Biden National Security Memorandum 20 Approves US Weapons To Conduct Genocide
We Are Living In Orwell’s Nightmare Of Permanent War
[Update Below On Resignations]
I’ve spent a 40 year career reading and sometimes writing government documents, but I’ve rarely waded into the text of military documents.
So, it was with some trepidation that I just hit a link to Biden’s recent National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM 20) regarding US weapons exports.
NSM 20 was issued in response to numerous condemnations of US provision of weapons – including 2,000 pound bombs – that Israel is using to slaughter civilians in their Palestinian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.
After Biden and Blinken repeatedly bypassed Congress and secretly provided weapons and military support to Israel, a handful of Democrats in Congress were pressuring Biden and discussing legislation to reinforce current US laws that ban export of weapons to exactly those kind of war crimes and atrocities.
Biden used NSM 20 to derail those efforts and cover his ass politically by creating the false impression that he was complying with US laws and holding Israel accountable.
In my own field of expertise, I’ve seen Biden play the exact same dishonest and corrupt political game many times, e.g. in issuing Executive Orders for a “pause” on oil and gas leases on public lands (and then go on to set record levels of US oil & gas production), “Environmental Justice” (and then walk it back in response to industry legal threats, e.g. EPA permits in “cancer alley” in Louisiana)) and federal lands and forestry policy (only to expand extractive practices like logging and mining and grazing).
Bill Clinton was known for “triangulation” – so we need to craft a similarly notorious term for Biden’s cynical hypocrisy, where he says one thing to provide political cover for doing the exact opposite. (“Bidenocrisy”?)
Getting back to the Orwellian NSM 20.
Starting with the title, we enter absurd Twilight Zone territory:
How the fuck can someone write and say that with a straight face?
- “Safeguards” to allow Israeli slaughter of thousands of refugees and women and children?
- “Accountability” as Israel openly and with impunity conducts a Genocide, siege, and ethnic cleansing in complete violation of US law, International Law, and a UN Court of Justice Order?
- “Defense Articles and Services“? Are you kidding me? 2,000 pound bombs and white phosphorus dropped on refugees in tents and hospitals and schools and religious institutions and entire neighborhoods and farms and groves of olive trees are intentionally destroyed? These are “defensive”? “Services” and “articles” (like “articles of clothing”)?
But the text of NSM 20 is even worse than the title.
Literally echoing Orwell, Biden actually wrote that “war is peace”.
Biden found that export of weapons – during the conduct of a Genocide – advances US objectives:
transfers of defense articles by the Department of State and the Department of Defense is a critical tool for advancing United States foreign policy and national security objectives,
Those objectives include … wait for it … (verbatim, but the red is mine!)
- supporting United States-led diplomacy in building and maintaining international coalitions
- promote international peace and stability
- help allies and partners deter and defend themselves against aggression and foreign malign influence
- strengthen United States national security by reinforcing respect for human rights, international humanitarian law, democratic governance, and the rule of law;
It takes a truly twisted mind to write those words. They are disgusting lies.
The reality is the exact opposite of each objective, to wit:
- The Biden administration explicitly denounced diplomacy, blocked ceasefire and peace negotiations, repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council Resolutions, rejected the jurisdiction of and attacked the International Court of Justice, and in the process, has destroyed any possibility of any “international coalitions”.
- The US is stoking wars around the globe: proxy war in Ukraine, Genocide in Gaza, and gunboat diplomacy in Taiwan, China, and the Pacific region.
- The US is the foreign aggressor and is injecting malign influence globally.
- The Biden administration is making a mockery of human rights and is being denounced by the UN and entire world for that.
How can professional journalists read this language in light of the “facts on the ground” and not denounce Biden’s lies and hypocrisy?
Why aren’t there massive resignations throughout the Biden State and Defense Departments?
Orwell lives. Dark times, indeed.
[Update: 6/3/24 – Update on resignations – check this out from Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch:
+ On Tuesday, Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the State Department, resigned in protest, after charging that Biden’s State Department falsified a report on whether Israel was restricting the flow of humanitarian goods into Gaza. Gilbert had been one of the Department’s experts helping to assemble the NSM-20 report to Congress assessing Israel’s compliance with US law in its military operations in Gaza. But she charges the report was removed from the experts before it was completed and its conclusions adulterated by the leadership of the department.
+ “Sometime at the end of April, the subject matter experts were taken off the report and we were told it would be edited at a higher level,” Gilbert said. “So I did not know what was in the report until it came out. But when the report came out, late on the Friday afternoon [on 10 May], I read it and I had to reread it. I had to go back and print out that section and read it, because I could not believe it stated so starkly that we assess that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.
“There is consensus among the humanitarian community on that,” Gilbert said. “It is absolutely the opinion of the humanitarian subject matter experts in the State Department, and not just in my bureau – people who look at this from the intelligence community and from other bureaus. I would be very hard-pressed to think of anyone who has said [Israeli obstruction] is not an issue. That’s why I object to that report saying that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance. That is patently false. Two hours after it was released, I sent an email to my front office and the team that is working on this, saying I will resign as a result of this.”
+ After four years working for USAID, Alexander Smith, a top advisor to Samantha Power on gender, nutrition and maternal and child health. resigned last week after a presentation he’d prepared on maternal and child mortality was abruptly canceled last week by the leadership at the agency. Smith said he was then given the option of being fired or resigning. He resigned, writing in his letter to Power: “I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race.”
+ Counting Alexander and Gilbert’s resignations, at least 12 government officials have quit the Biden administration over pro-Israel policies in Gaza and several more resignations are reportedly forthcoming. ~~~ end update]
