The Next Kissinger: Part 1
Hopefully, a post-mortem of Bloody Blinken's Political Career
With the long political career of Joe Biden now at an end, much has been said about his time in office, both as a senator and as president. However, equally important to Biden himself is the people who worked with him. It is a simplistic view of history to see it only in the terms of individuals. Biden is only one man, his power and ability is limited. He could not have done any of the things he has done without a considerable amount of help.
Biden has surrounded himself with a loyal cadre of political operatives, chief among them is former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The two have been joined at the hip for over 20 years, with Blinken serving as one of Biden’s most faithful lieutenants. Blinken was richly rewarded for his service. Not only did he have a lucrative career as a “consultant” in the private sector, turning access into cash1 while working with a rogue’s gallery of future and former CIA directors and other criminals, but Blinken also became the power behind the throne towards the end of Biden’s regime. As Biden’s mind and body faded away into irrelevance, it was Tony Blinken who implemented the long-sought foreign policy goals of his boss.
Of course, everything that exists is shaped by what came before. Tony Blinken did not emerge from a vacuum, fully formed as a killer of children. Blinken was shaped by those who came before him, no one more so than his hero, Henry Kissinger.
For his monograph at Harvard university in 1987, Blinken interviewed the notorious war criminal, writing a glowing hagiography of a man who brutally murdered millions to advance the power of capital both at home and abroad. For his part, Blinken would continue his hero’s legacy, expanding the scope and scale of US imperialism to new levels after the fall of the USSR left American power without any checks or balances. The resulting slaughter has been immense, as have the profits for the arms dealers who control our government.
Throughout the disastrous (and ongoing) “Global War on Terror”, millions have perished to keep the furnace of Capitalism operating at full power. Between Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and many more, the power of the imperial system that Kissinger helped build has been fully unleashed. The end result is an absolute minimum of 4.5 million dead as of 2019, a macabre legacy that approaches even the bloody master of the past.
Blinken got his start in national politics sitting on the National Security Council, an unelected board of bureaucrats who advise the president on military and foreign affairs. He has been known from the beginning as a consistent pro-war voice. In 2002, he was appointed as chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, serving under chairman Joe Biden. In this role, Blinken was instrumental in formulating Biden’s strategy to garner support for the illegal, full-scale invasion of Iraq, a country which had no weapons of mass destruction and was violently opposed to Al-Qaeda. Although Tony Blinken would have known these things at the time, his job was not to find the truth, but rather to build the case for his boss’ long-desired war. To that end, Blinken stacked the deck.
When the time came for hearings on the topic of war or peace, Tony Blinken had the privilege of deciding who was allowed to talk, and for how long. He made sure that only pro-war voices were heard, and sent home the UN weapons inspectors who had travelled the world to testify that Saddam Hussein long ago dismantled his “WMD” programs.
With the support of the Democratic party (but notably, not the American people) secured, the war continued on. Biden (and Blinken) maintain that they later changed their minds and opposed the war, however this is a lie. Biden was never opposed to the war itself, but rather the conduct of it. Biden did not call for the withdrawal of American troops, rather he favored broadening America’s coalition, using more foreign troops to fill the gaps. It is unclear how he would have found more foreign allies without any evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing. He also favored balkanizing Iraq, splitting the country into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish ethnostates, a policy designed by Tony Blinken. This policy was soundly rejected both at home and inside Iraq itself.
Contrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner, rather than later. So I commend the president. He was right to enforce the solemn commitments made by Saddam. If they were not enforced … what good would they be and what value those institutions? For me, the issue was never whether we had to deal with Saddam, but when and how we dealt with Saddam. And it’s precisely the when and how that I think this administration got wrong. We went to war too soon. We went to war with too few troops. We went to war without the world, when we could have had many with us, and we’re paying the price for it now.-Joe Biden
Blinken was a chief advisor on Joe Biden’s failed 2008 primary campaign. Although this is now a footnote in history, it is worth mentioning that Biden portrayed himself as a right-wing Democrat, an alternative to the allegedly “radical” Barack Obama. For once, this was not a lie or obfuscation, Biden had always been solidly on the right wing of the Democratic party.
He got his start in politics opposing school integration, and worked with the Ku Klux Klan to end bussing of low-income minority students to the wealthy, white schools his constituents attended. In the run up to the 1991 Gulf War, Biden was one of the most enthusiastic backers of the astroturfed campaign carried out by high-priced New York PR firm Hill & Knowlton to agitate for a war with Iraq. After the images of the slaughter of escaped slaves and civilians on the infamous highway of death were made public, Biden congratulated the George H.W. Bush administration for what they had done, but then condemned them for not going far enough. Afterwards, Biden helped author the sanctions on Iraq which, by the government’s own admission, killed millions.
In 2008, Biden’s campaign tacked so far right that the senator first announced his intention to run on the Don Imus show, a popular radio show haunted by constant accusations of racism and bigotry from the host. Blinken’s strategies failed, and Biden received about 1% of the vote in Iowa. With his campaign crushed under the weight of Barack Obama’s charisma, Biden was among the first to drop out of the primary election, endorsing Obama after the January 3rd Iowa primary in exchange for the vice-presidency. This was a canny move from both men, Obama secured his right flank, thereby protecting him from the rightist attacks of Hillary Clinton, while Biden parlayed an otherwise doomed campaign into a position of serious power. This was Biden’s second attempt, the first in 1988 was thwarted by accusations of plagiarism.
Blinken was rewarded for his leal service. When Biden ascended to the office of Vice President under Obama, he appointed Blinken as the national security adviser to the Vice President. In 2013, he was promoted to Deputy National Security Advisor, and in 2014 Deputy Secretary of State. To give an idea of his importance, he was one of only a handful of advisors present in the situation room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
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