Professor John Robertson OBA
I wrote this about the Biden/Trump contest in 2020 and there’s a link to the earlier one with the dread Hilary Clinton in it.
Trump’s complicity in the horror that is Gaza may moderate my position but it seems likely a Democrat president would have been no better.
Here it is:
If you live in the US, Trump is clearly the more bad choice. Though Biden is no socialist, there is some (little?) hope, under him, for the sick, the poor, women and ethnic minorities and less (little?) joy for the rich and the corporations.
But, if you live in the Arab world or Europe, Biden is bad news, real bad news.
Trump is by inclination an isolationist. He wants to get US forces out of the Middle East and Central Asia, reduce US casualties and slash spending there. He’s is regularly condemned by senior officers, past and present, for pulling troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. That he has left some is to appease them and to suppress media criticism.
His sabre-rattling against Iran is just that, on behalf of his business allies in Saudi and in the US corporations. Authorising the assassination of the top Iranian military leader does not mean he wants a full-scale invasion, quite the opposite. If they step up, he’ll back off. It’s just a business strategy.
Biden, in sharp contrast, is an interventionist foreign policy ‘hawk‘, like Clinton. Like her, he was a cheer-leader for the Iraq campaigns. Women and children in the Arab World had reason to fear her enthusiasm for carpet bombing their towns and sending under-educated boys to barge into their homes, smashing them up and killing or humiliating their husbands and sons. In Europe, we had reason to fear the consequences of those humiliations as the sons fled to our towns.
In 2016, the most clicked-on blog post I wrote that year was this:
Why Trump is less bad, far less bad, than Clinton, in as few words as possible.
It’s still mostly true, for Biden.
Additional reading on Joe:
Joe Biden championed the Iraq war. Will that come back to …www.theguardian.com › commentisfree › feb › joe-bid…17 Feb 2020 – The Iraq war has been a prominent, even decisive issue, in recent US presidential elections. That will make Biden’s history a liability.
‘Their blood is on your hands’: Veterans confront Joe Biden …www.independent.co.uk › … › Americas › US election5 Mar 2020 – Group confronts former vice president for past support ‘enabling a war that killed thousands of our brothers and sisters’
Joe Biden’s Vote for War – The New York Timeswww.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics12 Jan 2020 – In October 2002, he was one of 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. He is still trying to explain …
Joe Biden Was Talking Up War With Iraq Years Before Invasiontheintercept.com › 2020/01/07 › joe-biden-iraq-war-his…7 Jan 2020 – At a 1998 Senate hearing, Biden argued that “taking this son of a — taking Saddam down” was the only way to guarantee Iraq’s disarmament.
Biden and the Ghosts of Iraq – Foreign Policyforeignpolicy.com › 2020/07/22 › biden-wants-to-fix-a…22 Jul 2020 – Americans Stopped Trusting Long Before Trump. Joe Biden is part of an insular Washington culture that produced the Iraq War—and the …
6 Jan 2020 – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden dishonestly suggested on Saturday that he had opposed the war in Iraq “from the very moment” it …
17 Jan 2020 – As the US War in Iraq continued to unravel in the spring of 2004, then-Sen. Joe Biden delivered a commencement speech at the University of …
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
What a choice ! A senile warmonger or a racist misogynist narcissist !
Are there no politicians in the US who are NOT abject failures as human beings ?
Why can’t they produce sensible politicians like the UK’s – Boris , Liz , Nigel , Keir , ….
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Recently watching America’s PBS documentary on General Franco I was struck by how similar Trump’s manipulation of Religion to gain and retain power. In Franco’s case it was his pact with the Vatican and in Trump’s American evangelists. Both leaders were not regarded as being religious but saw their importance in brainwashing and getting a firm grip on the masses for their own ends. A frightening thought that their influence could have far reaching consequences particularly for some ethnic minorities. Just waiting now for Farage’s desciples to start waiving the Bible in advance of next year’s election.
Robbo
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American foreign policy hasn’t changed since WW2 and I watched the horrors unfold over the decades from Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and of course, Palestine since 1948. The UK is always an eager accomplice and sometimes instigator. That’s only the overt violence. The covert campaigns are just as bad in South America, South East Asia and Africa but also in Greece and Italy.
People throwing hissy fits every time Donald Trump opens his mouth and says something outrageous (every day) kept strangely quiet about Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton when they were causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Hillary (We came, we saw, he died) Clinton would have been no different.
What an appalling legacy the imperialist countries have created. Trump may be genuine about ending military intervention, who knows? but I doubt the policy will change any time soon. There’s too much money to be made for the MIC.
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Exactly!
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How unreasonable to say that the US taking over Canada or Greenland would be imperialism on steroids and that destroying women’s and LGBTQ rights in the US as he is now in the process of doing while trampling the right to due process is a bad, bad thing. We are so stupid to think that, it seems.
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Sorry but you are wrong. Someone who believes in conquest is an odd type of ‘isolationist’. He is perfectly willing to complete the genocide of the Palestinian people so he can with Netanyahu’s help turn Gaza into TrumpLand. In no way on earth is this less horrific for the people of the Middle East.
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And that in the US he has stolen women’s right to an abortion, is massively attacking LGBTQ rights, and is having his secret police kidnap people (almost all of colour) off the streets to deport with no due process is all right as long as it is only Americans. Maybe you should sit down and have a think that he just showed up in Scotland attacking immigration and immigrants in Europe.
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One last thought. How well did appeasament of tyrants work in the 1930s?
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Trump is worse than all listed – he is killing Palestinians in the tens of thousands by supplying Israel with bombs, missiles the political support. He is also totally corrupt – to a level that would cause all other corrupt politicians to blush with shame or applause in amazement at his brazenness. He is the culmination of a poor political system and a poorly educated, easily misled population
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