Previously, I had opined that just when you thought the Biden-Harris foreign policy couldn’t get any worse it does. I followed that up by claiming that we’re an impotent bystander in world affairs, but somehow they have managed to continue to reach depths previously thought unreachable.
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made yet another trip to the Middle East in hopes of achieving an ever elusive ceasefire deal between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Though the Biden-Harris Administration had been pursuing such a deal since the early summer, even claiming they had established a framework agreed upon by all parties, this particular trip was rather oddly timed considering that Israel, after an Earth shattering month of sustained effort, appears on the verge of a never before seen breakthrough. Following an ingenious pager and walkie-talkie attack in Lebanon last month, Israeli defense forces have succeeded in decimating the leadership of both Hezbollah and Hamas. In late September, an Israeli bombing campaign in Beirut killed Hezbollah’s leader and co-founder Hassan Nasrallah along with Ibrahim Akil, leader of the elite Radwan Forces, Ali Karaki, leader of the southern front, and Fuad Shukr, a notorious commander. As the Associated Press described Mr. Nasrallah’s death in particular, “The killing of the powerful militant group’s longtime leader sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the Middle East, where he has been a dominant political and military figure for more than three decades. Nasrallah, linked by Israel to numerous deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets, has been on Israel’s kill list for decades. His assassination is by far the biggest and most consequential of Israel’s targeted killings in years, and significantly escalates the war in the Middle East. Hezbollah is backed by Iran, Israel’s chief regional rival.” Almost immediately after this military triumph, Israel achieved yet another major victory by killing Hamas’ top political leader and chief architect of the October 7 atrocities, Yahwa Sinwar, in Rafah, Gaza. As Axios described it, Mr. Sinwar “became a member of Hamas’ military wing at the time of its founding in 1987. He helped lead the group’s counterintelligence arm before being convicted of killing four Palestinians accused of spying on Hamas for Israel in 1989. Sentenced to life in an Israeli prison, Sinwar became a leader among the Hamas prisoners in Israel and studied Hebrew and Israeli society. He was released after 22 years as part of a prisoner exchange. Upon his release, he resumed his role in the Hamas political and military apparatus, eventually becoming the group’s leader in Gaza in 2017.” Earlier this year, Israel also killed Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas political leader, Mohammed Deif, head of their military wing, and Marwan Issa, deputy leader of their military wing. Axios helpfully summarized this stunning sequence of events, “the series of assassinations and other military operations in the region helped restore much of Israel’s deterrence, which was shattered on Oct. 7. Israeli officials say most of Hamas’’ and Hezbollah’s military leadership has been eliminated, and much of the political leadership is dead or on the run. Still, while the decapitations have made it far more difficult for Hamas and Hezbollah to function, the groups are far from destroyed or willing to surrender.”
Left unsaid, these gains have been achieved by Israel doing precisely what the Biden-Harris Administration had repeatedly insisted should not be done under any circumstances. Immediately after the October 7 attack, the administration almost immediately began pursuing two key goals beyond a ceasefire, limit Israeli operations to certain areas of the Gaza Strip and prevent the war from spreading beyond Israel’s borders, rather than allowing them to fully prosecute the attack against their enemies. In March, Vice President Kamala Harris told ABC News that pursuing operations in Rafah, where Mr. Sinwar was killed, would be a “huge mistake.” “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” she said. Lest there be any mistake about her own meaning, she added, “Let me tell you something: I have been studying the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go, and we’re looking at about 1.5 million people in Rafah who were there because they were told to go there, most of them. So, we’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.” The administration as a whole was issuing similar statements, even calling going into Rafah a “red line” in public. “We opposed a large-scale invasion with heavy ground fighting in densely populated areas while there were so many civilians sheltering there given the high potential for civilian casualties,” an official wrote Newsweek in an email. Lebanon, perhaps needless to say, was considered even more off limits than Rafah, being perceived as part of a larger war the Biden-Harris Administration has been desperate to prevent despite thousands of rockets raining down on Israel. At the United Nations last month, before Mr. Nasrallah was taken out in Lebanon, the President himself insisted diplomacy rather than military action was still the answer while subtly acknowledging that he and Vice President Harris had completely failed, “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.” Perhaps needless to say, it wasn’t working in the least, so much so that the Biden-Harris Administration had paused cease fire talks while the President was insisting it was still the optimal path forward, meaning he was either unaware of what his own team was doing or lying. Equally needless to add, this didn’t prevent them from taking a victory lap of sorts when Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death. Despite that the assassination happened precisely where the Jewish state was told not to tread, President Biden and Vice President Harris bizarrely claimed they took their advice all along. “We opposed a large-scale invasion with heavy ground fighting in densely populated areas while there were so many civilians sheltering there given the high potential for civilian casualties,” an official said in an email. “Instead, we advised the Israeli government on a different approach, and it worked.” “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world,” President Biden said in a statement. Vice President Harris spoke from the campaign trail, insisting “justice has been served,” and that “the United States, Israel and the entire world are better off as a result.” From there, she immediately claimed victory on behalf of Israel, announced that they had officially won the war, that they were “secure,” and promptly demanded an immediate cease fire. “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza. And it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom and self-determination.” In other words, their position – peace at all costs, even with Hamas remaining in power – was the same before and after. Apparently, the only constant is the need to lay down arms even as Israel remains beset with terrorists on all sides, funded by Iran, of which the administration rarely if ever speaks.
Ironically, their position in Ukraine is essentially the opposite and when it comes to Russia, where no ceasefire deal is possible, only total victory in Europe. The constant, in this case, is that everyone has ceased listening to what the Biden-Harris Administration has to say, except when begging for more massive infusions of cash and weapons. While how to achieve this victory remains as elusive as the Middle East ceasefire, a key part of what passes for a plan has always been the idea that our alliances around the world and devastating sanctions were isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin on the world’s stage, banishing him from polite society and turning him into an international pariah. As The New York Times described it shortly after the war began, “When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration activated a diplomatic offensive that was as important as its scramble to ship weapons to the Ukrainian military. Wielding economic sanctions and calling for a collective defense of international order, the United States sought to punish Russia with economic pain and political exile. The goal was to see companies and countries cut ties with Moscow.” “Today, Russia is more isolated on the world stage than ever,” Secretary Blinken declared that June. President Putin’s war, he added, “has diminished Russian influence on every continent,” but even as the Secretary was headed to the Middle East this week, President Putin was hosting a global summit of world leaders that further illustrated how badly our policy has failed and how powerless we have become in international affairs. For three days, leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran, and Turkey will meet in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan at the BRICs summit. The meeting was an opportunity for President Putin to showcase his close ties with China, calling the partnership between the two countries, a “model of how relations between states should be built,” and to claim that they were on their way to establishing “the new world order.” While it might seem easy to insist the summit is essentially a den of thieves, a gathering of our enemies, Turkey is ostensibly a NATO country, the alliance that President Biden frequently claims he has strengthened as a bulwark against Russia and a champion of freedom in the world. India is also the world’s largest country and the world’s largest democracy, meaning it should be our closest ally in the region. Combined with China, the two represent almost three billion people, or more than a third of the world’s entire population, now increasingly aligned with one of our chief adversaries even as we claim that adversary is isolated and alone. The situation is so catastrophic that even CNN couldn’t manage to spin it favorably, writing that “The West wants Putin isolated. A major summit he’s hosting shows he’s far from alone.” “This BRICS summit is really a gift (for Putin),” explained Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “The message will be: how can you talk about Russia’s global isolation when (all these) leaders…are coming to Kazan.” Russia wants to portray BRICS “as the spearhead, the new organization that leads us all as a global community to a more just order,” he added.
Previously, I had opined that just when you thought the Biden-Harris foreign policy couldn’t get any worse it does. I followed that up by claiming that we’re an impotent bystander in world affairs, but somehow they have managed to continue to reach depths previously thought unreachable. It’s as if every prediction they’ve ever made and every policy they’ve ever put in place, has only the opposite effect, a fact proven almost daily at this point, and that’s not good news for anyone.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 