By Matt
Joe Biden has been in office for a staggering 48 years. In that time he has been instrumental in making mass incarceration, near-total surveillance, bank bailouts, and endless wars part of the American landscape. If anyone in the current political scene embodies the establishment it is Joe Biden.
Before supposedly being elected President, Joe Biden served as Obama’s Vice President. In those years he presided over many wars (as well as coups in Honduras and Ukraine, supporting sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, and meddling in elections in Macedonia and Egypt) which continue to rage today. While the current mainstream discourse continues to focus in on all-things COVID, the military-industrial-complex rolls on completely unabated.
James Evan Pilato over at Media Monarchy often quips that Obama, and therefore Joe Biden, added five wars to Bush’s two. So, let’s take a quick look back at where Biden’s seven wars started all those years ago and where they are today.
AFGHANISTAN
Like the Trump and Obama administrations before him, Biden has announced an end to the military mission in Afghanistan. The administration set themselves the deadline of August 31, 2021 to have all troops out of the country while additional NATO forces will depart the graveyard of empires by September 11, 2021.
The framing of this so-called withdrawal makes it appear that after 20 years of death and destruction, the occupation of Afghanistan is finally ending. This is, of course, not true.
While there will most definitely be a reduction in the U.S. military’s presence in the country, there will still be troops in Kabul to protect the U.S. embassy and the diplomats who work there as well as a “shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats.” Currently, there are approximately 18,000 contractors operating in Afghanistan; and as of May, private contractors like Triple Canopy, Raytheon, and BAE Systems are continue to hire for new positions. Additionally, the CIA has no plans to discontinue its activities in the country. This is presumably true of the NSA and other intelligence agencies with personnel in the country. Beyond the borders of Afghanistan the U.S. also continues to operate a constellation of bases and military installations that allow for continued operations in the country even if there were ever to be no boots on the ground.
With the deadline for withdrawal looming, chaos is already erupting in Afghanistan as the Taliban seizes territory and civil war continues. This was inevitable for many reasons but, perhaps most strategically, this situation always leaves the door open for the Biden administration, or any other regime in the future, to bring troops back just as quickly as they left.
Joe Biden voted in favor of the war in Afghanistan.
IRAQ
History is also repeating itself in Iraq. Like the Trump and Obama administrations before him, Biden has announced an end to the military mission in the country after a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in July.
Again, the public is being told that after 18 years of death and destruction the occupation of Iraq is finally ending. This is, of course, not true yet again. The International Business Times reports that not all troops will actually be withdrawn, which violates the resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament in 2020 that called for the expulsion of U.S. troops from the country. As is the case in Afghanistan, thousands of contractors will also remain in the country for the foreseeable future and intelligence spooks continue to meddle in local affairs.
Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the perfect bogeyman exists in Iraq (and Syria) in the form of ISIS. The terrorist group is still active in the country; and since the group was the creation of the U.S. and its allies they can always be called upon to usher in a new reign of terror should Uncle Sam want his men back in the country.
Joe Biden voted in favor of the Iraq War and was one of the loudest proponents for occupying the Middle Eastern nation.
PAKISTAN
Over the years, the war in Pakistan has often mentioned in conjunction with Afghanistan as if it was just one big battleground, which is largely how it was officially treated. Action in Pakistan was largely centered around drone operations, and during Biden’s time as VP almost 400 drone strikes killing over 2,800 people were carried out. The last strike was reportedly carried out in 2018.
There was little military action in Pakistan under Trump, and things remain quiet under Biden as they try and play nice with the government there in an attempt to counter China’s influence in the region. It’s yet to be revealed whether or not the $25 million that was given to Pakistan for “democracy programs” and “gender programs” was useful in this geopolitical game.
YEMEN
In his first foreign policy address in February of this year, Biden announced that, “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” The U.S. envoy for Yemen has met with Saudi and Yemeni officials several times this year in order to broker a ceasefire but all attempts to get the Saudis to end their blockades, something the Houthis say is a prerequisite to ending the fighting, have failed.
While Vice President, Biden had seemingly no issue with arming the Saudis in their relentless campaign to reduce Yemen to rubble. In their eight years in office, Biden and the rest of the Obama administration sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
While negotiations are ongoing, those U.S.-supplied weapons continue to be used in battle and the Biden administration has taken almost silent. Somewhat recently, on July 1st, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price actually blamed the Houthi forces in Yemen and their comparatively minor attacks on Saudi Arabia for “exacerbating the humanitarian crisis faced by the people of Yemen.” Victim blaming in Washington knows almost no bounds.
While we hope to see an end to this situation as soon as possible, we do not hold our breath waiting on Joe Biden’s administration to play an active role.
SOMALIA
While the Biden administration was busy declaring an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they were equally busy attacking Somalia. On July 20, a drone strike was carried out in the north of the country. A second strike in the area followed three days later, and yet another strike was carried out on August 1.
The scope of U.S. military operations in Somalia are not nearly as robust as in Iraq or Afghanistan. Activity in the country had been quite quiet under Trump who had removed most of the 700 troops stationed there and relocated them to Djibouti and Kenya. The Biden administration is currently weighing whether or not they will send troops back into the country. If not, the CIA’s torture site in Mogadishu, which was built the Obama/Biden administration, can continue to operate should troops not return.
LIBYA
The NATO-led mission to rid Libya of Muammar Gaddafi turned one of the most prosperous countries on the African continent into a failed state complete with thriving slave markets. “We came, we saw, he died,” as Hilary Clinton famously cackled years after the country had been laid to waste.
Biden, for his part, thought that “NATO got it right” on their mission by saving the U.S. tax payer money in their efforts to rid Libya of its gold and silver reserves among other objectives. In 2016, Biden claimed to have not supported the attacks on Libya. In the years since, the situation in Libya has improved but it is still largely a failed state in the midst of a civil war. If Biden really claimed to have not supported regime change in Libya then his election was his chance to help uplift the country’s trajectory.
So what did he do upon taking office? Filled his cabinet with the same people who helped destroy the country.
His Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was adamant about attacking Libya. His Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, was one of the architects of the Obama administration’s drone assassination program which continues to be used in Libya today. Current head of the United States Agency for International Development Samantha Power was, alongside Susan Rice and Hilary Clinton, the loudest cheerleader for destroying Libya and continued to defend the decision to strike the country years after the damage was done. Neera Tanden, a senior advisor to Joe Biden, once argued that Libyans should be forced to repay the U.S. for their attacks on the nation via venue from oil sales.
The worst of the NATO-led decimation of Libya may be over but nobody should expect an apology from any member of NATO, especially Joe Biden’s administration.
SYRIA
With Libya in ruins the war mongers in Washington were able to swoop in and exploit the crisis they helped create. Almost as soon as the country fell into disarray the CIA were running weapons from Libya to Syria and into the hands of the terrorists they were supporting.
The convoluted war has now raged through three presidential administrations. Along the way there were false flag chemical attacks, expertly crafted propaganda constructs, and, of course, countless pain and suffering among the Syrian people. But with help from Russia, Iran, and the Syrian people, the Assad government has managed to stay intact throughout this conflict and remains in the crosshairs of the Biden administration. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there is not even a pretense of American troops leaving Syria.
There it is. Though this barely touches on the true global footprint of the U.S. military, it is clear that war machine remains more or less as intact and as ravenous as it was before the world went into a panic over a manufactured pandemic. If all we continue to focus on is the minutia of a phony crisis then we will never see an end to these horrible wars.
It’s imperative that we begin reconnecting dots. If we do, we can stop just debating about how much graphene oxide is in vaccines and start talking about how it can be used to aid in the enslavement of humanity. If we can stop arguing about who’s taken a shot and who hasn’t then maybe we can find common ground in halting wars. If we can scale back the actions of the world’s largest polluter, the U.S. military, we can make a real impact on aiding the planet’s well-being. If we can refuse vaccine passports then we can refuse all the technology that is to be ushered in as part of the fourth industrial revolution and reclaim the future that is free from all of these shackles.
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