Bully Biden Bombs Syria, Slashes COVID-19 Payments and Drops $15 Minimum
Wage
https://socialistaction.org/2021/03/22/bully-biden-bombs-syria-slashes-covid-19-payments-and-drops-15-minimum-wage/
March 22, 2021
By Jeff Mackler
President Joseph Biden’s fealty to U.S. imperialism and its ruling class
domestic agenda was demonstrated soon after his Jan. 20 White House
arrival. Five days later he sent additional troops to northeastern Syria
to fortify U.S. control of that U.S.-beleaguered nation’s oil rich and
most fertile agricultural region. On Feb. 25 Biden directed U.S. drones
to drop multiple 500-pound bombs on Syria, targeting the Iranian Kataib
Hezbollah militia forces that were there to help defend that beleaguered
nation from U.S.-backed attacks and to thwart still-existing ISIS forces
intent on entering neighboring Iraq. The Iranian militia forces were
there at the invitation of the Syrian government. Indeed, the
combination of Iranian, Lebanese Hezbollah militias and Russian forces
that answered Syria’s call for help was decisive in defeating the
U.S./NATO/Gulf State monarchy’s regime change “coalition” war, that
including at various times ISIS forces. The latter were organized,
financed, armed and directed by the U.S. military operating out of
Turkish military bases and also by the U.S.’s Gulf State monarchy
“coalition” partners, especially Saudi Arabia. When ISIS forces, who
slaughtered some 10,000 Syrians in the course of their effort to
establish a permanent Caliphate in the region, aimed to overthrow the
Bashar al Assad government they were supported with zero hesitation by
the U.S. war machine.
U.S.-backed “rebels” occupy 2/3 of Syria
By 2015-16 the combination of all these so-called rebels, overwhelmingly
from outside Syria, occupied some two-thirds of the country. They were
poised to take the capital city of Damascus itself. 600,000 Syrians died
in the course of this U.S.-instigated horror. Half the nation was driven
into external or internal exile. The nation’s infrastructure was devastated
Had Syria, a poor and oppressed nation about to become yet another
conquered U.S. neo-colonial failed and plundered state, not exercised
its right to self-determination and sought aid against the U.S. imperial
beast, its fate would have been inevitably sealed. Indeed, virtually
every major U.S. corporate media outlet all but predicted the date of
its conquest and planned dismemberment. Its President Bashar al-Assad,
was said be preparing to flee.
This U.S.-led cabal had convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in December
2015 with 116 participants – none representing the Syrian government –
to negotiate among themselves Syria’s anticipated division and its
future “leaders.” President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry
effectively presided over this “Syrian Opposition Conference.” Said
Kerry, “We welcome the positive outcome of the gathering of the Syrian
opposition in Riyadh today including reaching a consensus on principles
for a pluralistic and democratic [division of] Syria… We appreciate that
this extremely diverse group of Syrians put aside differences in the
interest of building a new Syria.”
Warmaker Biden
The bully imperialist Biden defended the recent U.S. bombing of Iranian
forces in Syria by claiming without proof that it was in retaliation for
Iranian forces based in Iraq firing missiles at U.S. military bases
including at an airport at Erbil. Iran denied that its forces were
responsible for the attack. Indeed, the New York Times a day later, Feb.
26, reported that “a previously unknown group calling itself Guardians
of Blood claimed responsibility.” The corporate media characterized
Biden’s bombing order, that murdered 22 Iranians in Syria, as the new
president’s first overseas military venture. They were dead wrong.
U.S imperialism: the colonial occupier Iraq
Biden’s military has been consistent assassins in Iraq, Somalia and
Afghanistan before and after he assumed the presidency. How could it be
otherwise? The U.S. maintains 1,100 military bases in some 100 nations.
This world’s most powerful war behemoth exists solely to advance the
interests of the tiny ruling class few. For these would-be masters of
the universe death and destruction serve as their ultimate weapon,
regardless of who holds the presidency.
Biden, of course, neglected to mention that the U.S. today operates to a
significant extent as Iraq’s neo-colonial master. Following two
devastating U.S. wars against this relatively defenseless nation – 1990
and 2003 – and associated sanctions and periodic bombings that combined
to take the lives of 1.5 million Iraqis, few doubt that Iraq’s periodic
U.S. overseen elections notwithstanding, the U.S. continues to call the
shots. The 2003 U.S. military conquest was immediately followed by the
appointment of American diplomat Paul Bremer to govern the defeated
nation via a “Coalition Provisional Authority.” Iraq’s oil resources
were shortly after ceded to U.S. corporations. Permanent U.S. military
bases were established across the country. Students of Iraqi history may
recall that the war itself was justified with the lie that Iraq
possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that its President Saddam
Hussein was about to launch against other nations. One after another
U.S. military official and the then Secretary of State Collin Powell
publically presented “evidence” to the United Nations of such “weapons
of mass destruction.” None existed. None were ever found. Powell himself
testified that he was deceived with false information. Nevertheless Iraq
was destroyed.
That the current Iraqi government, pressed by massive and repeated
anti-U.S. demonstrations protesting last year’s Trump-ordered drone
assassination of Iranian Quds force leader Qassim Suleimani near the
Baghdad Airport, had demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces also went
unmentioned by Biden. Neither did the fact that the Iranian forces in
Iraq were there at the behest of the Iraqi government, where they
operate as an official part of the Iraqi Army engaging in joint efforts
to combat ISIS attacks.
Imperialist arrogance knows no limits.
It was later reported that Biden’s real objective was to force the
Iranians to engage in negotiations that would allow the U.S. to return
to the previously negotiated and Trump abandoned “Iran Nuclear Deal,”
the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Iranians have
insisted that any U.S. return was contingent on an end to the deadly
U.S. sanctions that have inflicted untold misery on the Iranian people.
Biden’s steadily mounting war moves included his cancellation of U.S.
plans, negotiated by the Trump Administration, to withdraw U.S. troops
from Afghanistan, where the U.S. war machine continues its 20 years of
slaughter and occupation. Biden’s commitment to the U.S. $1 trillion
annual military budget remains unchanged.
Biden’s U.S. corporate agenda
On the home front Biden quickly signed some 42 Executive Orders,
purportedly to revoke Donald Trump’s most heinous decrees. The
implementation of these orders, however, is far from immediate, being
subject to “implementation and interpretation” by yet-to-be-established
bureaucratic government oversight bodies.
Meanwhile Biden’s touted $1.9 trillion new COVID-19 relief package has
been signed, sealed and delivered but not before Senate Democrats
stripped it of key Biden election-time promises, including his proposal
to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Biden’s promise of
a one-time grant of $2,000 per person as a COVID-19 stimulus relief
payment was reduced to $1,400 with new provisions added to limit
eligibility for this reduced payment to 19 million fewer people than
Trump’s previously-signed legislation. Similar cuts included reducing
unemployment benefits to $300 rather than the promised $500. At the last
minute Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer slipped in an additional $3
billion to fund private religious schools, despite the Democrats
opposing such expenditures when proposed by Trump’s Education Secretary
and charter school champion Betsy DeVos. No doubt additional surprises
will be revealed in the months ahead including mandated cuts in budget
allocations for vital social programs resulting from previous
legislation that compels such cuts when congress approves measures that
increase the federal deficit as is the case with Biden’s COVID-19
stimulus package. “The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Hath Taken Away.”
Still, there is no doubt that several of Biden’s one-time pandemic
relief measures will be welcomed by working people at a time when
capitalism’s ever-deepening economic crises, before and during the
COVID-19 pandemic, have taken a great toll on the overall conditions of
working class life. Recent polls indicate that his $1.9 trillion package
has the support of over 77 percent of the population. Today’s Bureau of
Labor Statistics Labor Participation Rate report indicates that almost
40 percent of all eligible workers are without jobs, that massive
layoffs continue every week, that increasing numbers live
paycheck-to-paycheck, are unable to pay rent and face imminent eviction.
Again, oppressed nationalities and women suffer most. Under these
circumstances and wary of the deep and mounting working class anger that
permeates U.S. society, the ruling rich no doubt felt compelled to pose
the Democrats as more attuned to mass moods of discontent and make some
temporary and limited concessions.
But Biden’s promised $2 trillion in future legislation to upgrade the
nation’s failing infrastructure to provide new jobs has been shelved as
both capitalist parties reject funding any such project by raising taxes
on the rich. Indeed, both Republicans and Democrats joined to pass
Trump’s unprecedented tax cuts for the corporate elite that slashed
corporate tax levels and allowed U.S. multi-nationals to offshore
profits to avoid taxation.
Capitalism’s profit or perish credo
The sum total of all the policies of a crisis ridden world capitalist
system amount to making working people pay – to the constant
immiseration of the masses, to their repeated subjection to
recession/depression cycles that permeate capitalism’s history and throw
ever-increasing numbers into the ranks of the unemployed and
underemployed. Whether it be overt union busting, obliteration of
pensions and health care benefits, workplace speed up, offshoring plants
to low wage nations, imperialist conquests to secure vital resources,
cutbacks in social services, “elimination of welfare as we know it,” the
bi-partisan objective is the same – to preference the corporate elite at
the expense of the vast majority, a preference driven not by any moral
failings of the super rich, but by the necessities imposed by the very
operation of the system itself. Whether capitalists are well intentioned
or evil, Democrat or Republican, they must deploy one or another or all
of the above measures aimed at workers to keep their businesses afloat
in the face of the incessant competition that drives them to profit or
perish.
Joseph Biden is Donald Trump, but better attuned to posing himself as a
civilized politician acting in the interests of the vast majority.
Beneath this veneer of compassion, however, lies another experienced
racist warmongering puppet of the U.S. ruling elite, the very image he
previously projected in the course of his three-plus decades of service
to the governments of the exploiting few.
The independent organization of working people to challenge capitalist
rule in all its manifestations today stands at the center of the program
of all revolutionary socialist organizations today. Join us!
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--
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
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to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski