While the current pandemic has put on hold concerts, holidays and even the Olympic Games there’s a perverse sense of normality to be seen in the realm of military action. As we’ve seen in the past week even a virus claiming thousands of lives each day will not stand in the way of US drone strikes on nations in the Middle East.
Scenes of devastation like this are commonplace in the cities of Syria
The strikes in question were carried out on the 15th of February, with specific details on locations and deaths having only been released in the last week. Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden approved the strikes, following in the footsteps of his personal friend and ex-running mate Barack Obama who launched strikes on 7 countries during his 2 terms in office (including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq). With Biden being less than 2 months into his presidency, it sends a very clear and concerning message to the international community concerning his foreign policy and his willingness to engage in questionable military action, with little regard for its consequences. Of course this is far from abnormal for an American president; the Oval Office has a well-established history of interventionism dating back to McCarthy’s Red Scare and the Korean War in the 1950s.
This particular vein of American interventionism is now known to be targeted towards Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias in Syria, a nation ravaged by civil war since the Arab Spring in 2011. The strikes have been described by Mr. Biden’s government as “effective” and a UK-based Syrian Human Rights watchdog attested to there having been at least 22 casualties. The strikes send a clear message to the world: that a more progressive US President is no guarantee of more progressive foreign policy, and that we certainly shouldn’t expect an end to the American tradition of bombing, invading and drone-striking countries to whom it is ideologically opposed.
Regardless of said tradition, some Democrat voters and liberal political commentators are surprised by the swiftness with which Biden has acted, especially after pushing such a progressive narrative during his campaign and stating his intentions to focus on home affairs rather than international matters. In fact it seems only logical to question why Mr. Biden is not turning his attention to the looming economic devastation that exists due to an incompetent handling of COVID-19, or perhaps to the issue of institutional racism that has sparked such uproar over the past 12 months? Even discounting the two aforementioned issues, we still observe America as being a nation with an immigration crisis, allegations of human rights abuses within detention facilities and to top it off, a prison population larger than that of China and Russia combined.
Despite these strikingly obvious problems on home soil, Mr. Biden still chooses to define the start of his presidency with military action abroad, a move that is sure to polarise his supporters and the international community alike, spelling a disappointing and potentially dangerous message for the next 4 years.