Politics
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January 17, 2025
It’s not simply the Gaza genocide. It’s his a long time of warmongering within the Center East.
Joe Biden coughs as he delivers remarks on the Division of Labor on December 16, 2024.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Pictures)
As his presidency staggers to an in depth, the query of Joe Biden’s “legacy” is hanging closely within the air. Though he’s ending his time period as a deeply unpopular determine who paved the way in which for Donald Trump’s return to the White Home, some liberal politicians and pundits are attempting as exhausting as they will to have fun his time in workplace.
“By any goal commonplace…he was an excellent president whose accomplishments will profit the nation for a few years to come back,” The Washington Submit’s Eugene Robinson insisted lately. Vice President Kamala Harris stated Biden’s “legacy of accomplishment over the previous three years is unmatched in trendy historical past,” and that “in a single time period, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who’ve served two phrases in workplace.”
Biden, too, is touting his supposed achievements. In a speech about his overseas coverage legacy on Monday, he stated that he was “leaving the subsequent administration with a really sturdy hand to play” on the world stage.
For tens of millions of Arab Individuals, these statements make us query if we’ve been dwelling in an alternate universe. That’s as a result of, to them, Biden’s legacy will probably be outlined by one factor and one factor solely: his assist for the genocide in Gaza, and his bloody historical past within the Center East extra typically, which stretches again a long time.
Biden constantly harmed Arabs and Muslims by way of his overseas coverage selections lengthy earlier than he was president. In October 2002, whereas serving as chair of the Senate International Relations Committee, he joined 76 different senators in authorizing using navy drive in Iraq.
In an op-ed for The New York Instances, he repeated false claims by the Bush administration that the one solution to cease Saddam Hussein’s “relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” was to go to battle with Iraq.
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Biden confirmed no humility when these lies unraveled. In October 2004, he informed the Council on International Relations that he “by no means believed that they had weapons of mass destruction.” He then tried to backtrack on his assist for the battle in November of 2005, calling it a “ mistake,” however solely after greater than 39,332 civilians had been killed in Iraq. In 2006, he floated a daft plan to divide Iraq into three zones which the media dubbed “Shiastan, Sunnistan, and Kurdistan.”
As a senator in 2001, Biden additionally voted in favor of the US invasion of Afghanistan and issued statements supporting the extension of worldwide navy drive in Kabul. Twenty years later, after his disastrously dealt with troop withdrawal in 2021, he would go on to lie once more, stating: “I’ve been in opposition to that battle in Afghanistan from the very starting.”
As vice chairman, Biden bolstered the Obama administration’s efforts to make Individuals comfy with drone strikes. Based on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there have been 10 instances as many air strikes within the Warfare on Terror” throughout the Obama-Biden years than throughout the Bush administration. They launched extra air strikes of their first yr in workplace than Bush carried out throughout his complete presidency.
The air marketing campaign led by Obama and supported by Biden destroyed life in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan and led to mass civilian casualties—regardless of their claims that their drone strikes had been “ exceptionally surgical and exact.”
Whereas serving as vice chairman, Biden stood behind Obama as he launched his first strike on Yemen, which was catastrophic. Commanders claimed they had been focusing on Al Qaeda—as a substitute, they hit a tribe with cluster munitions killing 55 individuals, together with 21 kids and 5 pregnant girls.
Biden’s years as vice chairman will probably be remembered by Arab and Muslim Individuals as a few of the deadliest for our households again residence, with 582 civilians reportedly killed on common yearly from 2007 to 2016—an period that largely encompassed his tenure. In 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs throughout seven international locations: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
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Now, whereas liberals are scrambling to discover a solution to glorify Biden for his home coverage selections, they should do not forget that for Arab Individuals, he’ll eternally be remembered because the Butcher of Gaza, because of his political, navy, and monetary assist for Israel’s genocidal marketing campaign.
In only one yr, from October 2023 to 2024, Biden despatched a report quantity of navy support—not less than $17.9 billion—to Israel, from precision-guided munitions to artillery shells to 2,000-pound bombs. Moreover, he used American taxpayer {dollars} to fund a $4 billion replenishment of Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile protection methods. The weapons transfers he signed off on had been utilized in horrific massacres in each Palestine and Lebanon that worldwide organizations like Amnesty Worldwide have stated violated each worldwide and US legislation and amounted to the crime of genocide.
On Could 26, Ahmad Al-Najar, solely 18 months outdated, was decapitated when Israel struck the tents of displaced Palestinians within the Tal al-Sultan space of Rafah. The video of Al-Najar’s headless physique shocked the world. “I noticed the our bodies of my spouse Faten, and daughter Huda, my son Arkan and my child Ahmad,” his father Abdul Hafez informed Al Jazeera. “I used to be informed he was headless; I simply peeked contained in the physique bag and noticed his physique with out a head, and I couldn’t stand to see it anymore.”
The weapon used to kill Al-Najar’s household, induced his son’s decapitation, burned down tents, killed 45 Palestinian refugees, and injured 200 others, was recognized by an explosives professional as an American-made munition. This occurred weeks after Biden claimed that he wouldn’t enable any extra US weapons for use in a serious offensive in Rafah.
Biden repeatedly ignored his constituents once they begged for him to name for a ceasefire. As an alternative, he repeated the weird assertion that “if Israel didn’t exist there isn’t a Jew on this planet that will be protected” (implying that the nation he’s in command of isn’t a protected area for Jewish individuals) and constantly lied about his supposed “crimson strains” for Israel. (It’s essential to notice that Western media was completely instrumental in washing the blood off Biden’s fingers.)
On January 15, Biden stood at a podium, flanked by fellow genocide enablers Kamala Harris and Antony Blinken, and introduced {that a} ceasefire deal had been reached between Israel and Hamas. As anticipated, Biden took credit score for securing the deal, even though the phrases had been virtually precisely the identical because the deal put forth within the spring of 2024. Again then, he had burdened that this was “the Israeli proposal,” however now, days earlier than leaving workplace, he was insisting that the deal was “the precise framework I proposed again in Could. Actual.”
Whereas he walked away from the press convention, a reporter yelled out a blunt query that has been on everybody’s thoughts: “Who do you suppose deserves credit score for this, Mr. President: you or [Donald] Trump?”
“Is {that a} joke?” the president requested, with a smug expression. However one of the vital latest headlines from The Instances of Israel reads: “Arab officers: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu extra in a single assembly than Biden did all yr.” And in line with The Guardian’s supply on the Pentagon, the ceasefire was “pushed by Trump’s crew…and Biden, Blinken and the entire administration secured its legacy as enablers.”
Throughout the first month of the genocide, creator Omar El Akkad wrote on X: “At some point, when it’s protected, when there’s no private draw back to calling a factor what it’s, when it’s too late to carry anybody accountable, everybody could have all the time been in opposition to this.” We will already see how persons are making an attempt to rewrite historical past, however Palestinians had been severe once we stated we’d always remember, and by no means forgive.
We are going to keep in mind the way in which Biden walked away when his constituents begged for a ceasefire; we are going to keep in mind the lies he informed that led to the slaughter of over 17,400 kids; and we are going to do not forget that in considered one of his closing acts in workplace, he signed off on $8 billion extra for Israel so it might do its finest to complete off the genocide.
There isn’t any manner I’d ever be capable of summarize each demise sentence that Biden signed in Gaza. There isn’t any solution to encapsulate the horrors he perpetrated throughout his political profession and condense them in a neat abstract like Biden’s allies have tried to do along with his “accomplishments.” I can’t even maintain observe of all of the lies he’s informed the American public.
Finally, there is no such thing as a “win” for us in Biden’s retirement. Orphans in Gaza should develop up figuring out that the person answerable for killing their dad and mom obtained to reside out the remainder of his days peacefully on some huge property in Delaware. The hundreds caught beneath the rubble, the new child infants that froze to demise, the entire moms who sobbed at their kids’s graves—he won’t ever should confront any of it. There’ll by no means be any semblance of justice right here. Some would possibly see a “ towering” or “brave” determine once they have a look at Biden. All I see is an never-ending path of blood.
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