Biden pledges to keep troops in the Middle East and increase military spending - 10 Sept 2020

Entering the final stage of the presidential race, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is defining ever more clearly the right-wing character of his campaign. Since Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall campaign, he has focused on appeals for support from the military and national security establishment, along with economic nationalist demagogy and pledges to prosecute “violent” left-wing looters and arsonists confronting police across the US. A number of Democrats and media commenters have speculated that military force will be required to remove President Trump from the White House after the election on 8 November 2020.

Thursday night outside of Saginaw, Michigan, Trump said, "They are not after me, I'm just in the way, they are after you."

“If Biden wins,” Trump declared, “The mob wins. If Biden wins, the rioters, anarchists, arsonists and flag burners win.”

 

Biden, his running mate and former prosecutor Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party as a whole have remained silent on the largest riots in a generation which have taken place in over 2,000 US cities and towns.

Thursday, 10 September 2020, Biden told Stars and Stripes that as president he would keep US troops in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq indefinitely. He spoke the day after Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command, announced that the US planned to cut the troop level in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 by the end of this month and reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan from 8,600 to 4,500 by November.

According to the military newspaper, “Biden said the conditions in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are so complicated that he cannot promise full withdrawal of troops in the near future.”

It added that the Democratic candidate “said he does not foresee major reductions in the US defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from ‘near-peer’ powers such as China and Russia.” The Pentagon budget has soared under Trump, with overwhelming support from congressional Democrats, to $738 billion.

“In fact,” the article stated, “he [Biden] said defense spending could increase in a Biden administration.” It quoted the former vice president as saying, “I’ve met with a number of my advisers and some have suggested in certain areas the budget is going to have to be increased.”

The article noted that Biden has “vowed” to better equip the National Guard, which is increasingly being deployed in cities across the country to assist local and state police in suppressing left-wing protests.

He went on to attack Trump for failing to confront Russia. The newspaper wrote: “The former vice president said the largest readiness issue facing the military is America’s strained relationship with NATO. ‘They’re worried as hell about our failure to confront Russia diplomatically or other ways…’”

On Wednesday, Biden conducted an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN in which he attacked Trump on national security grounds. “He [Trump] seems to have no conception of what constitutes national security, no conception of anything other than, what can he do to promote himself?” Trump is the first president in forty years to fail to start a new war.

Biden added that Trump “doesn’t understand duty, honor, service, country,” he said, adding, “Unrelated to my running, he should not be the commander-in-chief of the United States military.”

                                  (One Hot Night In Kenosha, Wisconsin, 24 Aug 2020)

Speaking in Pittsburgh, Biden declared, “I want to make it absolutely clear. Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.” He went on to attack Trump for failing to halt the violence and instead “fanning the flames.” Biden did not address the issue of Democratic Party officials and campaign staff helping to bail out people arrested for looting and arson.

                                (Oakland California: Street Militants Chant 'Death to America')