Remember the sound of Hillary Clinton’s ribald laughter when, in 2011, the then-Secretary of State sat down with a sycophantic “reporter” shortly after the U.S .government (and other forces) broke international laws and the U.S. Constitution by invading and overthrowing the government of Libya, a military incursion that saw Libyan head-of-state Muammar Gaddafi killed without trial, and his body paraded through the chaotic streets? Remember her snide comment, “We came. We saw. He died…” that inspired her wicked, spine-chilling cackle?
Well, “President-Elect” Joe Biden appears desirous of placing into the slot of Secretary of State one of the old Obama-Biden figures who backed that embroglio, and many other inconceivably aggressive acts of U.S. Empire.
His name is Antony Blinken, he was one of Vice-President Biden’s “national security advisors,” and, as Reason’s Christian Britschgi reports, he not only backed the U.S. coup in Libya that turned that nation into a charred basket-case that saw multitudes flee to Europe (and many die trying to make the escape), he supported numerous other U.S. international transgressions.
’In short, Blinken has agreed with some of the biggest foreign policy mistakes that Biden and Obama made, and he has tended to be more of an interventionist than both of them,’ wrote Daniel Larison in a Monday article for the Quincy Institute's publication, Responsible Statecraft.
Indeed, in 2002, Blinken worked for then-Senator Joe Biden when Biden backed the idea of U.S. soldiers being sent overseas without any congressional Declaration of War (which is the only constitutional way a president can lead U.S. troops against other nation-states) to invade a sovereign nation. Writes Britschgi:
He served as Biden's chief policy adviser in 2002 when the then-Delaware senator voted in favor of the use of military force in Iraq.
And, although Biden opposed the invasion of Libya, Blinken supported it. Britschgi reiterates facts recalled by Kelley Vlahos, of the non-interventionist Quincy Institute:
When working as (then-VP) Biden's national security adviser… Blinken supported the Obama administration's disastrous Libya campaign, despite the vice president being opposed to that particular intervention.
And Blinken seemed not to have learned as time passed, tax cash was burned, people were killed, and lives were ruined – all without officially constitutional Declarations of War.
As recently as 2019, he pushed for increased U.S. involvement in Syria, a position that nearly saw Barack Obama engage in an all-out invasion and further undeclared warfare with Syria and Russia half a decade earlier.
’Without bringing appropriate power to bear, no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed’ in Syria, wrote Blinken and Robert Kagan in a 2019 essay published by the Brookings Institution.
And, lest one be wondering if Blinken missed choice opportunities to spread militarism in other ways, Britschgi has you covered.
In 2015, Blinken—then assistant secretary of state—was also a proponent of the Obama administration's policy of shipping arms to and sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia in support of that country's war in Yemen, which has proven to be a humanitarian disaster.
Yet, on the whole, the fraudulently self-avowed “peace-loving” left turns blind eyes to Biden’s embrace of this Deep State militant. The supposedly “anti-war” Senator Bernie Sanders (who repeatedly voted for “regime change” in Iraq prior to 2001, and repeatedly voted to fund the U.S. aggression once it had been deployed overseas and who successfully lobbied to get a warplane manufacturer to open an office in Vermont) employs an advisor who applauds Biden’s not-so-peaceful choice for Secretary of State:
Matt Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I–Vt.) foreign policy adviser, described Biden's selection as ‘a good choice,’ saying Blinken has ‘the knowledge and experience for the important work of rebuilding US diplomacy.’
Why is it that the supposedly “anti-war” left and the pop media are virtually silent on Biden’s hoped-for Secretary of State and his record of...well, not being very "anti-war"?
It has taken the libertarian Reason and the non-partisan Quincy Institute to bring all this to light.
Which, just as the granters of the bogus “Nobel Peace Prize” revealed when they awarded their tarnished crown to Barack Obama before he did anything to actually bring about any peace on Earth – and he subsequently killed more people with extra-judicial drone strikes than any other President – shows us that many of the great pronouncements about “loving peace” that the left offers are shallow. They are offered dishonestly, for show.
How appropriate, for a potential Biden presidency.