People say that foreign affairs don’t matter in American elections. They are wrong. Foreign affairs often influence electoral outcomes. Former President Jimmy Carter’s weakness before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 helped sink him in 1980. Former President Ronald Reagan’s tough talk on the Soviet Union was part of his appeal. Former President Bill Clinton’s sweet nothings about an American-led world were central to his seduction technique. Former President George W. Bush won as a war president in 2004. Former President Barack Obama won twice as an anti-war president. Former President Donald Trump may be about to do the same.
The “war on terror” was such a disaster that every winning candidate since 2008 has sounded the note of American retreat from the world. President Joe Biden sounded it loud and clear in his 2020 campaign. Candidate Biden criticized then-President Trump for assassinating Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, which is the division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tasked with expanding the revolution beyond Iran’s borders. “The world has changed because of what Trump has done,” Biden said. “As the walls close in on this man, I’m worried he’s going to get us into war with Iran. Unfortunately, I may be right.”
He was wrong. Biden is the man who ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Biden is wrong again now, too. He promised normalcy, a return to convention. The conventions of American foreign policy have served the United States poorly since 9/11. The norm is fine words and strategic failure, a waste of lives, money, and credibility. Unfortunately, I may be right.
The world has changed because of what he has done. Biden’s administration revived the Obama administration’s pandering to the nuclear ambitions of the mullahs in Tehran. Biden allowed sanctions to lapse. He sent cash sweeteners to the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. He took the Houthis off the terrorist list. He sent money to Hamas-controlled Gaza.
The Iranians surmised that they were dealing with clever fools. They waited. They armed and trained their proxies across the Middle East. And then they struck, repeatedly. First at Israel on Oct. 7, and then at U.S. bases, and international shipping in the Red Sea.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to use the war in Ukraine to push the U.S. out of Europe, so the mullahs seek to push the U.S. out of the Middle East. Iranian-backed groups have attacked U.S. bases some 150 times since Oct. 7. They have attacked commercial vessels and effectively closed the Suez Canal.
Iran has launched a war against America. The Biden administration insists there is no war with Iran. The killing of three U.S. servicemen and the wounding of 35 more in a drone strike at an outpost in Jordan on Jan. 28 exposes not only Iran’s malevolence but also the Biden administration’s duplicity.
Within hours of the Jan. 28 attack, the administration let it be known that the drone got through because radar operators had mistaken it for an American drone. This is close to blaming the victims rather than the Iraqi terrorists who fired the drone. It also ignores, as Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told the Wall Street Journal, that the terrorists often hide their drones in the radar signatures of American drones.
“Our heartfelt condolences go out to the families,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “who lost, er … three, three brave … er, three brave, er … three folks who are military folks who are brave, who are always fighting, who are fighting on behalf of this administration, of the American people.”
If Jean-Pierre were a chef, her specialty would be word salad. Here, however, she knew exactly what she wasn’t saying. The word she couldn’t bring herself to say was “soldiers” — as if someone killing your “military folks” doesn’t suggest you’re at war. The same goes for saying they were “fighting on behalf of this administration” — as though this is a Beltway matter or a Trump thing, not a blatant assault on the U.S.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“We will hold all those responsible to account,” Biden said, with every intention of doing as little as possible. The administration let it be known that it would respond at the time of its choosing, probably in a “tiered approach” over a period of time yet to be specified, and that it did not seek a war with Iran. As it says nowhere in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, telegraph your intentions to your enemy by leaking to the media. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq evacuated some of its bases in Iraq and Syria so that the U.S. can blow up some empty shacks and call it deterrence.
The walls are closing in on this man. Foreign affairs, and the Middle East in particular, will matter in the 2024 elections more than in any election since 2004. The road to peace was once said to run through Baghdad. Now, the Democrats’ road to victory in 2024 runs through Michigan and Arizona. Reversing policy on the southern border is easier than reversing policy in the Middle East. One reason is that the Democrats’ Middle East policy has collapsed. Another is that Iran has declared war on the U.S.
