If the President thinks this is a genocide, say it and demand a change in course. If he thinks it’s a just war, but he has a better idea how to fight it, say it. Voting present simply isn’t an option anymore.
Earlier this week, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict throughout Ramadan, the Holy Month in the Muslim world. The final ceasefire resolution was the result of several back and forth efforts between the United States, supposedly allied with Israel, and Russia and China, who are both far closer to Iran, the client state of Hamas. Multiple resolutions were previously put forward over the past several weeks, but were either vetoed by the United States when they were advanced by Russia and China, or vice versa. Monday’s resolution passed because the United States took the extraordinary step of abstaining from the vote, not choosing to exercise either veto power or to affirm the ceasefire. Instead, the Biden Administration bizarrely chose to step aside on a matter of huge importance, effectively abdicating our authority to our avowed adversaries at a time of war. The choice to show such indecisiveness and outright ambivalence can only be explained by concerns in the Administration that progressive voters remain rabidly opposed to Israel, claiming they are conducting a genocide in Palestine, and are souring on the President’s re-election hopes because of his continued support for the effort to eradicate Hamas. In a word, it’s a bizarre compromise, an attempt to placate his progressive base while not actually going on record against Israel. A classic have your cake and eat it too, which ultimately pleases no one, revealing why President Biden’s foreign policy has been a disaster, and why neither side of the conflict trusts him. As any student of history should know from the early days of World War I, a President cannot simply abstain from matters of war and peace. He or she must choose one side or the other, committing to the outcome most desirable for America’s strategic interests, and ensuring something close to that outcome comes to fruition. Abstinence, on the other hand, is abdication, that will only be perceived by both sides, our adversaries, and even neutral parties as weakness. Ultimately, it leaves one wondering, who does President Biden think he’s fooling?
For their part, progressives neither took the resolution seriously, nor do they believe the President is suddenly moving against Israel to block what they perceive as a genocide. Last week, progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grew more vocal than ever in her comments about Israel’s conduct of the war, neatly summarizing the opinion of the left. After claiming Israel was conducting a genocide on the floor of the House of Representatives, her comments were posted as an op-ed on The Guardian arguing that the US “must stop facilitating mass killing in Gaza.” She began by quoting the President himself, when he was Vice President, “preventing genocide is an achievable goal, a goal that requires a level of government organization and engagement that matches in its intensity the brutality and efficiency required to carry out mass killing. Too often, these efforts have come too late, after the best and least costly opportunities to prevent them have been missed.” After detailing the horrors of the invasion and life under the blockade in Gaza, Representative Ocasio-Cortez claimed that “all [of this has been] accomplished with US resources and weapons. If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing. Or too little. Too late.” Further, it “is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance. And that is exactly what is happening right now.” She concluded by urging the President to cease military funding for Israel. “We have a responsibility to prove the value of global democracy, enshrined in the upholding of civil society, rule of law, and commitment to human and civil rights. This is not just about Israel or Gaza. This is about us. The world will never be the same. And we will never be the same.” Previously, she’d described the Biden Administration as “shameful” for vetoing earlier cease fire resolutions, but as far as I can tell, she had nothing positive to say about the decision to abstain from the recent vote, and why should she? I strongly disagree with her assessment of Israel’s actions in the conflict, but if you believe a genocide is being conducted, at least partially funded by the United States, why would you be satisfied by an Administration that refuses to take a firm stand about the horrors occurring in your name? Putting this another way, if you think what’s happening in Gaza right now is truly a genocide, you are going to demand direct answers and serious action, not too-cute compromising on votes and vague comments about “indiscriminate bombing” as the President has done while trying to straddle both sides of the issue. This is doubly true when National Security Council spokesman John Kirby bizarrely insisted that the move didn’t represent a change in policy. “Nothing, nothing has changed about our policy. Nothing,” he said.
Likewise, no one except the Biden Administration was surprised when Israel reacted in unfeigned outrage, immediately canceling a planned delegation to Washington, DC. “We’re very disappointed that they will not be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah,” rationalized Mr. Kirby without mentioning what those alternatives might be and while State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the cancellation “surprising and unfortunate.” It was even less surprising when Israel immediately issued a statement that they will not honor the resolution in any event and that airstrikes continue as we speak. “The state of Israel will not cease fire,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages returns home,” thereby illustrating for all the world that the United Nations is essentially a corrupt debate club with no power at all and privately at least, the Biden Administration informed Israel there’d be no consequences if the continued the campaign in Gaza. Even stranger, the decision to abstain from the vote occurred while the Administration has been actively negotiating with both Israel and Hamas about a different potential ceasefire with an accompanying hostage exchange, as happened earlier this year. They claimed they couldn’t vote for the UN ceasefire – though apparently they could allow it to pass – because it didn’t condemn Hamas, but that they wanted some other ceasefire. “Because the final text does not have key language we view as essential, notably a condemnation of Hamas, we could not support it. This failure to condemn Hamas is particularly difficult to understand coming days after the world once again witnessed the horrific acts terrorist groups commit,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “A ceasefire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been willing to release hostages,” explained US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield while insisting that member states and the Security Council demand that Hamas “accepts the deal on the table.” “Any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,” she added. Mr. Kirby noted that “You can do two things at the same time,” whatever that means in this context, except that the United States is simultaneously abdicating key votes on a ceasefire, while pushing for a ceasefire of our own design, and having “candid, frank conversations” with Israel about protecting civilians during the military operation and allowing humanitarian assistance to enter the Gaza Strip. The very next day, however, Hamas rejected the United States ceasefire proposal, in perhaps the least surprising move at all, refusing to exchange 40 hostages for 700 Palestinians, which of course has always been the underlying issue. Hamas does not want a ceasefire. They want Israel to surrender and to leave them to commit more attacks.
If you are confused by any of this, you are not alone. Rather than the clarity required for a successful foreign policy, the Biden Administration has chosen to pursue their own political goals, attempting to please both sides of an irreconcilable issue in the hope that they can hold together their electoral coalition this November. The result is weakness and impotence. China and Russia cannot help but perceive our abdication as a victory at the UN, especially as the UN itself has been pursuing a ceasefire since the very beginning of the conflict. Israel, self-evidently, views it as a betrayal, and very well might decide to get more aggressive in the short term, believing their closest ally is not far from abandoning them, leaving only a small window to achieve their goals. Our allies are likely wondering what our strategy actually is, or even whether there actually is a strategy in the first place beyond the President’s own political needs. They too are undoubtedly considering how long they should continue backing Israel. Domestically, progressives do not believe the President has really changed policy, especially when they jumped out and said exactly that, seeing this as a shameful attempt to appease them while the war they consider a genocide rages on. Conservatives and other supporters of Israel, meanwhile, see an administration adrift, incoherent, and clueless about how to achieve our objectives. In fact, one might even wonder what the objective even is at this point. Are we still committed to the destruction of Hamas or is the goal now simply to get the hostages back? The Biden Administration would likely insist they are committed to both, but the destruction of Hamas is necessarily going to be accompanied by even more civilian deaths whatever strategy is pursued. How many is too many before we change our goal? Beneath the spin and moral preening, war is about the application of force to achieve political or economic goals, the classic politics by other means description. Force does not come without a price in lives, and a certain amount of force must be applied to achieve the objectives, meaning a certain number of lives are going to be lost whatever precautions are taken. This amount is unfortunately unknown in advance, save that if you apply too little, you will fail and the lives destroyed in the process will be wasted, dying in vain for an unsuccessful cause. Therefore, the goal of any military campaign should be to apply the necessary force without excess. This cannot be done by playing both ends against the middle, hoping to appease both sides of an equation where each side fundamentally disagrees on the nature of the conflict in the first place. As I have argued, nobody likes President Biden because no one knows who he is. I’ll add that no one respects him either for the same reason. If he thinks this is a genocide, say it and demand a change in course. If he thinks it’s a just war, but he has a better idea how to fight it, say it. It’s a time for choosing, and yet he won’t choose, not even when lives and perhaps even the international order hangs in the balance. Biden is no longer in the Senate. Voting present simply isn’t an option anymore.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 