WASHINGTON TIMES: DAVID BOSSIE: Don’t expect Biden to make a foreign policy course correction
Our enemies are on the march in the Middle East, yet President Biden has failed to articulate to the American people exactly what’s at stake and our policy moving forward.
Americans are among the 240 innocent civilians being held hostage by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists in the wake of their murderous rampage that killed at least 1,400 people in Israel. At this point, the Biden administration is asking Congress for billions of dollars but providing scant details about its plan for success.
Since Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 assault on Israel, Iranian proxies have been regularly attacking American forces across the region, but the White House’s mild response to date only invites more attacks on our heroic troops. Seeing reports of the murder of women and children in Israel and the rise of antisemitism in American cities and on college campuses is disgusting and unacceptable. With antisemitism on a dramatic uptick, the American people must demand the death of moral equivalence now.
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It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. November 4th will mark the 44th anniversary of the start of the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Just like in the case of Mr. Carter, the terrorist onslaught being perpetrated by Iran and the barbaric enemies of freedom is a direct result of the weakness of Mr. Biden and his incompetent administration.
Iran – the world’s largest state sponsor of terror – and the Islamic terrorist groups hellbent on wiping our ally Israel off the face of the earth only respect one thing: American strength and our capacity for overwhelming military power. But when Mr. Biden came into office, he abandoned President Donald Trump’s peace through strength foreign policy and emboldened our enemies to go on offense.
Mr. Biden made it a priority to appease the radical left in America by ordering his State Dept. to start the process of re-entering Barack Obama’s insane nuclear deal with Iran – a deal that makes America look pathetic in the eyes of the world.
Now, Hamas’ act of terror comes on the heels of the Biden administration agreeing to release $6 billion in Iranian assets as part of a September prisoner swap, and the optics could not be worse. The timing of this irresponsible move by Mr. Biden makes clear that the dangerously weak Iran policy that the Obama and Biden administrations have been pursuing for the past decade is a complete failure and should be abandoned before it’s too late.
Mr. Biden’s weakness and incompetence across the board has made the American people far less safe. Our adversaries have no respect for a government that doesn’t even secure its own borders. It’s no secret that plotters in China, Russia and elsewhere see our porous southern border as proof positive that the Biden administration isn’t serious about defending American interests at home or abroad.
Undoubtedly, a weak, rudderless America encourages bad behavior around the world. That’s why Russia is in Ukraine, that’s why China is threatening Taiwan, and that’s why Iran is trying to destroy Israel.
To make matters worse, Mr. Biden isn’t only weak but also thoroughly predictable. And on matters of foreign policy, predictability can be a killer. World leaders have known Joe Biden for half a century; they know his foreign policy is grounded in retreat and capitulation and is being driven by powerful forces on the radical left that control the fate of his reelection campaign.
Juxtapose the Biden-United Nations appeasement playbook with the forceful America First approaches of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mr. Trump. Under Messrs. Reagan and Trump, world leaders always had to consider what consequences they would suffer for bad behavior on the world stage. With Joe Biden at the helm, the bad guys are literally running wild without a worry in the world. Strong American leadership and moral clarity are needed now more than ever.
Unfortunately for the American people, in the case of Mr. Biden, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Highly respected former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that Mr. Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” So, with this current crisis, don’t expect the president to do an about-face and start getting things right. Look no further than how Mr. Carter failed to navigate the hostage crisis and Soviet aggression during his own reelection campaign.
Mr. Biden’s mindset is no different; bad decisions coming from the Oval Office will begin to pile up. Just three weeks into the war, and Mr. Biden is already putting his head in the sand. The president is refusing to blame Iran directly for its role in the brutal Hamas attacks, and he worked to undermine and delay Israel’s ground invasion.
Going forward, the antisemitic protests springing up around our country must be adequately addressed by Mr. Biden and cannot be viewed in a vacuum. This is the same behavior that paved the way for the rise of Nazi Germany and the death of over six million innocent Jews not so long ago. Any Hamas sympathizers who have been allowed to enter the United States must be rounded up and deported immediately. This is our time for choosing.
Over the course of the next year, Mr. Biden will continue to prove exactly why he should have never been entrusted with the presidency. It’s going to take a change in leadership at the top to fix this malaise, and a year from now – just like in 1980 – the American people will have their chance to make a much-needed course correction.
The civilized world surely depends on it.
• David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United and served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President.