Friday, April 3, 2020

Hawk Democrat Joe Biden's Pre-2010 Record On Foreign Policy Issues Revisited


Most U.S. peace movement and anti-imperialist/anti-war left movement supporters in the United States opposed the Democratic Clinton administration's decision to militarily attack people in Serbia in 1999 and the Republican Bush II-Cheney administration's decision to militarily attack and occupy Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Yet former U.S. Vice-President and 2020 candidate for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination, Multi-Millionaire Joe Biden, supported the decision of the U.S. power elite's government officials to use its Pentagon war machine to attack Serbia in 1999, to attack Afghanistan in 2001 and to attack and occupy Iraq in 2003, when he was a U.S. Senator.

As Jules Witcover recalled in his 2010-published Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption book:

"With [Bill] Clinton assuming the presidency in early 1993, Biden...called for NATO air strikes on Serb positions...Biden joined his Delaware Republican colleague, Senator William Roth, in calling on NATO to bomb the Serbian heavy artillery...To Biden's chagrin, Milosevic remained Yugoslavia's...leader...In March 1999 Biden introduced a resolution in the Senate authorizing Clinton to take action...and with Clinton's approval NATO air strikes began. At one point Clinton told Biden he was considering halting the bombing, but Biden urged him otherwise...Biden continued to make trips to the Balkans, insisting that Milosevic be seized and turned over...for trial as the war criminal Biden had proclaimed him to be...

"...The Foreign Relations Committee [Joe Biden] moved quickly to demonstrate his solidarity with Bush administration in its response to...9/11. In October [2001] he [Biden] called Secretary of State [Colin] Powell before the committee and lauded him and the president...In early January [2002] he flew to the war zone...On leaving Kabul, Biden...emphasized that in his view U.S. participation in a multinational military force was essential to restore order against the Taliban, not simply as a peacekeeper but `with orders to shoot to kill. Absent that,' he said, `I don't see any hope for this country.'...

"...Biden held full Foreign Relations Committee hearings on July 31 [2002] and August 1 [2002]...Biden, in opening the hearings, seemed to accept the idea that the Iraqi dictator had the fearful weapons [of mass destruction]...Biden said, `These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.'...

"...House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt persuaded his Senate counterpart, Tom Daschle, to urge fellow Democrats to vote for the Bush use-of-force resolution in October [2002], providing a congressional green light for the eventual invasion of Iraq...On October 10, 2002, the Bush war resolution passed the House, 296-133, and the next day the Senate, 77-23, with Biden voting for it...Biden then joined Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's eventual 2004 presidential nominee, and Senator Hillary Clinton of New York...in voting for the Bush resolution on the same dubious grounds...Biden resisted the notion, raised in the fall [of 2005] by Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, for an immediate drawdown of American forces in Iraq. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Biden said...`the hard truth is that our large military presence in Iraq is necessary.'...When liberal Democrats in Congress in 2007 sought to cut off funding for the war...Biden refused to use denial of funding as a tool to end the war..."

And as a U.S. Vice-President between 2009 and 2017, "Biden's recommendation...was a key ingredient in Obama's initial decision in his first few weeks as president to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan [in 2009]...," according to the same book.

Despite his pre-2010 record of pushing for and/or supporting morally wrong and militaristic White House foreign policy decisions prior to 2010 that violated the UN Charter, international law and the Nuremberg Accords, the 77-year-old Hawk Democrat Biden apparently still believes he's morally qualified to try to continue to position himself to become president of the United States on January 20, 2021. Yet, ironically, as Jules Witcover observed in his 2020 Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption book:

"According to an interview with Newsweek...Biden...told Obama [in 2008], `The good news is that, I'm 65 and you're not going to have to worry about my positioning myself to be president...'"

Perhaps the now multi-millionaire former U.S. president Obama-- whose Hawk Democratic administration initially escalated U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, continued to militarily occupy Iraq, waged drone war in Pakistan, waged war for regime change in Libya and initiated a covert war for regime change in Syria between 2009 and 2017--might not be worrying about Biden now attempting to position himself "to be president" in 2021?

But, given Joe Biden's pre-2010 record on foreign policy issues, U.S. peace movement and anti-war/anti-imperialist left activists should, perhaps, be worrying now about what kind of foreign policy decisions Hawk Democrat Biden will make if he moves into the White House oval office on January 20, 2021?

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