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The World Is Paying A Deadly Price For Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 16, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/16/the-world-is-paying-a-deadly-price-for-barack-obamas-foreign-policy-legacy/

Joe Biden and Barack Obama

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If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States, would Joe Biden call it a “win”? Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show “restraint”? What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences?

This is what Joe Biden and the Barack Obama acolytes, Iranian dupes, and Israel antagonists he’s surrounded himself with demand of Jewish State. And by “Iranian dupes,” I don’t only mean the Jake Sullivans and Antony Blinkens of the world, who worked to elevate the mullahs over Sunni allies and the Israelis, or even a Hamas-bestie like Rob Malley or Israel-hater like Maher Bitar. I mean assets of the Islamic State who promised the Iranian government to help out in any way possible.

Their worldview is a cancer that’s metastasized within the Democratic Party. To these people, Israel will always be the villain. And if the Iranian regime’s murder of more than 600 American servicemen couldn’t cool that bromance, 1,300 dead Jews certainly aren’t going to do the trick.

To begin with, Jared Kushner’s Middle East policy efforts were, by every measure, more successful than not only Obama’s efforts but the decades of Brookings Institute-endorsed failures the region has endured. The Trump administration undercut Palestinian terror efforts, stifled Iranian ambitions, and created space for the Gulf States and Israel to enhance ties.

Biden immediately reversed those gains, reverting to Obama-era Iranian boosterism. We’re now experiencing the consequences of pacifying Islamic ideologues. Obama might have sent the mullahs pallets of cash in the middle of the night, but the Biden administration openly subsidized the Revolutionary Guard with a $6 billion ransom payment, at least $25 billion in sanction relief, including $10 billion via a waiver, and so on.

Let’s also remember that one of Biden’s first foreign policy decisions was to overturn Trump-era policy by releasing millions to Gaza that would be sifted off by Hamas, releasing funding to Hamas-allied UNRWA, and removing the Iranian-backed Houthis from the terror list.

But to truly comprehend how demented our foreign policy has become, consider this: Iran reportedly informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, and the U.S. told Iran through Ankara that the attack should be “within certain limits.” This is a longtime ally of the United States we’re talking about — and a foe that’s murdered and kidnapped Americans for decades.

It should be mind-boggling that Biden likely knew Iran was moving forward with its attack but still gave his goofy and impotent “don’t” when asked about it by the press.

Indeed, the Biden administration’s position seems to be that Israeli military and defense forces exist to allow Iran to have a hissy fit and save face. The Iranian attack is only “symbolic” because it failed. According to officials, the attack, indiscriminately aimed at civilian centers, was designed to cause “mass casualties.”

Just because you shoot at someone, and miss doesn’t mean you’re not trying to kill them. Yes, the Iranians were embarrassed. But they almost surely view this as a win. And they also crossed a red line by firing on Israel from their own territory. Yet Israel is apparently the only nation on Earth that is permitted to fully defend itself only if its enemies succeed.

Then again, virtually every conflict against Israel unfurls the same way: Its enemies threaten or attack the country. Israel responds and heads for a victory. Only then does the world demand “restraint.” Finally, the antagonists demand Israel rewind history to a more convenient spot. (Modern Democrats demand that Israel show restraint before it even has a chance to respond. That’s a new twist.)

Those, for instance, who contend that Israel started the conflict when it hit a “diplomatic mission” in Syria last week are engaged in restarting the historical clock when it suits them. There are no Iranian diplomatic missions in Syria. There are buildings where IRGC terror leaders coordinate attacks on civilians — against Arabs as well as Jews. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the “general” Israel killed last week, helped plan the barbarism of Oct 7.

Recall that the United States atomized Qasem Soleimani at a neutral nation’s airport. Though, of course, Obamaites protested that killing as well.

Now, it is something of a cliché to contend that Israel must be right 100 percent of the time while its enemies only need to be right once. It also happens to be true. The lo-fi Hamas attack last year was a devastating failure for the Jewish state and its leadership. Israel, a country the size of New Jersey with a dense population area, relies on deterrence and preemption.

Democrats blamed their strawman, Benjamin Netanyahu, not Hamas or Iran, for trying to “drag” the world into war. The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, perhaps the wrongest person ever to tread on this planet, theorized that the prime minister wanted “a war to shore up his own crumbling political base.”

Meanwhile, Axois reports that Netanyahu was reluctant to strike back while his cabinet wanted to move immediately. Anyone who’s paid five minutes of attention to Israeli politics knows that Netanyahu is frustratingly cautious. The “war hawk” perception of him is a myth, created by the left because of the prime minister’s open opposition to Obama’s mullah bootlicking.

We have no idea what Israel will do. Maybe caution is the best policy. The notion that the Jewish state simply lashes out in revenge and doesn’t rationally consider all its options is preposterous. Whatever happens, it should be Israel’s terms, not Iran’s.

Despite what Obama’s retreads demand.


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

Biden Fell for China’s Empty-Promises Playbook at The San Francisco Summit


BY: HELEN RALEIGH | NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/17/biden-fell-for-chinas-empty-promises-playbook-at-the-san-francisco-summit/

Xi Jinping

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President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping met this week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. The Biden administration touted the meeting as a significant foreign policy achievement, even though it accomplished little but photo ops.

Leading up to the APEC meeting, Xi had a weak hand, while the leverage was on the U.S. side. China’s economic growth has slowed down significantly. Its once high-flying property sector crashed and exports dropped. The youth unemployment rate reached 22 percent in June 2023 before Beijing stopped publishing the data altogether out of fear of causing public panic. Foreign firms have pulled billions out of China, concerned over its weak economy, hostile regulatory environment, and geopolitical tensions with the U.S. China risks prolonged economic stagnation as consumers are unwilling to spend money due to financial and political uncertainty.

In contrast, the U.S. economy grew almost 5 percent in the third quarter despite facing its own

challenges, such as inflation and ballooning national debt. Since China needs American companies’ investments and technologies to revive its weak economy, Biden could have waited for Xi to plead for a summit and used it as leverage to demand some behavioral changes from China. Preconditions could have been that China’s military stops its harassment of Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea, or no more funding Russia and Iran’s geopolitical aggressions by purchasing their oil.

Sadly, Biden and his foreign policy team are known to turn U.S. leverage into weakness by focusing on the wrong priorities. For example, they continue to believe that climate change is the world’s biggest challenge and that the U.S. needs China’s cooperation to save the planet, even though China remains the world’s biggest polluter after signing the Paris Climate Agreement.

Biden’s green initiatives have only deepened the U.S. economy’s dependency on China since the communist regime dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries for electric vehicles due to its willingness to exploit slave laborers (most are ethnic minorities) and the nation’s abundant supply of coal.

Biden, led by misguided policies, sent several cabinet-level officials to China, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They practically begged Xi for a meeting. Xi, of course, played hard to get. Rather than reciprocating senior U.S. government officials’ multiple visits, Xi waited until last month to send Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, to visit the U.S. and only recently agreed to a meeting with Biden. 

A few days before the summit, China’s People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), faulted the U.S. for the deterioration of the Sino-U.S. relationship and demanded the U.S. “abandon its aggressive Cold War and aggressive mindset, fix the ‘action deficit’ with practical actions and concrete policies,” even though China is the one who has an action deficit as wide as the Grand Canyon. Remember when Xi promised President Barack Obama not to militarize artificial islands in the South China Sea and then armed those islands anyway and claimed 90 percent of the international waterway is Chinese territory?

Communist Party’s Playbook

What Xi has been doing is following the typical CCP playbook. Miles Yu, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, points out that CCP leaders, starting with Mao, love to “use international gatherings to lend legitimacy to [a] beleaguered regime at home.” By playing hard to get with the Biden administration, Xi hid his weakened hand behind a strongman image. He “seeks to send the message to his caged people — aided by the CCP’s relentless propaganda machine — that their supreme leader is respected, even revered, on the global stage,” according to Yu. Another CCP go-to tactic is to make vague and unenforceable pledges for the distant future in exchange for concessions from the other side now.

Unfortunately, the Biden team fell for the CCP’s trick. In a post-summit press conference, Biden put on a brave face and claimed the summit was “among the most constructive and productive we’ve had,” with three key agreements: to restart cooperation on controlling fentanyl, to resume direct (high-level) military-to-military contact, and to set up expert exchanges on risks and safety issues in artificial intelligence (AI).

But none of these represent any meaningful achievement, since the CCP is known for making empty promises, and the joke is on whoever believes them. On the fentanyl issue, many China observers, including Kelley Currie, a former diplomat, quickly pointed out on X, “Don’t forget that China agreed to do this exact thing in 2019 and dramatically reduced the flow of fentanyl out of China, only to switch tactics and instead supply mass amounts of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels.”

On the AI issue, China promised nothing. Xi has made enhancing the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities through AI a national priority and has already committed plenty of resources for AI research and development. Xi will not change his course because of some experts’ exchanges on AI with Americans. If such a discussion occurs, China will exploit it to identify which American AI expert to poach and what latest AI technology China should steal.

Military Aggression

Biden clearly believes that resuming direct, high-level military-to-military contact between the U.S. and China was a significant accomplishment. He tweeted, “Clear and open communication between our defense establishments is vital to avoid miscalculation by either side and prevent conflict.” But it was Chinese military leaders who refused to pick up phone calls from the U.S. side, and they did so under Xi’s order.

Chinese pilots frequently made dangerous maneuvers near the U.S. and its allies’ military assets in the South China Sea, not because of a lack of communication but because of Xi’s deliberate policy decision: China regards the international water as its territory and tries to block the U.S. and its allies from accessing it through intimidation. According to Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, “China wants the United States and its partners to feel worried about rising military and security risks in East Asia.”

It’s unlikely the Chinese military’s aggressive behavior in and above the South China Sea will stop after the Biden-Xi summit. Furthermore, Elbridge Colby, a former Pentagon official, points out that military-to-military communication is “not vital. It’s not the key issue.” Responding to Biden’s self-congratulatory tweet, Colby wrote, “The key issue is China undertaking a historic military buildup and increasingly using that military to get ready for a war, as your own appointees and generals point out. Just really nowhere near the seriousness we need.”

President Biden and his foreign policy team want Americans to believe that his meeting with Xi in San Francisco was successful. But in truth, the U.S. gained nothing from the Biden-Xi summit. Don’t expect Xi to fulfill any promises or change his policies. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s recent 753-page report to Congress presented evidence that Xi is preparing his military forces and the rest of the country for war and treats diplomacy with the United States, such as the most recent Biden-Xi summit, “primarily as a tool for forestalling and delaying U.S. pressure over a period of years while China moves ever further down the path of developing its own economic, military, and technological capabilities.”

If anything, the world is becoming more dangerous after the Biden-Xi summit, and we are on Xi’s timeline.


Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Her latest book is the 2nd edition of “The Broken Welcome Mat: America’s UnAmerican immigration policy, and how we should fix it.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.

On Israel, Biden Picks Up Where Obama Left Off


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | OCTOBER 25, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/25/on-israel-biden-picks-up-where-obama-left-off/

President Barack Obama walks with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken contends that Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”

You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.

The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.

It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.

Yet, only days after the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Biden was already lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu on how “democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.” The insinuation, again, is that there is something nefarious about winning a war against those who massacre your citizens.

Israel doesn’t target civilians, as Blinken, busy placating the progressives who now infest Washington and academia, knows well. Many Israeli soldiers have died because the nation avoids civilian casualties – even as Hamas diligently places their weapons and themselves behind women and children.

Then again, the idea Hamas’s greatest victory would be Israelis exacting revenge is itself the kind of self-satisfying gibberish that might impress a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival or readers of Tom Friedman columns.

Hamas’ greatest victory is killing and terrorizing as many Jews as possible. We know this because Islamists tell us this all the time. Why is this confusing? “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad” are the words literally written into the group’s charter. And Hamas is quite popular in both Gaza and the West Bank. Islamic fundamentalism is popular.

“Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people,” Joe Biden said the other day. This is the “religion of peace” canard, begun by George W. Bush and widely promulgated by Obama all over again.

When our former president declared that the “future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he wasn’t joking. Every time Islamists committed acts of terror, the Obama administration would turn the conversation towards “Islamophobia,” a neologism that conflates tolerance of individuals and groups (Muslims) with tolerance of a belief system (Islam). This rhetoric is not only meant to cloud reality but to chill speech and create immunity for the many progressive “anti-Zionists” on the left.

The modern Democrats have taken up this dishonest framing with gusto. When a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week if the president was concerned about rising anti-Semitism — you know, because of the Jew-hating protests that have broken out across the country — she responded by saying there were no “credible threats” and then pivoted the claims that “Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”

She did this twice. Not only is it a gross deflection, but it is also a lie. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews represent over 50 percent of all religion-related hate crimes, while hate crimes against Muslims are under 10 percent.  

But Obama’s most corrosive legacy is foreign policy. Democrats have become obsessed with turning Iran into a regional counterweight to Israel while also restarting a “peace process” that would surely create a Muslim Brotherhood-led terror state on Israel’s borders.

Before Israel could even identify all the bodies of their citizens, Biden was already yammering on about the “dignity” and “self-determination” in places where “self-determination” manifested in the creation of a Jihadist terror state.

Donald Trump nixed this strategy, punishing Iran and circumventing Hamas/PLO in peace negotiations with Gulf states. That success was shattered when the Obama retreads entered the White House again and began opening up billions to Iran and sending Hamas and Fatah hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.

“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”

Definitely.

Even now, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in the killing of not only 1,300 Jews, 30 of them Americans, the administration does everything it can to deny Iran provided logistical and financial help that killed 30 Americans.

Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.

Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.

When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.

And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs. 


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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