A publication called the Jewish Insider reported on August 31, the day the last American troops vacated Afghanistan, that an all-Democrat congressional delegation is on its way to foreign parts, perhaps, some cynics may suppose, to staunch wounds following President Joe Biden’s “successful” – so he says – withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The delegation, which will include Connecticut U.S. Senators Chris Murphy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, and Dick Blumenthal, intends to visit Israel, the West Bank and Lebanon.
The West Bank in Israel has been in continuous eruption, owing chiefly to Iranian support of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists and U.S. complacency. Lebanon is, for all practical purposes, an Iran supported terrorist controlled state – just like the now Taliban controlled Afghanistan. And Israel, whose new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, recently sat down with Biden for a chat, is now and forever in danger of being pushed into the sea by its enemies.
The Afghan withdrawal has not been an unqualified success, and at least one of the visiting delegates, Blumenthal, has said publicly that he had warned Biden in May, when Biden had announced an inflexible withdrawal date of August 31, that he did not, as reported by Connecticut Commentary, “favor a withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan until it is certain all Americans have left the sole airbase Biden had not yet surrendered to the Taliban.”
Following his misadventures in Afghanistan, Biden had announced, prior to Bennett’s visit, that he intended to reopen a diplomatic entente with Iran. His entente with the Taliban, a conspicuous failure, ended with the surrender of a fully operational Bagram military airbase, the takeover of the whole of Afghanistan by the Taliban, and the removal of any possibility of on the ground supervision of Taliban pledges that the terrorists will refrain from decapitating the friends of America who remain in Afghanistan, along with American citizens, possible money producing hostages, left behind a Taliban cordon surrounding Kabul Airport.
Bennett advised against deals between America and Iran now in progress, as reported in Connecticut Commentary: “Bennett made clear his opposition to an Iran deal, arguing that Tehran has already advanced in its uranium enrichment and that sanctions relief would give Iran more resources to support Israel’s enemies in the region.”
Nuclear scientists tell us that Iran had all along been making steady progress in the development of a nuclear weapon, previous diplomatic misadventures pursued by the Obama administration having conspicuously failed.
All indications suggest that Biden intends to reanimate former President Barack Obama’s failed domestic and foreign policy misadventures – with one important exception. Obama regarded the American intervention in Afghanistan, 16 years old by the time he left office, as necessary. Afghanistan, he famously said, was “a war of necessity,” while former President George Bush’s war in Iraq was “a war of choice.” In most other respects, Obama’s foreign and domestic policies have been copied and pasted into Biden’s somewhat erratic foreign and domestic policy agendas.
Biden is not a creative President. He has always operated on the assumption that there can be but one consequence of an action he prefers; the notion of unintended consequences is foreign to him. T.S Elliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock describes him best: “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be/ Am an attendant lord, one that will do/ To swell a progress, start a scene or two/ Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,/ Deferential, glad to be of use,/ Politic, cautious, and meticulous;/ Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;/ At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—/Almost, at times, the Fool.”
Most derivative politicians align with Elliot’s description. They are in the business of politics; which is to say – they are in the business of convincing other politicians that twice two makes five.
What is the mission of the all-Democrat foreign policy diversion? There are only four possibilities. Either 1) they are sent by Biden to gather useful information for Biden, hence the absence of even a single Republican delegate. This is possible, but such information is better gathered by intelligence services and ambassadors. Or 2) they are being sent with a message from the president. The hidden nature of such messages arouses doubts in those receiving the message. Or 3) mistrustful of the usual propaganda preceding an election campaign, the delegates will gather information useful to some future congressional hearing. Or 4) the sole intent of the secret meetings is to convince ill-informed and therefore credulous voters that the delegates are indispensable to the well-being of the Republic.
Unfortunately for the delegates and Democrats Biden and Speaker of the U.S. House Pelosi and U.S. Senate leader Chuck Schumer, others entirely outside their sphere of influence will determine their political fate and the fate of our dear Republic.
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