’s comments come after the Biden administration said this week that its new aid package to Ukraine would include cluster munitions. Cluster munitions are bombs that, when fired, send out smaller explosives over a wide area. More than 100 countries have banned cluster bombs because they are known to kill or hurt people. Submunitions that don’t work often fall to the ground without firing, but they sometimes go off years after they were dropped.
Since the first attack by Russia in February 2022, Russia and Ukraine have used cluster bombs. Jake Sullivan, the national security director for the White House, said on Friday that civilians are at risk from cluster bombs. Still, he said that citizens would be in more danger if Kyiv didn’t have enough weapons to fight off Russia’s troops. The Pentagon’s “dud rate” for the weapons it sends to Ukraine is less than 3%.
In February 2022, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that if Russia used cluster bombs, it could be a “war crime.”
“There are rumors that the Russians are using cluster bombs and vacuum bombs in ways that are against the law. If that’s true, what should this government do next? One reporter asked, “Is there a red line for how much violence will be allowed against civilians in this way, which is against the law and could be a war crime?”
“It’s true—it would be true. I don’t have any proof that that’s true. We have heard about it. “If that was true, it might be a war crime,” Psaki said.
In a story released on Friday by the Washington Post, the paper talked about Biden’s “complicated history” on the issue of cluster bombs and how he has changed his mind about Israel’s use of the weapons over time.
Some Democrats in the House, like Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., were also worried about Biden’s plan to send cluster bombs to Ukraine.
In a statement, McCollum, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense panel, said that the move by the Biden administration to send cluster bombs to Ukraine was needless and a bad mistake. “After cluster bombs have been used, they leave pain, death, and expensive cleaning behind. The U.S. spends tens of millions of dollars yearly to eliminate Vietnam-era cluster bombs in Laos, which continue to kill and hurt people.
“As a strong supporter of the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine, I must say in the strongest possible terms that I absolutely oppose the U.S. transferring cluster munitions,” she said. “We shouldn’t send these weapons to Ukraine. Instead, we should get rid of them.”
