US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has once again made the Sunday news show rounds with the purpose of defending the administration in the wake of Biden's controversial approval of cluster munitions for Ukraine. Initial shipments of thousands of cluster bombs have already been received by Kiev, according to reports.
Speaking to NBC News, Sullivan rejected the notion that Washington is losing "moral authority" in providing the weapon system which is banned by more than 120 countries due to its indiscriminate nature and higher chance that it will kill civilians, possibly even for years to come (given unexploded bomblets often remain in the ground).
Sullivan with a straight face defended the supposedly untarnished "moral authority" of America, based on the mere fact of supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
"Our moral authority and Ukraine’s moral authority in this conflict comes from the fact that we are supporting a country under brutal, vicious attack by its neighbor with missiles and bombs raining down on its cities, killing its civilians, destroying its schools, its churches, its hospitals," Sullivan told host Chuck Todd.
"And the idea that providing Ukraine with a weapon in order for them to be able to defend their homeland, protect their civilians is somehow a challenge to our moral authority, I find questionable."
Watch the exchange below:
President Biden has meanwhile admitted that a prime factor in the decision to provide cluster munitions arose from severe artillery shortages, both in Pentagon stockpiles and within the Ukrainian arsenal. But the US has plenty of cluster bombs, which have been stockpiled for decades.
Another interesting angle to the interview is that Sullivan has once again resurrected the old Russiagate-related talking points to preemptively smear whichever GOP candidate for 2024 emerges - and it's looking increasingly likely it'll be Trump. Sullivan told NBC that Putin can't 'bet' on the 2024 US presidential election to further his aims.
Meanwhile, for documentation of America's recent 'dark history' of cluster munition use on foreign battlefields...
Just a reminder US soldiers have been killed by US cluster bomblets that basically created a minefield on the ground in Iraq. But don’t worry when we give them to Ukraine they will be careful. https://t.co/0oxK5t6LeR
— Rachael (@Rachael_wv) July 8, 2023
