Amid the joy rocketing over the end of four years of Donald Trump’s reign by leftists, Biden further added to the celebrations and wrote on Twitter that “this is the time to heal in America”.
However, it is important that we take a break from focusing our concerns on Donald Trump, instead drawing attention to something much more serious: Biden’s dangerous foreign policy track record.
As the world cheers on the result of the US election, what does Joe Biden’s victory mean for the rest of the world and his position on US foreign policy?
As a US senator, Biden advocated, supported and voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, under the false premise of the country hiding “weapons of mass destruction”, which led to the deaths of a million innocent Iraqis. The weapons of mass destruction were nowhere to be found, and since then, the country has witnessed war, destabilisation and devastatation.
Trump’s behaviour, on the other hand, has not been perfect, but while being Commander in Chief of the American armed forces as the President of the United States, he largely refrained from starting new and very illegal wars in the Middle East and around the world. It remains true, however, that there is a currently a continuation of brutal US foreign policy that remains unjustified.
However, these policies were implemented by past US politicians such as Bush, Obama and Biden, which Trump inherited, expanded and intensified upon during his presidency, as analysed by respectable outlets such as The Intercept.
Despite Trump’s flawed foreign policy record, he has widely criticised US intervention in the Middle East, once stating at a press conference: “We killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East. I always say it’s the bloodiest sand anywhere in the world and it didn’t have to be that way. The single worst decision our country ever made was to go into the Middle East.”
It should also be noted that US foreign policy would not only be immensely difficult, but practically impossible to abolish over a short four-year period. Trump still decreased US military presence in Afghanistan, and to a small extent in Syria and Iraq, according to a recent report by the BBC News, which provided expertise from Michael O’Hanlon, a security fellow at the Brookings Institution.
As mentioned, however, Biden had a prominent responsibility and a much more aggressive role in leading the devastating Iraq war. Furthermore, he served as Vice President of the United States between 2009 and 2017, largely under the Obama-led administration. During Biden’s time as Vice President, he witnessed bloody drone strikes ordered by the Obama administration in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It should be clear that Joe Biden should also face scrutiny over his foreign policy record, just as Trump did. Biden’s support of the Iraq war has been disastrous and led to the devastation of lives and livelihoods in Iraq and surrounding regions.
As a Muslim minority living in the UK, it’s easier for me to tolerate Trump’s silly tweets with bad grammar than illegal invasions and catastrophic neoliberal foreign policies in the Middle East, such as Joe Biden’s. It is evident that the world and the American people would appreciate a clean break from the earlier failures of US foreign policy.
Lastly, I should add that – as should be obvious – Joe Biden saying “inshallah” has not impressed me in the slightest, nor has his terrifying foreign policy track record.
