It notes that Trump had pledged to end “forever wars” but has instead continued and expanded them. The same, of course, could be said of Barack Obama, who ran in 2008 as a supposedly antiwar candidate, and then continued the wars of the Bush administration, adding his own (Libya, Syria, Yemen). Biden’s promises to end US military intervention in the Middle East are equally worthless. The core interests of US imperialism are involved: oil, military alliances with Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the conflict with Iran, the struggle for influence against Russia and China.
The Democratic platform backs a continued US military presence in Iraq “to train our Iraqi partners,” and in Syria to keep up “the offensive against ISIS” while restoring the US alliance with Kurdish forces in Syria that Trump reneged on.
The platform declares “Our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself” to be “ironclad.” Initially, the platform language referred to the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank, a term that was removed at Biden’s personal insistence. The draft now merely criticizes “settlement expansion” and “annexation.”
Biden pledges to “close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay,” as Obama pledged in 2008. Twelve years later, the prison still stands and not one of the prisoners has been brought to trial.
-- Patrick Martin, "Biden’s blueprint for a right-wing presidency: Part two" (WSWS).
