Afghanistan All Over Again? US Lawmakers Fret Over Accounting of Weapons Biden Sending to Ukraine
21:08 GMT 02.06.2022 (Updated: 17:06 GMT 20.04.2023)
© AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky
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Amid the billions in weapons being shipped to Ukraine, Washington has settled for pledges of “accountability” from Kiev, including that it won’t use the weapons to attack Russian soil, although the Pentagon has no way of knowing if Ukraine is keeping its word.
Since Russia launched the special operation in Ukraine on February 24, the US has pledged a total of $23.9 billion in military aid to Ukraine - nearly nine times what it sent to Ukraine in the entire period between February 2014, when the US-backed coup seized power in Kiev, and February 2022.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Ukraine spent just $5.9 billion on its military in 2021.
As a result, some US lawmakers from opposite ends of the political spectrum are demanding more robust accountability of the money and equipment being sent to Ukraine, wary of the debacle that unfolded in the US’ 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a conservative known for opposing big spending bills, stalled the $40 billion aid package until a provision creating a government watchdog for its spending was added. Meanwhile, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to Pentagon comptroller Michael J. McCord that was obtained by Politico in which she urged him to comprehensively tally the spending.
Warren told the outlet on Thursday that a full accounting would be “critically important for both past and future funding requests.”
“The US government is sending billions in humanitarian, economic, and military assistance to help the Ukrainian people overcome Putin’s brutal war, and the American people expect strong oversight by Congress and full accounting from the Department of Defense,” she said.
Warren said that the Pentagon already owes the Senate Armed Services Committee, on which she sits, “several years” worth of spending reports, adding that she was “getting sick of the run-around here” and that the Pentagon “has not complied with the law.”
Members of the 17th Fires Brigade from Ft. Lewis fire two High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) rockets simultaneously in a training exercise at Yakima Training Center Nov. 1, 2007 in Yakima, Wash.
© AP Photo / The News Tribune, Peter Haley
The Pentagon on Wednesday laid out the contents of a $700 million tranche of weapons promised by US President Joe Biden earlier this week, which includes HIMARS rocket artillery, Mi-17 helicopters once destined for Afghanistan, radars, anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery rounds and other items.
As a result of Paul’s demands, the $40 billion spending bill passed in May - only half of which is military aid - includes increased oversight, including requiring the Pentagon inspector general’s office to review how the Department of Defense spends the money given to it, and for the Defense and State Departments to report to Congress about their own accounting mechanisms.
Paul’s and Warren’s anxieties about waste stem from the disastrous US war in Afghanistan, a 20-year debacle that cost the US some $2.26 trillion and saw billions of dollars wasted, despite the regular pleading of the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko. However, a Reuters investigation in 2013 found another $8.5 trillion of appropriations since 1996 not accounted for by the Pentagon.
Despite the expense, which included weapons given to the US-backed Afghan government as well as funding the Afghan military and police forces’ payrolls and civil reconstruction efforts, the US-backed government crumbled before a Taliban* offensive in August 2021, several weeks before US forces were scheduled to leave the country, and the very government the US invaded Afghanistan to overthrow returned to power.
When asked about accountability and Washington’s record of waste on Thursday, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told Politico “Ukraine is a different story” because its military is well-trained.
“Obviously, we always have to be on the lookout, but this is not the same scenario that we have in the past,” Gallego said. “There have been agreements between our governments about [some of the weapons’] usage. And I believe so far Ukraine has abided by all of them.”
