Tag: Joe Biden

Biden’s Pier to Nowhere

Mike Coté1 Comment

The Biden administration’s plan to build a temporary port to receive aid in Gaza is the worst in a long line of bad decisions with respect to the Israel-Hamas war.

If anything is true about Joe Biden, it’s that he has, in the words of the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” To give just one representative example, then-Vice President Biden argued against the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011 – one of the few signal foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration. So his failures with respect to Afghanistan, Iran, China, the Houthis, and Ukraine are entirely fitting with this personal history. But perhaps the most disappointing foreign policy issue during the past few years has been his approach to the Israel-Hamas war.

I say disappointing because his initial response to the Hamas barbarities was actually quite good. The administration rhetorically supported Israel to the hilt, ramped up military aid and sales, and sent carrier groups to the region to deter a broadening of the conflict by other Iranian proxy groups. Over the past few months, however, that early resolve has steadily eroded under consistently increasing left-wing and international pressure. We have seen it with the steady push for a ceasefire that would only serve Hamas’s interests, the choice to work closely with Qatar (a primary sponsor of Hamas) on negotiations, the constant badgering of Israel about civilian casualties (which are quite low for an operation of this scale and complexity), and the drawing of a ‘red line’ on Israel entering Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza. Still, the most frequent refrain the administration uses against Israel in this conflict revolves around its obsession with humanitarian aid.

The White House and its Democratic supporters have pushed for increased aid to Gaza, blaming Israel for the parlous state of the Gazan population. This runs counter to the facts – that Israel has allowed a large number of aid trucks through border crossings that are sitting in Gaza awaiting distribution by NGOs, that Hamas and other armed gangs are stealing much of this aid, and that in no other war situation is the outside power responsible for the basic needs of the populace whose government began the conflict. Still, the administration has repeatedly upbraided the Israeli government – unfairly and inaccurately singling out Benjamin Netanyahu, who is but one member of a triumvirate War Cabinet – over this issue and has gone out of its way to insinuate itself into it. This was evident when the White House insisted on airdropping aid into Gaza, a tactic that gained the administration few plaudits, resulted in some of the food being thrown away out of anti-American spite, and caused the deaths of several people from falling aid with faulty parachutes.

Now, the Biden team has landed on an even worse idea that they’ve rushed to implement after its announcement during the State of the Union address last week: a floating pier in Gaza meant to deliver humanitarian aid by sea.

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A Modest Proposal – Old Politicians Edition

Mike Coté1 Comment

** This is the second in a recurring series, in which I offer some modest proposals – in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift – for American and international politics. **

America’s political class has one defining feature: its age. Political elites, particularly at the federal level, are almost uniformly ancient. The average age in the United States is just under 40 years old, with the average voter clocking in at 50 years old; in contrast, the average age for House members is 58 and for senators 65. There is a supermajority of senators older than 60. The two most influential congressional politicos of the recent past, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, are both octogenarians. Baby Boomers and their elders rule the roost, comprising a full 49.4% of the House and a whopping 74% of the Senate. They also dominate the presidency and major party nominations thereto. Every president since Bill Clinton has been a Baby Boomer or older, as have all the people they have defeated. Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney were all born between 1946 and 1947! (Joe Biden, Al Gore, and John Kerry also are children of the 40s.) These people are old. As such, they suffer from the normal problems of old age.

Health issues abound. There are strokes, heart attacks, cancers, unexplained freezes, and more. Political figures seem to die in office at an almost-19th-century clip. The aforementioned Mitch McConnell had polio, a disease fully eradicated in the United States before the Reagan administration, as a child. For today’s largest population cohort, Millennials, that is about as alien to their experience as the Spanish Flu, cholera, or the Black Death. There might be more Life Alert pendants on the floor of the Senate than there are American flag lapel pins. Colonoscopy scheduling errors could lead to failing to achieve a quorum. Senility is not uncommon. The late California senator Dianne Feinstein was entirely mentally incompetent by the time of her death at age 90, while other politicos have faced repeated gaffes caused by aging brains.

The two main candidates for the 2024 presidential election, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, both have significant age-related issues. The errors and embarrassing mistakes have come up again and again during this campaign season. Donald Trump confused Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi. Joe Biden seems to think he won his first presidential campaign in 1988 instead of his last in 2020, confusing France’s Emmanuel Macron for François Mitterand and Germany’s Angela Merkel for Helmut Kohl. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however.

In a new special counsel report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, the president is described as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” who failed to recall the dates of important events like his own vice-presidency and the death of his son. In a press conference called to debunk these assertions, Biden looked more like Abe Simpson than Abe Lincoln. He verbally stumbled around in a belligerent haze and, in a wonderful undermining of his own message, confused the leader of Egypt for the leader of Mexico. (Perhaps that’s why the administration’s policies on the border and Israel are so messed up.)

None of this is necessary. America doesn’t have to submit to gerontocracy. We can choose better, but we need a roadmap. If that’s the case, consider me Rand McNally.

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No to ‘Palestine’

Mike CotéLeave a comment

The recognition of a Palestinian state anytime soon would only reward terrorists.

There have been a whole mess of no good, very bad, absolutely awful ideas vis a vis the Israel-Hamas conflict tossed around the media and the internet since October 7 of last year. We’ve had serious arguments that Israel was responsible for the deaths of Jewish civilians on that horrific day, that the whole attack was a false flag meant to gin up antagonism towards Palestinians, that the well-documented atrocities against civilians – including mass rape – did not occur, and that there were no hostages taken into Gaza. On top of these egregious contentions, there has been widespread blame ascribed to Israel for purported war crimes, including destruction of civilian property (used, of course, as Hamas military camouflage), disruption of food and other necessities (basic screening of humanitarian aid that has historically been used to smuggle weapons to Hamas), ethnic cleansing (relocation of civilians outside of combat zones), and even genocide. The last allegation was leveled by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, making it all the more official-sounding, despite its complete fabrication. But these are complete bupkis compared to the new proposals coming out of major Western nations.

Over the past few days, both the British and American governments – ostensibly Israel’s allies – have floated trial balloons for the recognition of a Palestinian state in the immediate aftermath of the current Hamas-Israel war. David Cameron, former British Prime Minister and current Foreign Secretary (somehow a man who is bad at both jobs), has asserted that the UK may just decide to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations, so as to make the statehood process “irreversible.” He argues that “most important of all, is to give the Palestinian people a political horizon so that they can see that there is going to be irreversible progress to a two-state solution and crucially the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This would include recognizing Palestine as a state before negotiations commence, rather than doing so as a part of a final negotiated settlement.

The Biden administration has put the idea of near-term Palestinian statehood in the ether as well, hoping for it as a part of a broader Saudi-Israel normalization deal. The Palestinian issue was not part of any prior Israeli-Saudi negotiations, but the Biden team has forced the issue after the attacks of October 7. According to a senior White House official, “some inside the Biden administration believe that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state should be the first step in talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of the last,” dovetailing with the view embraced by Cameron. Of course, this information was promoted in the press by the White House’s chief useful idiot, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. The so-called “Biden doctrine” for the Middle East is replete with pie-in-the-sky idealism – famously something that works so well in the region – and assumptions about Palestinian and Iranian behavior that fly in the face of reality.

But we’re going to focus for now on the push for Palestinian statehood as part of the cliché “two-state solution,” which was, is, and should remain a dead letter. Here’s why.

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Native Privilege

Mike Coté1 Comment

Native Americans have experienced a great deal of historic tragedy, but that does not merit extraordinarily special treatment in the present.

There are many things which, in the modern progressive worldview, are the original sins of the United States of America: chattel slavery, racism, imperialism, militarism, and more. But perhaps the one with the most actual historical backing is the treatment of American Indians by the European colonists and their descendants. To be clear, I do not buy the idea that Native Americans were actors without agency in this conflict, nor do I believe that the large-scale depopulation faced by the continent’s pre-contact inhabitants should be considered a genocide. The first is disproven by the multisided melees that characterized the complex relations between settlers and natives, while the second is shown to be untrue by the fact of novel disease transmission – something not understood by either party at the time.

Despite the falsity of these major claims, there is some truth to the idea that American Indians have been ill-treated by our nation in the past. We have broken treaties, forced internal migrations, and engaged in shady dealmaking. None of these are good, even if they are not as evil as what progressives contend. Making amends for these wrongs and treating Native groups as equal members of American society is what has been and will continue to be done. It is also key to deal with official tribes as the semi-independent nations they are – hence the treaty-making. All of these things are happening and have been for decades. This has been a bipartisan effort through the legislature, the executive branch, and the courts. In fact, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Republican appointee, has been one of the most stalwart defenders of Native treaty rights in the entire judiciary.

But this is not enough for progressives, who seem to want to undo centuries of history and return to an idyllic pre-contact utopia that never existed. In support of that quest, they are using government and cultural institutions to privilege American Indians in a manner that cements them at the tippy-top of the intersectional hierarchy and caters fawningly to their every desire.

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Suez 2.0?: The Houthis v. International Shipping

Mike Coté1 Comment

The geopolitics of 1956 can feel ancient, but, 67 years later, history may be repeating itself.

The biggest geopolitical story of 2023 is, inarguably, in my opinion, the Hamas attack of October 7 and its aftermath: the ongoing war in Gaza. That story has gathered in various other strands – the rise of Iran in the region, Israeli internal politics, American partisanship and the Middle East – while spinning out other yarns – the cross-border tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the impact on the potential Arab-Israeli warming, the response of the Egyptian government to Palestinian refugees, and the further moral depravity of the United Nations. But the most significant of those subsidiary tales has thus far been the Houthi assault on commerce in the Red Sea. That story is already making an enormous impact across the world and could signal far greater issues in the future.

So, who are the Houthis and what are they doing in the region that is causing such wide-ranging effects?

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