Biden Has (so far) Done Two Good Things

Otherwise Biden's Foreign Policy and Harris's) Has Been Mostly Bush/Obaba Stuff

US Army ATACMS missiles and launche. The rocket has a range of 190 miles (US Army phoro)

Through his political career and his presidency lame duck Joe Biden has been a dutiful backer of US militarism. That is to say: Enthusiastically fund Pentagon weapons systems, including continuing support for the “modernization” of the US nuclear triad and its enormous world-destroying stockpile of nuclear weapons, and continue using the US military abroad in blatant violation of international law.

But Biden has at least twice done the right thing as president, even if clumsily.

The first good decision was to call an abrupt if messy halt to the longest-running US war in history against Afghanistan—one of the poorest countries in the world. The second has been to (at least so far), reject Ukraine’s incessant importuning for approval to use long-range US missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia — a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned could lead to a nuclear response against both Ukraine itself and any country supplying that nation with such rockets.

The 81-year-old Biden dropped out of the race for a second term as president against Republican ex-President Donald Trump and endorsed his VP Kamala Harris to be the Democratic candidate after his dismal display of mental incapacity during a nationally televised debate with Trump.

But impaired or not, he appears, thus far, to be thinking clearly enough to realize that okaying Ukraine’s use of US-provided missiles to strike targets deep in Russia’s heartland would be a profoundly dangerous.idea. Aside from the sheer idiocy of supporting and providing the means for Ukraine to fire long-range ballistic missiles to strike targets deep inside a nuclear state like Russia, Harris, who is in a tight race against Donald Trump — one that could be settled by a veritable handful of undecided voters in seven “swing” states — needs to realize that those voters and also a near majority of Republicans, think the US is being “too supportive” of Ukraine. If she were to speak out against okaying these long-range missiles, and say she’d instead work for a peaceful solution to that fratricidal decade-long conflict, she’d have all seven of those states and both a Electoral College majority and the popular vote and with that the presidency in the bag.

So what’s going on? Maybe Harris is scared of alienating the media? 

Certainly taking such a position would not be welcomed by the major news organizations.

As Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) is reporting, Biden’s taking a lot of hits in the war-besotted US corporate media for barring deep missile strikes on Russian targets (as he also did earlier for his ordering of an abrupt pull-out of all of US military forces from Afghanistan),

If Harris is not a shill for the Pentagon and the arms industry, she’s making a big mistake (of course if she is a shill for the military she’s also making a big mistake!). While a majority of Americans want the US to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a larger majority do not want the US fighting Russia itself. Sending long-range missiles to Ukraine so it can strike the Russian heartland would be viewed as directly attacking Russia.

Harris has to know that. Trump has, after all, repeatedly warned that the US support for Ukrainian attacks upon Russia re raising the risk of nuclear war—a warning that neither Biden nor Harris has specifically responded to. Or dismissed as absurd. 

Hopefully Biden will keep his wits about him and continue to stick to his opposition to any long-range attacks on Russia. Using  by US-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Such surprising but welcome prudence on Biden’s part cannot erase the bloody stain on his legacy caused by his provision of over $100 billion in lethal weaponry for Ukraine or for his even more fulsome support of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank and now on the Lebanese people. But at least he seems to be still sufficiently lucid to see that providing long-range missiles to strike the Russian heartland would be to seriously risk a nuclear war—most likely a global one, as war gaming has shown that the nuclear escalator in any such a conflict would be running at a high rate of speed — and that escalator only runs in one direction: up.

Kamala Harris is reportedly trying to find ways to show voters she is not a clone of Biden. In foreign policy a great  way to prove that would be to immediately call for negotiations to end the Ruasasia-Ukraine War.

In the case of both the Russia-Ukraine War and Israel’s one-sided war on Gaza and the Palestinians of the West Bank, as the main supplier of weapons ammunition, satellite targeting support and diplomatic clout to one side, the US has enormous leverage, yet Biden has refused to use it. 

This is madness!

Harris meanwhile looks increasingly clueless saying at rally after rally and in media interviews that she is ‘trying as hard as she can” to get Israel to “agree to a ceasefire.” Every American knows that it is US arms that allow Israel to continue to bounce the ruins of a leveled Gaza, to widen the war to Lebanon, and to blow off Biden’sand Harris’s pathetic calls for a ceasefire that come with no teeth to them.

She’s fooling nobody.

If she wants to be president, she needs to step away from Biden’s terrible policies and to support his good ones. That means calling for a peaceful negotiated end to the Ukraine War and and end to the Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, and a clear statement of opposition to war with Russia…and China and Iran.