It is true that I am not a big supporter of Joe Biden or the record of his first term. Heartbroken by his destruction of the leftist and social-democratic movement of Bernie Sanders organized with the complicity of the leaders of the Democratic Party, I find it more useful and interesting to criticize the ultra-centrist policy of the outgoing president (and his central committee) than to join my voice to the anti-Trump hysteria that dominates my natural habitat of right-thinking New Yorkers.
The absurdly enthusiastic reception that the media gave to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7 only irritated me more. In the pages of Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, the former pen-president of President George HW Bush, described her speech as “spirited”, raving about the outgoing president’s “energy” and “attention”. “He’s still alive, the old boy,” trumpeted the Republican.
Oddly enough, however, there are very good arguments that did not present themselves in the joint session of the US Congress to support Biden. Among the main misconceptions about the president’s “failure” is his withdrawal from Afghanistan, the chaotic planning of which would have been disastrous for the credibility of the United States. Nowadays, do we know of a military withdrawal of such a scale, carried out in such a hostile environment, which would have joyfully crossed the television screens without showing images of death or heartbreaking despair?
Indeed, we could have brought out more pro-American Afghans in the early morning. But with Taliban spies scattered throughout the national army and government, such an operation would likely have sparked more panic and more deaths. One way or another, this inappropriate, even stupid adventure had to be put an end to. Let’s face it, military evacuations are never pretty. Biden carried on his shoulders the burden not only of George W. Bush’s past stupidities, but also of those of a detractor of the invasion of Iraq, none other than Barack Obama, who notably promulgated the “surge” of 30,000 soldiers in Afghanistan in December 2009, an act so cynical and so unnecessary that I still can’t believe it.
We should never have occupied this unconquerable country after failing the mission in Tora Bora to capture Osama bin Laden. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11, and the Afghan tribes did not want our concept of freedom and democracy. “We know from experience that wanting to impose a law on a people from the outside has not worked for a long time,” wisely declared Jacques Chirac, military veteran of the French ouster in Algeria, a few months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
I would like all Afghan girls to go to school, but not constantly protected by soldiers from Kansas and California. So well done, Mr. Biden. Stunted since childhood in focus and insight, former President Trump ordered a withdrawal from Afghanistan at the last minute of his term without any planning — and he strangely neglected to notify the armed forces before signing the order.
There is, however, an advantage in the Biden government’s game that is even less visible than the exit from Afghanistan: the anti-monopoly policy of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The United States enjoys a glorious tradition of public intervention in private markets to curb the concentration of power of large corporations: railroads in the 19the century ; oil shortly after the turn of the twentieth; and telecommunications in 1913. The great jurist Louis Brandeis summed up this threat well: “We can have a democracy in this country or we can have a great concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both . »
Today we find ourselves in an era as politically subjugated as that dominated by Standard Oil and its leader, oligarch John D. Rockefeller. The current danger comes from a concentration of shares listed on the stock exchange known by the acronym GAFAM. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon (who enjoys intimidating Congress with his Washington Post) are perhaps the closest thing to a Rockefeller-style capitalist character. That said, Google, by financially stripping media outlets that once served as a Republican barrier against attacks by private interests often intertwined with political factions, is just as toxic and destructive to democratic culture. The Biden administration has recognized this and has rekindled the anti-monopoly spirit within the federal government.
Two lawsuits initiated by the Department of Justice are underway against Google for anticompetitive — and therefore illegal — manipulation of Internet search and online advertising markets. The first was launched by the Trump administration, at its end; the second — more sophisticated and potentially more damaging because it targets the gigantic stolen revenues of the print media — was filed in January 2023 by the estimable Jonathan Kanter, head of the “antitrust” section.
Kanter understands these issues better than anyone besides the great Lina Khan, head of the FTC, who filed her own anti-monopoly complaint against Amazon in September. It’s hard to say who among these giants is the nastiest. Knowing that the division and weakening of GAFAM are essential if we want a pluralist and free America, this is in any case a completely honorable motivation to vote for Biden.
Publisher of Harper’s Magazine, John R. MacArthur signs in The duty a column at the start of each month.