Biden: Who’s the killer?

On March 18, U.S. President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “killer.”

Since no one has withdrawn this gratuitous insult, we assume this was no Biden gaffe. It indicates instead increased U.S. hostility to Russia — just as the recent Alaska talks showed a developing conflict with People’s China. Both Russia and China, like the U.S., are nuclear powers.

The first question this insult raises is: Is Biden a killer? 

We reviewed Biden’s record on important foreign policy decisions in this century that had to do with killing people. Did any decision show an aversion to killing?

In 2001, as a U.S. senator from Delaware, Biden, never known for political courage, joined the unanimous vote supporting the so-called war on terror. This led quickly to the invasion of Afghanistan − where the U.S. still has troops 19 years later. Many Afghans have been killed. U.S. troops too. 

In the fall of 2002, Biden was chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. He voted and spoke in support of the war on Iraq. Millions of Iraqis were killed. Thousands of U.S. troops, too.

As vice president in 2009, Biden supported the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. This coup unleashed a neoliberal plunder of that Central American country. In turn, many Hondurans were killed. It so disrupted life that many Hondurans fled, trying to migrate to the U.S. 

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama/Biden administration deported many Hondurans and other Central Americans back to the Central America the U.S. had disrupted. This led to more killing.

In 2011, Vice President Biden praised NATO’s war on Libya. This war destroyed a stable and prosperous African country. Along with the wars in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen, the Libyan collapse caused a new wave of migration to Europe. In that wave thousands are killed each year in shipwrecks, among other disasters caused by this disastrous war on Libya. 

Already, only 36 days into Biden’s own administration, he authorized the air strike on Syria. 

Whatever Biden feels about those kinds of decisions, he has shown he is willing to kill. Biden campaigned hard and often to become president. To be president of the United States means to be the chief executive officer of world imperialism. 

This is the person with the legal authority to direct the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and other more shadowy centers of U.S. foreign policy to oversee the exploitation of humanity in the interest of a relative handful of billionaires. 

Being a killer is part of the job description.