We can’t say we weren’t warned. Joe Biden’s abject incompetence at foreign policy is legendary.
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” former President Barack Obama reportedly warned a fellow Democrat during the 2020 primary. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in 2014 that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Biden’s record somehow has only gotten worse since he became president.
President Barack Obama, standing with Vice President Joe Biden, gives a press conference about the Iran Nuclear Deal, on July 14, 2015, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik – Pool/Getty Images)
His Afghanistan withdrawal strategy lead to chaos, horror, and death – including for children and American servicemen. His Ukraine/Russia policy undoubtedly played a major role in Putin’s decision to invade. China has routinely humiliated the U.S. on the world stage. Biden is more responsible than any single person for the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border. His efforts to keep America’s Southern border opens confirms that, stunningly, national security is simply not a priority for the U.S. President.
So, yeah, he’s wrong on every major foreign policy decision.
He staffed his foreign policy machine with grifters, dissemblers, and ideologues. Those who didn’t spend the Trump years hawking their services to the highest bidder were perched at think tanks, where they were no less at the mercy of foreign interests. Just last week, the Pentagon announced a probe into a Biden appointee over her cozy relationship with Iranian officials while promoting the nuclear deal as a scholarly “expert.”
Once in power, these phony “experts” have rarely even hinted at progress toward Middle East peace of any kind.
In fact, the region has been markedly more chaotic than the relative calm of the Trump years.
Despite Biden’s campaign promise for a return to “normal” foreign policy, this weekend’s blood bath carried out against Israelis by Iran-backed Hamas terrorists may well be his biggest foreign policy failure. For starters, Biden’s team appears to have been blindsided by the attacks. This should shock no one, since these same people have spent most of his term wrangling with allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel while trying to appease Iran (which wants us all dead).
Hamas militants celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Eslaiah)
Rockets are launched by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
A man passes the scene where a rocket fired from Gaza strip hit a building on October 7, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In fact, in response to Hamas attacking Israel, the United States’ Office for Palestinian Affairs called for Israelis to “refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” (They have since deleted the offending tweet.)
There is a word for granting moral equivalence between terrorists and their victims: evil.
Upon taking office, Biden chilled the U.S.-Saudi alliance. President Joe will rarely, if ever, defy his left-wing base, and his base had become obsessed with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudis. This made it impossible for Biden to engage with the Saudis at a level necessary to forge a stronger peace in the region. Additionally, as my colleague Joel Pollak has noted, Biden paused arms sales to Saudi Arabia and “reopened negotiations with Iran toward a new nuclear deal over Saudi (and Israeli) objections.” Russia would be a key partner if a new Iran deal takes shape. The same people who told us that Vladimir Putin is the world’s greatest threat are perfectly fine pushing for a deal that elevates him on the world stage while empowering Iran. This is incoherent and irresponsible.
Since Biden has been president, the U.N. nuclear watchdog found that Iran has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade.
That doesn’t seem to bother Joe Biden, who recently released $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran as part of deal that included a prisoner swap. Iran funds and arms Hamas. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared “victory” after the latest terror attack in Israel. While the $6 billion hasn’t arrived yet, and it is supposed to be used specifically for peaceful purposes, money is fungible and padding Iran’s bank account obviously frees them up to fund more terror. Only liars and demagogues would pretend this is not how money works. What’s more, people (and countries) spend when they have the expectation of money coming in; they don’t necessarily wait for the check to arrive. That’s basic economics.
In fact, the Iranian President has said he’ll do whatever he wants with the money.
He is laughing at us. Literally.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a rally outside the former U.S. embassy in the capital Tehran on November 4, 2022, to celebrate the 43th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis against Americans. (ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
But wait, there is more: Biden inexplicably revoked the terrorist designation of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group. He also pulled U.S. support for Yemen’s government against the Houthi rebels — in a country that sits across a narrow strait from a key U.S. naval base in Africa. All of this strengthens Iran.
Meanwhile, Biden has been icy to Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Bibi’s efforts to engage productively with President Joe. Biden and his team refused to meet with Israel’s duly elected government. They also restored funding to Palestine over internal objections that the aid could be diverted to Hamas.
U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan — another catastrophe Joe Biden failed to see coming — are also believed to now be in the hands of Hamas.
As I document in my new book, Breaking Biden (the definitive book on Joe Biden’s record with a strong emphasis on his disastrous foreign policy), the Pentagon reported that the U.S. left $7.12 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan upon our departure. This includes aircraft, air-to-ground weaponry, other military vehicles, munitions, and communications equipment.
Here is some of what has reportedly fallen in the Taliban’s lap:
- 208 aircraft, including UH-60 Black Hawks and M-17 helicopters, between 2003 and 2016
- 61,000 military vehicles of all types, including more than 2,000 armored vehicles and Mine-Resistant, Ambush- Protected (MRAP) vehicles
- 258,000 rifles, including M-16s and AK-47s
- 56,000 machine guns
- 31,000 rocket-propelled and handheld grenade launchers
- 18,000 “gravity” bombs
- 16,000 aviation rockets
- 1,845 D-30 mortar systems with more than a million mortar rounds
- 224 D-130 howitzer artillery guns 30 million rounds of ammunition 17,400 night-vision devices
- 95 small drones
- body armor
- biometric security equipment
There were likely other beneficiaries of this bounty besides the Taliban. As I note in the book, sophisticated weaponry and convoys of military vehicles could easily have fallen into the hands of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or other hostile actors in the region. Two months after the evacuation, in October 2021, U.S. supplies were already for sale by Afghani gun dealers.
Hummers from the U.S. Army left behind at Bagram air base in Kabul, Afghanistan, are seen on September 1, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)
Armed Taliban security personnel ride a military vehicle as they parade near the U.S. embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2023, during the second anniversary celebrations of their takeover. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Men watch as an armed Taliban security personnel rides a vehicle convoy as during a parade near the U.S. embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2023, as Taliban celebrates the second anniversary of their takeover. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Taliban security personnel display seized weapons in Mazar-i-Sharif on July 13, 2023. (Atif Aryan / AFP) (Photo by ATIF ARYAN/AFP via Getty Images)
An Afghan shopkeeper sells used U.S. military headphones and vests at Mujahideen Bazar in Kabul, Afghanistan, on October 12, 2022. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
It looks like we now know who got some of them: exactly the people we all feared.
As the disasters in the Middle East have mounted, the typically stubborn Biden has occasionally reversed course, meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent weeks. We were finally back on track for an historic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the framework for which was established under the Trump administration.
But this is all far too little, far too late. After Hamas’s terrorist attack, it would be a miracle if such a deal gets done now.
If it were in a vacuum, all the brutality would already be unthinkable. The systematic slaughter and murder of women. The preying on innocents. The stacking of bodies in the street. All of this is horrifying even for a region of the world known for constant war.
Yet it’s not in a vacuum. There is context. And the context is that the United States government under Joe Biden has signaled a weakening of our relationship with our allies in Israel, it has elected to fund the funders to terrorism, and it has repeatedly entertained a nuclear deal with the hideous Iranian regime that hopes to eviscerate both us and Israel.
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Alex Marlow is the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News and a New York Times bestselling author. His new book, Breaking Biden: Exposing the Hidden Forces and Secret Money Machine Behind Joe Biden, His Family, and His Administration, is available now. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @AlexMarlow.
Getting around downtown Chicago is a challenge at the best of times. Weekdays feature a constant flow of carefully and swiftly moving traffic; weekends all the more so.
But it is a city of 2.5 million people, in a tri-state metro area of 9 million. Back in the days when Chicago was known as “The City that Works” – a generation ago, at least – the city fathers took great care to minimize any event that threatened to jeopardize that title.
We had parades occasionally; we had demonstrations all the time. The Constitution guarantees American citizens’ right to such things.
So the city always allowed them – it had to – but made sure they were kept under control, usually on the front courtyard of the Daley Center or some similar easily-confined location.
The goal of the demonstrators was never to disrupt traffic, in those days. As fellow Chicagoans, demonstrators knew that their own neighbors, parents, or siblings had to get to work. So demonstrators would hold picket signs and recite pithy slogans, and the police would make sure fights don’t break out.
The regular population of downtown – the businessmen and the shoppers, the tourists and suburbanites in town for lunch or a show – could get on with their day unimpeded, but they would receive the message of the demonstrators while walking or driving past. See? The city still works, and the demonstrators reach an audience. Win-Win.
Not anymore.
On the afternoon of Saturday, October 21, A.D. 2023, Gentle Reader, this writer had to venture into the city to see a friend’s world premiere performance in an iconic downtown venue. With the Kennedy under construction and the usual traffic of a Saturday, it was sure to be an unpleasant drive, but nobody knew how unpleasant it was going to get.
There was already a big event scheduled for Saturday– the Halloween Parade, attracting some 50,000 spectators. Back in the days when the infamous Machine still functioned, they would not have granted a permit for a competing event two blocks away on a Saturday afternoon.
But at about 3:00 p.m., thousands of pro-Hamas protesters – both pedestrians and vehicles - converged on Chicago’s downtown, centering around the intersection of Ida B. Wells Drive (named for a famous black Republican journalist of the 19th century) and Michigan Avenue (named for our own Great Lake), mere blocks to the east).
There was no room for this massive, unsanctioned demonstration, so it tied up traffic for hours, as thousands of people carrying full-size flags of the imagined nation of Palestine that the supporters of the terrorist groups Hamas and Fatah hope someday to establish in place of Israel.
I don’t know when people started bringing full-size flags to demonstrations; I certainly don’t recall them in the days when I used to watch (or counterprotest) such things, many years ago. Conservative demonstrations might have two or three full-size American flags to lead a parade and give the crowd a direction to face for the Pledge. Leftist demonstrations would have dozens of picket signs. But it’s not like the demonstrations of the 1970s and 80s had hundreds of Soviet or ChiCom flags flying around. Even those enemy nations’ own paid agitators (and yes, during the Cold War, there were plenty) knew better than to make their allegiance so blatantly obvious.
But in recent years, it has become common enough for people to drive around Chicago with a full size Mexican flag – or flags of other immigrants’ homelands - sticking out of the sunroof of a car, driving down our city streets, or even sticking out of a side window, presumably held in place by the passengers.
So at this pro-terrorist demonstration, there were indeed hundreds of people with these huge flags cluttering the streets and sidewalks of downtown Chicago on a Saturday afternoon. Visibility is never all that great downtown, with the crush of humanity on the sidewalks, and the SUVs and buses and trucks everywhere else. Add in all this random fabric flapping in the breeze, and traffic slowed to a crawl, as even our most confident Chicago drivers had to hesitate at every intersection, taking each turn more slowly than usual, from fear of hitting a car or pedestrian because of such obscured sightlines.
The short demonstration tied up the city for hours, because both before and after the actual speeches or chants, all the participants – with their cars and leaflets and flags and signs – were added to the already dense numbers of people downtown.
One is reminded of an anecdote from the late, great P.J. O’Rourke’s classic work, “Parliament of Whores.”
Not long after Andy (Ferguson) and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. “How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”
“We have jobs,” said Andy.
-- Parliament of Whores, copyright 1991 P.J. O’Rourke
O’Rourke was making a different point than I am here, since this was a Saturday, making it far easier for even people with jobs to attend a rally. But it is worth noting that a related aspect still applies. This pro-terrorist rally disrupted the commerce of the city of Chicago, the downtown commerce in fact, which – outside of the airports and our various stadiums on game days – is really the commerce that Chicago counts on to survive.
Why wasn’t this protest broken up immediately, as soon as it was clear that it was going to disrupt traffic?
When you add an hour in traffic to the tens of thousands of individuals, couples, and families in downtown Chicago on a Saturday, what you’ve done is shortened their day in town by an hour. You’ve caused them to miss the first hour of a performance they had paid to attend (or that they were to be paid to perform in). You’ve caused them to miss the dinner or drinks or dessert or appetizer that they were planning on enjoying at one of the restaurants or bars on their day’s agenda. Or you’ve caused them to skip one or two or three of the shops they were planning on visiting during their day downtown, likely costing each of those businesses a sale.
Every hour of unnecessary additional traffic in Chicago costs the Chicago business community – that means their proprietors and clerks, cashiers and musicians, bartenders and waitresses – hundreds of thousands of dollars at least, but more likely, millions of dollars.
That’s the real result of this traffic-snarling demonstration. That’s what its organizers costs us, and therefore, what our city leadership cost us by failing to properly enforce the permitting requirements and location limitations traditional for Chicago. This wasn’t a sudden change with Chicago’s rabble-rousing new mayor; Chicago has been careening on a downward track for years. They long ago forgot the importance of smooth traffic flow to the business of the city; they never did really understand how dependent their constituents are on a smoothly operating downtown business and entertainment district.
(Perhaps this tells us something about the supporters of Gaza as well. For generations now, especially for the past sixteen years of self-rule, the leaders and residents of the Gaza Strip itself have concentrated on protests and violence instead of on jobs and commerce. Had their own focus been on seeking honest prosperity instead of blood, we might have found peace by now.)
Perhaps the police were afraid that if they utilized the normal tactics of crowd control and actually tried to enforce the law, violence would erupt. This shouldn’t be a fear, but considering the crowd in question, it can’t be discounted.
This was, after all, a crowd of tens of thousands of Hamas supporters, just two weeks after Hamas committed one of the most horrific pogroms in history (yes, for all intents and purposes, most of the Hamas attacks on October 7 met or exceeded the definition of the worst of history’s pogroms).
Many spectators assumed that after the word came out of the unspeakable horrors of October 7 - the terrorists shooting up a music festival, the tortures and rapes at a kibbutz, the desecration of the bodies of their victims – Hamas would be sure to lose its vocal supporters. Surely nobody would admit to siding with such demonic villains in this day and age. This attack beats most of the barbarity of ancient times.
But no. It is now clear that Hamas supporters know no shame. Still they charged into downtown Chicago, as they have filled demonstrations in other cities as well for the past week, furiously calling for an end to American support of our friend and ally Israel. They have the audacity to call Israel the monsters. To claim that Israel practices apartheid, of all things. Even chanting their ghastly song of genocide against the Jews, calling for clearing the country “from the river to the sea.”
We remember our history books. We know about the Third Reich. We know exactly what “from the river to the sea” means.
Still the supporters of independent nationhood for the Arabs of the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria are willing to show their faces in public, even after all that their heroes have done to thousands of innocent victims in Israel in the past two weeks.
And we remember – for we can never forget – that under U.S. Law, those who support terrorists are terrorists themselves. Know your enemy.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II).
Image: Screen shot from NBC News Now video, via YouTube
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