{"id":246856,"date":"2023-10-30T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=246856"},"modified":"2023-10-25T06:59:47","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T05:59:47","slug":"joe-bidens-armageddon-from-gaza-to-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/joe-bidens-armageddon-from-gaza-to-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden\u2019s Armageddon, from Gaza to Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House newly prioritizes hegemony over humanity.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

24 Oct 2023 – <\/em>At a private Manhattan fundraiser one year ago this month, President Joe Biden shared an assessment that he had not told the public. From his vantage point, Biden told the room of Democratic Party donors, the world faces \u201cthe prospect of Armageddon\u201d for the first time \u201csince Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, Biden was referring to the conflict in Ukraine, which had just intensified with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and Russia\u2019s declared annexations of four Ukrainian regions. Despite noting the dangers of a proxy war against Russia, the world\u2019s other top nuclear power, Biden has nonetheless pursued the higher priority of enforcing US hegemony by attempting to \u201cweaken\u201d it. Accordingly, Biden has continued the proxy war with a signature policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons, encouraging a failed counter-offensive, and blocking diplomatic off-ramps.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

(Photo by Jonathan Ernst – Pool\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

One year later, Biden is not only doubling down on his apocalyptic approach in Ukraine, but adding a second front in the Middle East. The White House has asked Congress for a new spending package that would provide over $14 billion for Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza and more than $61 billion for Ukraine \u2013 the largest such request since Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion. Concurrently, the US is directly assisting Israeli atrocities and standing virtually alone to block global calls for a ceasefire \u2013 all while risking a wider regional confrontation.<\/p>\n

In an Oval Office address last week, Biden dusted off George W. Bush\u2019s \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d playbook to draw a direct tie between the Ukraine proxy war and Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza. \u201cHamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to annihilate a neighboring democracy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In another nod to neoconservative dogma, Biden appropriated Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s pitch to voters<\/a> on funding the war in Ukraine. The weapons sent to Ukraine and now Israel, Biden explained, are \u201cmade in America\u201d \u2013 including, he stressed, the election swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. \u201cYou know, just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.\u201d According to Biden\u2019s budget office<\/a>, nearly half of his $106 billion request, $50 billion, will be spent on \u201cthe American defense industrial base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond hegemony and war profiteering, Biden\u2019s mention of states vital to his 2024 re-election chances underscores another reason for his record spending request. In bundling the two conflicts together, Biden is hoping to entice pro-Israel Republicans skeptical of more funding for the Ukraine war \u2013 thereby giving him $61 billion to prolong the fight against Russia until after the November 2024 election.<\/p>\n

As it has done in Ukraine, the Biden administration is declining to use its significant leverage over Israel to end the carnage. If it wanted to, the White House could call on Israel to accept a ceasefire and pursue a negotiated release of Hamas\u2019 captives, on top of the four that have already been freed. But according to the Washington Post<\/a>, one US official \u201csaid it was clear that Netanyahu was not going to wait until the hostage crisis was resolved to initiate a ground offensive and that there was little Washington could do to change that calculus.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major factor, the Post adds, is that Biden \u201cofficials are loath to create a public spat as Republicans on Capitol Hill search for any sign of the president being insufficiently pro-Israel.\u201d To avoid looking \u201cinsufficiently pro-Israel,\u201d therefore, Biden must be sufficiently pro-mass murder \u2013 even at the expense of endangering the hostages that he insists are his top priority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the argument that there is \u201clittle\u201d Biden could do to impact Israel\u2019s behavior, even top Israeli officials admit that to be false. At a recent meeting with Israeli lawmakers, Defense Minister Yaov Gallant acknowledged that his government agreed to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza after US pressure. \u201cThe Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them,\u201d Gallant said<\/a>. \u201cWe rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for Israeli leaders, they will not have to tell Biden \u201cno\u201d on an immediate end to the bombardment of Gaza, and a negotiated return of Hamas\u2019 captives there. After Gaza\u2019s health ministry reported the deadliest night of Israeli airstrikes so far \u2013 over 700 Palestinians killed \u2013 Secretary of State Antony Blinken allowed himself to declare at the United Nations that \u201chumanitarian pauses must be considered.\u201d In other words, the mass killing of Palestinians with US weaponry may proceed, so long as a pause to the slaughter is \u201cconsidered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having previously deemed ceasefire proposals \u201crepugnant\u201d, the Biden administration is openly embracing more Palestinian civilian deaths. \u201cThis is war, it is combat, it is bloody, it is ugly, and it’s going to be messy,\u201d spokesperson John Kirby said at the White House, just as Blinken appeared at the United Nations. \u201cAnd innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.\u201d Kirby\u2019s callous indifference to the deaths of more Palestinian civilians contrasts with his response to Hamas\u2019 killings of Israeli civilians on October 7th<\/sup>, which led him to weep on live television<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Israel will thus have free rein to bombard Gaza with no concern for the civilian population or the Hamas captives. \u00a0\u201cHostages and civilian casualties will be secondary to destroying Hamas,\u201d ABC News reports of the prevailing Israeli government view. Economy Minister Nir Barakat explained the strategy further: \u201cWe shall do all efforts to bring our hostages, to bring our hostages [back] alive,\u201d but destroying Hamas is the \u201cfirst and last priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

A non-existent priority is the fate of Gaza\u2019s 2.3 million residents, who are facing what Martin Griffiths, the UN\u2019s top humanitarian official, describes as a crisis that \u201chas reached catastrophic levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to the meager amounts of aid that the US and Israel have allowed into Gaza, even that is subject to constraints. The first delivery of 20 trucks did not include any fuel, which powers hospital, water pumps, and everything else needed for survival \u2013 including the incubators for premature babies<\/a>. \u201cWithout fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,\u201d the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees warns. \u201cWithout fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Israeli needs negate such concerns. \u201cThe move to exclude fuel from the first delivery was an apparent concession to Israel, which worries that Hamas and other armed groups could divert it for military purposes,\u201d the Washington Post notes<\/a>. This follows the previous \u201cconcession\u201d to Israel that created the need for these trucks in the first place: the Biden administration\u2019s green light for Israel to shut off Gaza\u2019s water and electricity supplies.<\/p>\n

As Dr. Michael Ryan of the UN\u2019s Health Emergencies Programme notes, the small fleet of trucks allowed so far \u201cis a drop in the ocean of need right now in Gaza,\u201d where over 1.4 million people \u2013 more than 60% of the population \u2013 have been displaced. Before Israel\u2019s current assault, Gaza was already in such need that \u201cseveral hundred trucks had been arriving in the enclave daily,\u201d Reuters notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration also acknowledges that its touted aid packages do not meet the bare minimum for Gazans\u2019 survival. In an interview touting the first deliveries, the newly appointed US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, David Satterfield, said that the White House goal is to \u201cbuild that flow up to the levels necessary to begin to meet Gaza’s needs.\u201d Left unstated is that many Palestinians will die due to a lack of medical equipment and other vital supplies before the US-approved aid deliveries can \u201cbegin to meet\u201d their life-saving needs.<\/p>\n

The US is also actively involved in Israel\u2019s military operation against Gaza. The White House has sent a Marine three-star general, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, and several other military officers to advise the Israeli military, including for its planned ground invasion. According to the New York Times<\/a>, US officials \u201chave become increasingly concerned that a ground invasion in Gaza could lead to a huge loss of civilian lives,\u201d but nonetheless insist that they have \u201cnot told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s commitment to protecting Israel\u2019s carnage in Gaza and broader regional hegemony creates dangers far beyond the besieged territory. Since the assault began, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the south Lebanon border. In preparation for a potential regional conflict, the US has deployed air defense missiles and two aircraft carriers to deal \u201cwith threats to American troops throughout the Middle East,\u201d the Wall Street Journal notes. According to the Pentagon, US forces in Iraq and Syria have come under fire at least 13 times in the past week<\/a>, leaving at least 24 soldiers wounded<\/a>. Meanwhile, Israel continues its routine airstrikes on Syrian territory, including the country\u2019s two major airports.<\/p>\n

The attacks on US forces from Iranian-backed groups are understood to be a direct result of the Gaza slaughter. \u201cFor more than six months,\u201d the Journal reports, \u201cIranian-backed militia groups refrained from launching drones or rockets against American troops in Iraq and Syria, as part of what appeared to be an undeclared truce between Tehran and Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as the lives of Palestinian civilians and US-Israeli hostages are subordinate to the imperatives of US-Israeli hegemony, so are US forces\u2019. In Iraq, the US has retained its military contingent despite a 2020 vote from the Iraqi parliament calling for a full withdrawal. In Syria, the US remains all while ignoring government demands for both a withdrawal and compensation for looted oil reserves.<\/p>\n

Although the US claims that its “sole purpose” in Syria is fighting ISIS, the US military has in fact barely done any fighting against the militant group. In 2019,\u00a0now-senior Biden official Dana Stroul<\/a> explained\u00a0that occupying the “resource-rich”, “economic powerhouse” region in Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s “hydrocarbons” and is its “agricultural powerhouse” — gives the U.S. government “broader leverage” to influence “a political outcome in Syria” in line with US dictates. Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative Washington think tank, has likewise explained<\/a> that the US military occupation gives it \u201cdirect influence over the vast majority of Syria\u2019s most productive oil fields,\u201d thereby controlling \u201cSyrian national treasures that, when added up amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of this writing, more than 5,000 Palestinian civilians have become the latest casualties of the United States and Israel\u2019s brute geopolitical power. This includes more than 2,300 children, a calamity that UNICEF calls a \u201cgrowing stain on our collective conscience.\u201d Not that of the Biden White House, content to sacrifice countless more civilian lives from Gaza to Ukraine in its dogged embrace of Armageddon.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aaronmate.net<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Oct 2023 – The White House newly prioritizes hegemony over humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":235451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[3143,2642,2914,3010,1161,2197,87,1126,88,427,112,818,880,961,70,2686,1025],"class_list":["post-246856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-anti-nato","tag-armageddon","tag-arms-industry","tag-biden","tag-gaza","tag-hegemony","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-pentagon","tag-proxy-war","tag-state-terrorism","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-war-of-terror","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246859,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246856\/revisions\/246859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}