The President appeared before the UN General Assembly to brag about himself and lie about a peace plan for the Middle East that his own Administration has scrapped. Even worse, the Administration admits that despite months of effort, there is no Plan B and no way forward from here to end the bloodshed.
It’s official: President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record is so atrocious that even CNN had a hard time spinning it earlier this week. As the President appeared before the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the last time, they made the self-evidently self-defeating claim that he was hoping to “burnish [his] foreign policy legacy at the UN as leaders grapple with a world on fire.” Personally, I was reminded of their infamous 2020 chyron, when during the riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere after the death of George Floyd, they insisted these were “fiery” but “mostly peaceful protests” even as a building was engulfed in flames in the background. Metaphorically at least, the situation was the same. After almost a year of desperately attempting to avoid a wider war in the Middle East, primarily by trying to rhetorically appease two unappeasable sides and refusing to properly identify Iran as the real enemy, Israel and Hezbollah find themselves enmeshed in their deadliest few days in decades. Following a series of incredibly creative and destructive cyber attacks, when Israel somehow managed to remotely detonate devices stored in Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie talkies, shocking the world, killing some 30 people and wounding thousands of others, with some going so far as to insist it was a terrorist attack, Hezbollah’s leadership in southern Lebanon vowed swift revenge. Israel responded to these threats with a much more avert barrage of missiles that killed 492 people, making for the highest casualty count in 20 years. “There were dead bodies strewn on the side of the road, people with their arms blown off. Even the ambulances that tried to reach them were struck,” one man who reached the relative safety of Beirut, along with some 10,000 others displaced, told CNN. These deaths included key members in the senior leadership of Hezbollah itself, prompting even Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to acknowledge the attacks were “definitely a loss” for the group. “Yes, they incur damage. Some of the effective and valuable elements of Hezbollah were martyred, it was definitely a loss for Hezbollah. But, it is not enough to destroy Hezbollah,” he said. “Hezbollah’s organizational and personnel strength is much more than this. Their authority, their ability, their strength is beyond getting seriously damaged by these martyrdoms.” In addition to Israel, the Ayatollah singled out the United States itself – despite lifting sanctions, despite releasing funds, despite trying to restart a defunct nuclear deal, and despite President Biden refusing to name him an enemy – as responsible, insisting Washington, DC “pretends that it isn’t involved” when everyone knows the truth.
In this context, the President took the stage at the UN, a moment that called for a radical new strategy and change in approach if ever there was one, when a real leader would emerge to end the chaos. Instead, Biden was capable only of delivering yet another meaningless speech, repeating talking points recycled from similar efforts and oddly talking about himself rather than the world in flames he’s leaving behind. He began, in fact, with a focus on his own career rather than the challenges at large. “I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history. I was first elected to office in the United States of America as a U.S. senator in 1972. Now, I know I look like I’m only 40. I know that. (Laughter.) I was 29 years old. Back then, we were living through an inflection point, a moment of tension and uncertainty. The world was divided by the Cold War. The Middle East was headed toward war. America was at war in Vietnam, and at that point, the longest war in America’s history.” He went on to claim that he helped end that war, by doing something no one has ever heard of, spoke against apartheid in the 1980s (no mention of the fact that he lied about getting arrested with Nelson Mandela), and helped hold Slobodan Milošević accountable during the Serbian conflict in the 1990s, again without any evidence. Particularly bizarre for a foreign policy speech, he managed to sneak in a reference to how he helped draft the Violence Against Women Act, before turning to 9-11 and the killing of Osama bin Laden under his former boss, President Barack Obama. This was a strike he was said to oppose at the time, but now he insists, “We were attacked on 9/11 by Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. We brought him justice.” From there, he defended his disastrous pull out from Afghanistan, ignoring the reality that he lied about the facts on the ground and failed to adequately secure a critical airport, resulting in 13 dead servicemen and women. To hear him tell it, he bears no responsibility for the worst foreign policy fiasco since Vietnam, and should only be credited with the courage of his convictions, doing what no one else would, no matter the cost up to and including American lives. “When I came to office as president, Afghanistan had replaced Vietnam as America’s longest war. I was determined to end it, and I did. It was a hard decision but the right decision. Four American presidents had faced that decision, but I was determined not to leave it to the fifth. It was a decision accompanied by tragedy. Thirteen brave Americans lost their lives along with hundreds of Afghans in a suicide bomb. I think those lost lives — I think of them every day.” The President then turned to what he considered the more positive aspects of his foreign policy, namely rebuilding alliances. “To face the future, I was also determined to rebuild my country’s alliances and partnerships to a level not previously seen. We did — we did just that, from traditional treaty alliances to new partnerships like the Quad with the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. I know — I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not. I won’t. As leaders, we don’t have the luxury. I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond: war, hunger, terrorism, brutality, record displacement of people, a climate crisis, democracy at risk, strains within our societies, the promise of artificial intelligence and its significant risks. The list goes on. But maybe because of all I’ve seen and all we have done together over the decades, I have hope. I know there is a wa — a way forward.”
That way forward, however, was left completely unsaid. The only thing he would say is it’s threatened by malign forces, namely his political opponents which thankfully remained unnamed given the forum. “There will always be forces that pull our countries apart and the world apart: aggression, extremism, chaos, and cynicism, a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone. Our task, our test is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart, that the principles of partnership that we came here each year to uphold can withstand the challenges, that the center holds once again.” After reiterating the need to continue funding the war in Ukraine, presumably forever, claiming that a conflict causing the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and costing hundreds of billions of dollars has been a failure for Russian President Vladimir Putin rather then the alliances he so prizes, and insisting we need to stand firm against China, he discussed the situation in the Middle East in what might have been the strangest and most revealing portion of the speech. Despite months of failure to secure a ceasefire deal, he continued to proclaim that one is possible in the short term based on his own already rejected framework. “I put forward with Qatar and Egypt a ceasefire and hostage deal. It’s been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. Now is the time for the parties to finalize its terms, bring the hostages home, en- — secure security for Israel, and Gaza free of Ha- — of Hamas’ grip, ease the suffering in Gaza, and end this war…Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes on the border safely. And that’s what working — that’s what we’re working tirelessly to achieve.” Incredibly, he made this claim even as CNN was reporting that these efforts have been paused by his own Administration and that no progress is being made because it cannot be made. The framework is a complete and total bust. “With the Biden administration essentially pausing work on ceasefire negotiations to end the war in Gaza, Israel’s fresh assaults on Hezbollah in Lebanon this week are adding another layer of complication, making prospects for a near-term deal all the more difficult – if not impossible – at least while the bombs are falling. In recent days, senior US officials had largely stopped making a vigorous push on the ceasefire negotiations, sources told CNN, having determined there is currently no political will on either side – Hamas or Israel’s – to end the conflict.”
It’s difficult – if not impossible – to quote the President himself – to quantify how well this illustrates the abject failure of President Biden’s foreign policy and how little control he still maintains over his own Administration. The President, appearing at one of the most important global summits of the year, boldly proclaims that a diplomatic solution is still possible and he’s tirelessly working for it, but the reality is that his own staff had already paused these efforts and decided the very solution their boss is pushing has failed. Not surprisingly, CNN was happy to characterize his call for a ceasefire during the Assembly as merely “perfunctory” as if a President insisting a solution is “possible” and he’s working “tirelessly to achieve it” was just some minor matter that can be easily dismissed. The reality, however, is that neither our allies nor our enemies are going to be nearly as willing to simply bypass the disconnect, especially after the President himself and his would-be successor Vice President Kamala Harris, have already invested months pushing a failed plan. Moreover, it’s not simply the ceasefire proposal that has collapsed. Ever since the massacre of October 7, President Biden and his allies in the media have said that preventing a wider conflict that embroils the entire region was one of their top priorities. They have maintained this position even as the Middle East has descended further and further into chaos after Iran-backed terrorist groups have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, attacked US-bases and killed US soldiers, even attacked Israel directly for the first time in either country’s history. They’re still saying it as Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel are already at war, even if no one wants to label it correctly, and throughout it all, they have remained completely unwilling to name Iran as the primary aggressor, meaning they don’t even seem to be aware of who our chief adversary actually is. At best, they will admit, “It’s a bit of a false dichotomy to suggest that any of these pieces are completely separable from the mass,” as a senior State Department official described the situation in such antiseptic language it’s insulting to the dead. The mass of what, tragic death and destruction? Perhaps worst of all, CNN admitted that there is no “Plan B.” As they put it, “there are no indications the US is actively preparing to push for any Plan B for the time being. In fact, there are currently no known plans for some of Biden’s top national security deputies who have made countless treks to the Middle East over the last year to try to facilitate a ceasefire and hostages deal – including CIA Director Bill Burns, Secretary of State Antony Blinken or White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk – to visit Israel with that goal in mind.”
Amidst all of this chaos and confusion, literally a war on fire on his watch according to even CNN, the President closed his speech with another tribute to himself. “Being president has been the honor of my life,” he said. “There’s so much more I want to get done.” “As much as I love the job, I love my country more. I decided, after 50 years of public service, it’s time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward,” he added. Nor could President Biden resist framing his obvious expulsion from the campaign, when he was forced by powerful politicians and donors to leave a race he still believes he can win, as some sort of noble sacrifice. Some “things are more important than staying in power.” “It’s your people that matter the most,” he added. As if we needed any more evident that Teddy Roosevelt, he is not.
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