Rand Paul Is Right on Sending
No More Weapons to Ukraine
David Swanson / Let’s Try Democracy

(September 20, 2023) — As with every single other elected official in Washington, DC, Senator Rand Paul is someone with whom I passionately disagree on almost everything. Ceasing to send weapons to Ukraine is not one of those things.

Paul calls it “aid” and does not distinguish piles of deadly weapons from the possibility of sending purely humanitarian aid. He’s against sending anything at all. But he’s right that this “aid” is meant to perpetuate a deadly, endless, hopeless quagmire that risks nuclear war.

He thinks debts and deficits are the worst things possible. I think nuclear apocalypse and climate collapse are the worst things possible. But cutting off the funding for the war answers all of these things.

He wants to focus on one little country, the United States. I want to work for the good of the whole world. But destroying another country is different from aiding it; and I want this ended just as he does.

Paul is right that many of the weapons end up getting sold to other parts of the world. Even worse, I think, many of them end up getting immediately used as intended.

Paul is right that a nation that has canceled elections and banned opposition parties and censored journalism — and I would add prosecuted peace activists — is not a democracy for which one can wage a “war for democracy.”

But is the United States such a thing? Paul cites the CNN poll finding a majority in the US wanting just what he’s proposing. And virtually the entire rest of the Congress is dead set against listening. The “progressive” caucus retracted a timid little meaningless letter and falsely blamed a staff person for publishing it. The war for democracy is more important to Congress than democracy. It’s not even close.

Rand Paul Criticizes US Arms Sales in 2016