Winston Churchill is credited with saying \u201cNever let a good crisis go to waste\u201d in the mid-1940s as the world approached the end of WW 2. Churchill was supposedly referring to the alliance between himself, Stalin and Roosevelt in their defeat of the Nazis, promoting the idea that it is possible to create opportunities in the midst of a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modernly, this idea has been flipped on its head as propagandists and warmongers use it to promote their agendas. Nowhere is this more evident than in the jingoism surrounding the war in the Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House passed a \u201cUkraine Aid\u201d package yesterday. It includes $6 billion for security assistance, including training, equipment, weapons and support; $8.7 billion to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine, and $3.9 billion for European Command operations. In addition, the legislation authorizes a further $11 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to authorize the transfer of weapons and \u201cservices\u201d (read intelligence info and U.S. advisers in this proxy war against the world\u2019s largest nuclear power) from U.S. stocks without congressional approval<\/em> in response to an emergency. Biden had asked for $5 billion. It also authorizes $4 billion in Foreign Military Financing to provide support for Ukraine and other countries affected by the crisis. [emphasis mine]<\/p>\n\n\n\n This bill is a payoff to U.S. arms manufacturers. That\u2019s why it was rushed to the floor for a vote in the House before our representatives could even read the bill. This is how \u201cour democracy\u201d works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is how the great Glenn Greenwald puts it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are \u2014 particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict\/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.The amounts allocated thus far \u2014 the new Biden request of $33 billion combined with the $14 billion already spent \u2014 already exceed the average annual amount the U.S. spent for its own war in Afghanistan ($46 billion)….<\/p> \u201cWhile Washington depicts Russia as some sort of grave and existential menace to the US, the reality is that the US spends more than ten times on its military what Russia spends on its military each year….<\/p> \u201cWhile it is extremely difficult to isolate any benefit to ordinary American citizens from all of this, it requires no effort to see that there is a tiny group of Americans who do benefit greatly from this massive expenditure of funds. That is the industry of weapons manufacturers. So fortunate are they that the White House has met with them on several occasions to urge them to expand their capacity to produce sophisticated weapons so that the U.S. government can buy them in massive quantities.\u201d<\/p>https:\/\/greenwald.substack.com\/p\/biden-wanted-33b-more-for-ukraine?s=r<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Here is what Chip Roy (R, Texas) thought of the methods used to bring the bill to the House floor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n