One of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements was keeping America out of new wars.
But less than a month into Joe Biden’s term as President, the Middle East is blowing up.
And now, Biden may be on the verge of undoing Trump’s greatest achievement.
Joe Biden’s first few weeks in office suggest that powerful special interests in the Military Industrial Complex may be one of the largest beneficiaries of his Presidency.
And with less than a month into his term, President Biden is now considering canceling Trump’s historic deal to end the War in Afghanistan, a war that started almost 20 years ago.
If this deal gets canceled, some experts believe American troops might never leave Afghanistan. And while this makes defense lobbyists happy, it would almost certainly lead to many more American troops losing their lives.
There is even chatter in Washington that President Biden is planning to send more troops to Iraq, a nation the United States has been embroiled in for nearly two decades after Biden voted to approve the Iraq War in 2002.
But after 20 years of near non-stop warfare in two separate Middle Eastern countries, President Trump made it his mission to bring them home. During the final year of his term, Trump even began laying out a concrete plan to draw down America’s longest war.
But President Biden appears committed to the same strategy he voted for in 2002, by keeping American troops in dangerous foreign countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Additionally, the Biden administration has nominated Antony Blinken as the new Secretary of State. Blinken was one of the main people responsible for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya.
Nearly a decade ago, Blinken, Obama, and Hillary decided that it would be a good idea if Libya descended into jihadist anarchy. So they decided to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and plunge Libya into chaos.
Since that time, Libya and the Middle East have become much more dangerous and unstable. This made defense lobbyists very happy, because it meant more troops getting sent to the Middle East and more weapons sales to increase their profits.
Blinken has been rewarded for those efforts, and he is now the Secretary of State. However, he did face opposition from some America First Republicans. Senator Rand Paul argued that Blinken hadn’t learned his lesson from failed wars that he has advocated in the past.
“Mr. Blinken has been a full-throated advocate of military intervention in the Middle East for 20 years,” Sen. Paul said. “He’s more of the same.”
In another move that showed his support for defense lobbyists and weapons manufacturers, President Biden also nominated Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense. At the time of his nomination, Austin was a member of the Board of Directors at Raytheon, one of the largest companies that make up the Military Industrial Complex.
Those who have studied Biden’s career are not surprised about these moves. In fact, he has been a pro-war politician for as long as he’s been in Washington.
As Jeremy Scahill wrote in The Intercept before the election, “the Obama-Biden administration developed an almost clinical process for compiling kill lists and then sentencing people to death through a Frankenstein extralegal system of unofficial judges, juries, and executioners. Among their kills were several U.S. citizens, including a teenager who was never accused of any crime.”
Of course, Biden’s support for the Iraq War was legendary, as he teamed up with Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush to help instigate the conflict. The war turned out to be a terrible failure.
Donald Trump’s presidency was defined by his America First values and his attempts to end foreign wars that had failed. But it seems with Biden in the White House, these wars could be on the verge of picking up right where they left off.