Lloyd Austin Cheers Biden's 'Magnificent' Work in The Middle East

Edited by Sam Thielman

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JUST SO YOU KNOW, my plans are never to publish on a Friday if it can be avoided. But last night, with my children tucked away in bed, the Pentagon laced my inbox with a transcript of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's latest exchange with the traveling press corps. And as Austin fielded a question about the role that the war emanating from Israel's Gaza genocide played in Kamala Harris' defeat—asked, I believe, by the Wall Street Journal's Nancy Youssef—he said something that I would like to see carved onto a headstone marking the final burial place of U.S. empire. 

This is Austin's quote, with my emphasis, delivered after my friend Nancy (sorry if it wasn't Nancy) persisted:

Q: I just want to make sure I understand. Do you then feel that the war in Gaza was not a big factor or it did not play into how voters approached the election?

SECRETARY AUSTIN: I'm telling you what the media has said. The most important thing on voter's minds was the economy, and that's what people voted on. I did not say that this was not important. Of course it's important. I'm saying that what you've described as the most important thing to the people of America was the economy. So, I can't disagree with that, I think that's the way that people may have voted. But I can also say that things in Europe, things in the Middle East were very important as well. I think we've done a magnificent job there in terms of managing things and not allowing things to blossom into a full-blown regional war.

A magnificent job there in terms of managing things. 

The low-end total of the dead in Gaza is 43,000 people in 13 months. The real death toll is surely to be far higher considering all the men, women and children crushed under buildings collapsed after the Israelis unleashed their U.S.-provided munitions, aided by the U.S. software in their targeting algorithms, to say nothing of the preventable disease and starvation. The IDF is currently disputing comments attributed to one of its generals about removing Palestinians from northern Gaza—comments stemming from an Israeli media report claiming (per GoogleTranslate, I don't speak Hebrew) "The IDF says that after entering Jabaliya twice in the past, this time there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and that Humanitarian aid will regularly enter the southern Gaza Strip, since there are no more civilians left north of Gaza City." Haaretz editorialized in any event against the "mass displacement" the IDF is carrying out in Northern Gaza "in the spirit of the so-called 'Generals' Plan' proposed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, although officially, Israel denies that it is implementing it." 

A magnificent job there in terms of managing things. Shouldn't we be thanking them? 

And if the Biden team's approach to the don't-call-it-a-genocide wasn't magnificent enough, they also didn't "allo[w] things to blossom into a full-blown regional war." Never have the words "full-blown" carried so much weight. In reality, after nearly a year of official U.S. exhortations for Israel not to invade Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon, prompting the Biden team to simply shrug that Israel should really stop doing that soon. Before and after, Israel bombed targets in Beirut, Damascus, the Yemeni port of Hodeidah and Tehran. The Houthis and the Iranians attacked Tel Aviv with drones and missiles, much as Hezbollah had done to northern Israel since the IDF invaded Gaza. American soldiers were killed at an outpost in Jordan and the U.S. itself hit Baghdad with a drone strike, prompting a crisis in U.S.-Iraqi relations. 

For nearly a year, the U.S. has been engaged in sustained and unsuccessful naval combat with a far-outclassed Houthi militia, rather than conceding the point that the Houthi closure of the Red Sea is a response to the Israeli genocide of Gaza and, accordingly, will end once the U.S. imposes a lasting ceasefire on Israel.  Since the U.S. is unwilling to impose a lasting ceasefire on Israel, it instead deployed additional troops, warships, warplanes, anti-aircraft systems and anti-missile systems to the Middle East. No one thinks either Iran or Israel is finished exchanging fires. 

But hey. At least that's not a full-blown regional war, huh? 

A month ago, as Israel took another major step in escalating the regional war, I wrote: 

Something I've been hearing a lot about in my conversations over the last several days is that the people in the Biden administration who make decisions about the Middle East are a very small circle that believes very deeply that it has handled the past year's fallout from October 7 in as responsible a manner as could be.

Austin is providing perhaps the bluntest public example yet of this perspective. Self-congratulation is certainly a part of it, but I don't think it's merely that. To be blunt, this is how the liberal wing of imperialism talks. The U.S. is a force for stability in an unruly region, and if you see a whole lot of dead people, well, just think how many more would be dead if the U.S. hadn't been involved. It may look bad, but remember, without us, it surely would have been worse. It is a fixed idea that the U.S. is a firefighter and not an arsonist, despite its position atop the global arson trade. What, do you think China cares about fighting your peoples' fires?!? Don't you know how important it is to preserve the Rules-Based International Order? 

Austin and his colleagues will shuffle off after 90-ish days. They will declare that the last four years tells a story not of their facilitation of a genocide and regional war in the Middle East, but of their heroism in Ukraine. Never mind that they didn’t get around to securing an endgame that actually saves Ukraine. The post-October 7 environment was all an unfortunate contingency in a part of the world they wish they could be done with, but, alas, the world is never done with the Indispensable Nation. Ugly, yes, but ultimately just a detail in the grand tale of U.S. global stewardship, like the War on Terror was. It all could have been so much worse—and Trump unfortunately is likely to make it all uglier and worse very soon. When he does, those left alive in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran will surely look back upon the Biden era and agree that it was an age of magnificence.

I will have more to say about the architects of magnificence in tomorrow's FOREVER WARS—yes—which will give paid subscribers my latest (paywalled) column for Zeteo. Hit that subscribe button, because it's the best thing I've written for them yet. 

CRIMETHINC: 

The Democratic party leadership is already prepared to coexist with fascists, to be ruled by fascists. They would prefer fascism to another four years of tumultuous protests. Having a more authoritarian party in power gives them an alibi—it makes them look good by comparison, even as they are the ones channeling people out of the streets and paving the way for Trump to carry out his program. …

There will be a brief window of possibility now when millions of people who had counted on the Democrats to keep them safe wake up and realize that we are each other’s only hope. We have to take action immediately to make contact with each other, to reestablish all that we have lost since the year 2020.

Read the whole thing. I wonder how much of the FOREVER WARS audience engages with anarchist media.

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