Three Blood-soaked Piles of Bullshit from the Biden Administration…
One Piercing Truth from BA

March 1, 2021 | revcom.us

 

On Thursday night, February 25, American warplanes dropped seven 500-pound bombs on buildings in Syria. The airstrike killed between one dozen and two dozen people who the U.S. said were part of an Iranian-backed militia network that allegedly targeted American military contractors in Iraq.

This airstrike has also been justified by no end of commentary from mainstream news that puts a very different spin—that is, bullshit—on what has gone down and what it means. So it’s important to call out some of the lies and hypocrisy—spoken, unspoken, and so-deeply-drilled-into-Americans-that-they-don’t-need-to-be-spoken—involved in this crime:

Bullshit #1: “The world needs the U.S. to enforce the law worldwide. ‘America is back’—and that’s a good thing.”

Really?

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, pointed this out:

“The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target state is responsible. None of those elements is met in the Syria strike.”

And by the way: why are American military contractors in Iraq?

These contractors are essentially American troops, “special forces,” and mercenaries who maintain a U.S. military “presence” in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq 18 years ago.¹ This U.S. war left hundreds of thousands dead and drove millions from their homes as refugees. And this staggering crime was justified by what was later admitted to be a total and utter lie, that Iraq was building chemical and/or nuclear weapons of mass destruction—a lie which many had called out before the invasion. A lie that justified this wanton invasion and was part of an enormous crime against humanity.

Bullshit #2: “Biden’s going to be much more reasonable with Iran than Trump was, but first he has to ‘show strength.’”

Biden and his foreign policy team have expressed interest in a new nuclear treaty with Iran. The previous one was signed by Obama, and broken by Trump, who instituted extremely harsh sanctions in the wake of this unilateral U.S. withdrawal. These sanctions have inflicted horrific suffering on the people of Iran, including with unnecessary deaths from lack of medical supplies, especially life-saving drugs and protective equipment in the time of COVID-19. In his first sit-down interview upon becoming President, Biden refused to offer any sanctions relief, using this as a bargaining tool instead against Iran’s reactionary regime.² This strike underlines that brutal, people-killing stance.

So this is Biden’s “opening”—an “opening” backed up by even more blackmail, threats and murder. This is the meaning of Biden’s “strength”—tightening the inhumane, cruel and murderous screws on the people of Iran.

Bullshit #3: “Biden will stand up for right against the Russians.”

Stand up for...whaaat?

A question for those who expressed their disgust with Trump by bringing their "Putin's Puppet" protest signs to anti-Trump demonstrations, as if the big problem was that Trump wasn’t “standing up” to Russia (a story incessantly propagated by the media, like Rachel Maddow on MSNBC): did you ever hear the saying “be careful what you wish for”?

The U.S. and Russia are both imperialist powers. The Middle East is a strategic part of the world—economically strategic for its oil reserves and militarily strategic for its location at the meeting point of Africa, Asia and Europe. The U.S. has dominated this area since World War 2, but other imperialist powers are challenging this. The 2003 invasion and years-long war against Iraq is just one crime among many that the U.S. has committed in its pursuit and defense of that domination—crimes that have taken the lives of literally millions in the last 70 years, driven millions more from their homes (making many of them permanent refugees), and forced hundreds of millions into living under horrifically repressive and brutal regimes that the U.S. backs. (To get even a beginning sense of these staggering crimes, go here and here.)

But Russia during the Trump years made inroads in this region, including vastly strengthening its influence in Iran, as did China. The U.S. under Biden intends to meet this challenge with a different mix of threat, violence and negotiation than Trump did; but they are still trying to dominate, like a criminal gang defending turf and still using violence as their “bottom line” argument.

Asked to choose between these two contending imperialist blocs, anyone with a conscience shouldn’t take a minute to say “they should both lose”!

The Truth That People Need to Confront

In this new situation, brought on by the ouster of Trump and the election of Biden, many will get taken in, deceived by—or deceive themselves with—the hope of easy progress, or at least “going back to normal.” To those we offer, from the New Year’s Statement by Bob Avakian: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity, the following hard, but liberating, truth:

There is no question that many of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration will be different than the blatant atrocities of the Trump/Pence regime, and things will definitely “feel different” with Biden and Harris, but the way they will try to “unite the country”—in line with the interests and requirements of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is something that no decent person should want, or be part of. In seeking to re-establish and reinforce “stability” at home, and to maintain the U.S. as the world’s number one oppressive power, Biden, Harris, and the Democrats (as well as other “mainstream” institutions, such as the New York Times and CNN), will make determined attempts to keep the masses of people who have righteously hated the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime, and who aspire to a more just world, firmly tied to this system—restricting their political vision, and activity, within the confines of this system, preventing them from acting in their own fundamental interests and those of humanity as a whole.

 

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1. For more on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the aftermath, see these articles in the revcom.us American Crime series:

* November 2004—War Crime Fallujah

* “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 2003

* The Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs and the Persecution of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks  [back]

2. Asked whether he would lift sanctions to get Iran back to the negotiating table, Biden replied “no.” See “Biden says Iran must return to negotiating table before U.S. lifts sanctions,” CNBC, 2/7/21.  [back]

A satellite image of an Iraq-Syria border crossing after the U.S. airstrike this week. Photo: AP