Let’s send every available surplus US weapon to Ukraine

On September 3 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a decision, which I may surprise you to know, actually bears on what we’re trying to do with Ukraine. You know, Britain by September of 1940, was in desperate trouble. The Germans had occupied Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France, and seem to be preparing to try to invade Britain. The British were out of ships. They were in a situation when they were losing ships their power on a regular basis. And Winston Churchill for months, had begged President Roosevelt to find a way to help them.

They finally found 50 used destroyers. That’s right. destroyer is built for World War One over 20 years old. But sitting there and available. And Roosevelt on September 3 said, we’re going to give the British these 50 destroyers, in return for having a land lease agreement to occupy a series of islands and build naval bases on British territories. Those 50 destroyers played a major role in winning World War Two in saving Britain from a potential German invasion. And why does that matter today? Because the United States has a lot of surplus weapons that could be sent to Ukraine. At no cost. We’re in the process. I’ve been told of the mobilizing 100 IMRs artillery systems that will be perfectly useful, and an enormous asset to Ukraine. Now, why is it happening like this? I think there are two reasons. The bureaucracy and the Pentagon is a very complicated, frankly, self serving system that has massive red tape, and very, very limited ability to be agile. And they just haven’t thought it through. Second, the lobbyists have a game going, we’re going to pass money for Ukraine. But the money by the way, is not going to go to Ukraine. The money’s going to go to American manufacturers, were going to build new weapons, which are going to go to the Pentagon, for the Pentagon sends old weapons to Ukraine. So I think there’s probably a problem that if we were to suddenly say, what if we just took all the weapons that we were going to demobilize that we didn’t need anymore, that were surplus, and gave them to Ukraine, because it’s not costing us anything, these are weapons we’re not going to use, then that wouldn’t be weapons that would lead to money going back to the American manufacturers. So you’re not going to find any defense lobbyists, eagerly out there saying, Gosh, this would be a really smart thing to do. Good for the American taxpayer. Good for the Ukrainians, really bad for Putin and Russia. And yet, what I think should happen is we should survey first of all, how many weapons have been demobilized in the last two years that could have gone to Ukraine? My guess is it’s an amazing number, and would have made Ukraine much stronger, save Ukrainian lives, and forced the Russians to really rethink what they’re doing. But let’s start right now. We can’t go back and relive the last two years. Let’s make a ground rule that we’re going to make sure that every available surplus weapon goes to Ukraine. It doesn’t go to some graveyard and as used at no cost to the American taxpayer to help defeat Putin.