The true face of Joe Biden and his team

Par Qassam Muaddi

Much better could be expected than Biden’s foreign policy team to wish the world peace in the New Year.

Biden’s election has so far been celebrated by Democrats as heralding a return to sanity in American politics. Trump’s foreign policy of withdrawing from international cooperation agreements, fostering antagonisms, and escalating tensions with China, North Korea and Iran, has given the rest of the world hope that the next American president would not start a new war.

Ironically, Trump did not trigger one. Although he came very close to doing so with the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, his policy in the world and in the Middle East in particular has been a policy of withdrawal, both political and military.

Obama’s record, on the contrary, is marred by great belligerence. With his drone program and interventions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and sub-Saharan Africa, Obama has overseen ten times as many airstrikes as George W. Bush, dropping 26 171 bombs in 2016 alone, killing hundreds of civilians.

In the same vein, we note the destruction of Libya and a large participation in the destruction of Syria, two military operations largely responsible for the refugee crisis in 2015. But Obama was not alone. He was assisted by a top-flight team: his two successive defense secretaries, Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and his vice-president, now president-elect, Joe Biden.

One foot in the Pentagon, the other in the arms industry

Biden has now finished choosing his own team, which will take office soon, and when it comes to world peace, that choice does not look very promising. To begin with, Biden chose General Lloyd Austin for the post of Secretary of Defense. Austin is on the board of directors of Raytheon Technologies, a mega-weapons maker that enjoys huge contracts with the Pentagon.

Until last October, Austin owned half a million dollars in shares of Raytheon, which is also one of the biggest arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia which has been bombing Yemen heavily since 2015. This war is destroying the country. Yemen and caused a serious humanitarian crisis, not to mention the countless war crimes committed by the Saudis against civilians. Austin’s appointment to this post not only places him in a conflict of interest, but it dramatically diminishes the chances of ending the Saudi war in Yemen.

Bombing and Anti-Russia Policy Advisor

On a related note, Biden chose Jake Sullivan as his national security adviser. Sullivan was Hillary Clinton’s advisor when she was Secretary of State under the Obama administration. He lobbied for the US to intervene in Libya and supported the intervention in Syria. In her memoir, “Hard Choices,” Hillary Clinton wrote of Sullivan: “He was always on my side.”

But he doesn’t just pass his advice on to American officials like Clinton. Sullivan is also a member of the advisory board of the “Alliance for the Security of Democracy,” a transatlantic, anti-Russian think tank that campaigns against Russian bots and what he sees as Russian propaganda against Western democracies. . Now he’ll be able to whisper in Biden’s ear his warmongering anti-Russian recommendations.

Drones, Torture Cover-Up and Arms Industry Money

Then comes Avril Haines, Biden’s choice for the post of director of national intelligence. Haines, who started her career as a bookstore owner because she dreamed of a hip life, worked in government early on. In just over a decade, she became deputy director of the CIA under Obama, where she worked to put in place the legal framework for Obama’s drone program that killed hundreds of civilians.

Then, in 2015, Ms Haines was tasked with deciding whether CIA personnel would be sanctioned for hacking into Senate computers and destroying evidence of American torture while the Senate worked on preparing its torture report. Haines decided that they should not be punished, and she arranged for the protection of the personnel involved.

Haines is also a consultant for Palantir Technologies, a data mining company accused of helping the Trump administration set up the infamous immigrant detention program. In addition, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for New American Security. A think tank on security and defense policies, funded by large arms companies like Lokheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Selling war to the Senate and war material to the Pentagon

But the most disturbing of all Biden’s appointments is that of his next secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state under Obama. Not only is he a staunch supporter of military intervention in Libya and Syria, but he has also praised the Saudi campaign in Yemen, despite all its war crimes and the humanitarian crisis that continues to worsen.

Blinken’s enthusiasm for overseas military operations dates back to at least 2003. That year, Blinken was foreign policy adviser to Senator Joe Biden, when he voted for the war in Iraq. At the time, Blinken played a key role in gaining support for the war from the Senate Democrats.

Today, Antony Blinken is one of the founding shareholders of the consulting firm WestExec Advisors, established in 2017.

Read the full news https://www.en24news.com/129642/2021/01/the-true-face-of-joe-biden-and-his-team.html

The company offers, according to its own website, “Unique geopolitical and political expertise to help business leaders make the best decisions in a complex and unstable international landscape ”, using:“ networks of excellence in the fields of defense, foreign policy, intelligence, economy, cybersecurity, confidentiality of data and strategic communications ”.

Which means in plain language, according to the Government Oversight Project: “help defense companies market their products to the Pentagon and other agencies.” WestExec provides advisory services to various clients, with whom the company signs non-disclosure agreements. Some of his clients are known all the same.

One of them is Shield AI, an Israeli military artificial intelligence and drone surveillance company. This is all the more significant given that Biden has always been in favor of military aid to Israel and has pledged to continue it.

An interventionist team

Generally speaking, the new Biden foreign policy team is characterized by a mixture of radical interventionist and militarist visions, arms lobbying, conflicts of interest, and collusion between the various public and private sectors of commerce. of the war.

As Democrats hasten to forget the Trump era, characterized by a strategic, especially military, withdrawal from the Middle East, Biden appears to have assembled a team to counter the effects of Trump’s withdrawal, with its antidote correct: more interventionism.

An interventionism that has proven destructive and catastrophic for millions of people, from Libya to Afghanistan, via Palestine, each US external intervention leaving behind an uninterrupted succession of cities and towns in ashes, including the rubble barely had time to cool before the next expedition arrived.

January 1, 2021 – Quds News – Translation: Chronicle of Palestine – Dominique Muselet