Conservatives and Republicans often complain about the “incompetence” of Joe Biden and his administration – those complaints are sheer folly. The collapse of the border, the breakdown of law and order in major cities and our military disasters and misadventures have not occurred through incompetence – they are by design.
Consider our disastrous loss in Afghanistan. It should have been clear to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about Islam, and its doctrine of Sharia supremacy, that the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and their offshoots elsewhere around the world, do not desire any kind of “peace” except the peace of the Ummah – the peace of the worldwide reign of Islam.
The catastrophic failure in Afghanistan was not due to a failure of American arms or a lack of skill and courage on the battlefield, it was solely due to a lack of military and political leadership at the highest levels of the American government – and in particular the disastrous withdrawal planned and executed by Joe Biden and his Pentagon.
The end result of Biden’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan was the stranding of as much as $85 billion in US military aid, the deaths of countless US allies and the return of Afghanistan as a center of militant Islamism and Sharia supremacy.
What’s even worse is that in the wake of the disaster in Afghanistan Joe Biden and his Pentagon completely ignored the central lesson of that loss – have a plan for victory – when they jumped into the middle of the Russia – Ukraine war.
But again, this wasn’t an example of incompetence – it was by design.
The Russian military build up and threats to begin a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine were made openly and it was almost as if Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was goading the United States and NATO to do something about it.
In keeping with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s observation, "I think he [Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,”* Joe Biden’s first instinct was to offer Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a flight out of the country – it was never imagined by Biden or his Pentagon that Zelenskyy would want to stand and fight the Russians.
When Zelenskyy did stand and fight, instead of making it clear the United States would support Ukraine to ultimate victory Biden and his team have engaged in a halfhearted negotiation with Zelenskyy over what arms, equipment and training the Ukrainians needed to not lose.
And there’s a big difference between not losing and winning.
The result has been a stalemated meatgrinder in which as many as a half million Ukrainian troops have been killed and wounded – with no end in sight to the carnage – little movement on the front and no realistic plan for victory by the United States, NATO, or Ukraine.
The result has been another apparently endless war in which the United States is being bled of money, military equipment, and international influence – a strategic defeat in fact if not in name.
In the face of the two defeats explained above, our enemies, recognizing our weakness and lack of resolve have opened another front in their war on the United States and western civilization, this time in the Red Sea.
And once again, Joe Biden is doing his best to lose to our old enemies Iran and militant Islam.
As our friend former CIA operator Sam Faddis explained in a recent article for AND Magazine, Don’t Look Now But We Are Losing The War With The Houthis:
The problem is not that we have been trying in any meaningful sense to crush the Houthi forces attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea and failing. The problem is that we have not been pursuing any strategy with any chance of success and that our efforts, including intelligence collection efforts, have been pathetically weak. The problem is that we are not serious. We have no strategy worthy of the name and our forces and intelligence collectors are so hamstrung as to be virtually useless.
Winning takes recognizing you are in a war and a plan and a willingness to do what it takes to win – Joe Biden and his Pentagon are doing none of those things.
Rather than trying to destroy the Houthis, as Sam Faddis pointed out, we keep sending money to the ayatollahs with which they can buy the arms, explosives, drones, and missiles the Houthis use, have made no effort to stop every vessel sailing between Iran and Yemen and sink every one found to be carrying arms and munitions to the Houthis, and when the Houthis fire a missile or drone at a ship in the Red Sea we have not targeted and destroyed immediately every element in their structure connected to that action – instead we announced our intentions, gave them plenty of time to run away and punched holes in an empty desert.**
The bottom line?
Another Biden defeat, as we are using million-dollar missiles and billion-dollar ships to try to stop cheap weapons that can be manufactured in a low-tech metal shop and the ships and sailors we are supposed to be protecting are still getting sunk and killed. And our stated mission – to keep the Red Sea open to navigation is a failure because international shipping companies have concluded we can’t protect them and they have abandoned the Red Sea – Suez route in favor of, at huge expense, going around Africa.
However, we have saved the worst for last.
On October 7, 2023, Israel suffered a savage attack at the hands of the Islamist movement Hamas – clients of our Iranian enemies. The brutality of this attack, and its attendant hostage-taking defy description. An unknown number of Americans were taken hostage and remain in captivity.
The Israelis reacted with vigor and resolve and have – at great cost in lives – engaged in a sustained and effective campaign to kill those responsible for the attack, dismantle their infrastructure and eliminate any future threat from Hamas.
The Israelis have an announced plan for a “we win, they lose” campaign to assure the destruction of Hamas. “we have to destroy this terrorist, Nazi army, otherwise there’s no future for anyone,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu.
The response of the Joe Biden and his administration has not been to cheer on and support the destruction of our mutual enemy – the Iranian-supported Hamas terrorist organization – but to do everything in their power to stymie the Israeli effort to defeat them.
From manipulating arms shipments, to withholding diplomatic support, to using the bully pulpit of the presidency Biden has replayed his Ukraine strategy in Israel – create another endless war by giving the Israelis enough to keep going, but not enough to carry the war through to final victory.
The most stunning example of this is Biden’s astonishingly inapt threat to Prime Minister Netanyahu that there needed to be a “come to Jesus meeting” on how to have a quick cease fire, rather than an Israeli victory.
Coupled with Biden’s decision to build a resupply pier on the Mediterranean coast for Hamas to bypass Israeli security and allow unvetted shipments into Gaza, one can’t help but conclude that Joe Biden is doing his best to lose the Israel – Hamas war for the Israelis.
None of these losses are through incompetence – results that look like disasters to conservatives are intentional policies on the part of Joe Biden, and it is time we recognized the difference.
*Given Gates said this in 2014 it is now five decades and counting.
**We also keep putting Iranian and Islamist sympathizers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon to hamstring our decision-making and potentially assist our enemies.
Biden foreign policy
Afghanistan War
Afghanistan withdrawal
Israel Hamas War
Sharia supremacy
Russia Ukraine War
NATO
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Vladimir Putin
Houthis Red Sea
Militant Islam
Iran
Hamas hostages
Israel ceasefire
Sam Faddis
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu
I wish Robert Bork was still with us. I'd love to hear his thoughts on this.