In addition to holding back Kamala Harris’ campaign, Biden is leaving behind a disaster that will last for decades.
For Joe Biden, words and actions should never match when it comes to America’s relationship with Israel. In fact, Biden has a tic of his own: he privately muses about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even gives public speeches advising Israel to exercise restraint. But these words will never lead to actions that show he is serious.
Bob Wardward’s new book, Warfull of outbursts from the American president about the Israeli leader. Like CNN reports“Woodward describes the roller-coaster relationship between Biden and Netanyahu. While Biden publicly supported Israel, he battled with Netanyahu behind the scenes over Israel’s war in Gaza.” Earlier this year, Biden told aides: “This son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad guy!” When Israel sent troops into Rafah even after Biden said entering that town was a red line that should not be crossed, Biden said, “He’s a fucking liar.” Biden told Netanyahu, “Bibi, you have no strategy.” Biden also told the Israeli prime minister, “You know there’s a growing perception of Israel around the world that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor.”
Woodward’s account agrees with a Politics the report Earlier this month, “Biden told confidants that he did not believe his Israeli counterpart wanted a cease-fire agreement, arguing that Netanyahu was trying to perpetuate the conflict to save his political future and help Trump in the November election.”
Despite Biden’s scathing views of Netanyahu, the American president has spent the past year acquiescing to every escalation of the conflict by Israel, which has turned an already horrific and disproportionate retaliation against Gaza into a regional war with the ongoing occupation of Lebanon and an escalating cycle of mutual strikes against Iran.
Of course, Biden was right to fear that Netanyahu was using the war for his own political purposes, including helping Trump win the presidency. But in achieving these goals, Netanyahu could not hope for a more conciliatory accomplice than Biden himself, who showered Israel with a record $17.9 billion in military aid and to protect Israel from any diplomatic or legal repercussions from international organizations and to allow Israel to cross every red line that Biden claimed was inviolable.
In the process, Biden looked weak and hurt Vice President Kamala Harris’ election chances. Polls show the election is close, and Harris is trailing with groups opposed to Biden’s Middle East policies, not just Arab Americans (an important demographic in the volatile state of Michigan), but also youth in a broader sense.
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The electoral implications, as important as they are, actually understate the damage that Biden has done. Biden’s unconditional support for Israel is the biggest disaster in American foreign policy since the Iraq War (which Biden also supported). Like the war in Iraq, it is a catastrophe whose consequences will be felt for decades to come in the destabilization of the Middle East and the international order.
Writing in The new republicMatt Duce, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, is observed:
Netanyahu deceived Biden no more than he deceived George W. Bush when he decided to support the war in Iraq. He chose this path and stayed on it, despite constant warnings about exactly where it was leading. Having done this, when he leaves the White House, he and his team will leave this world a more dangerous and lawless place, with America’s trust more broken, the so-called “rules-based order” even more “so-called” than when he entered .
Doos cites a related analysis by Larry Friedman of the Middle East Peace Foundation, which found that Biden has created a new set of rules for war. As Friedman is right observes: “The cost of these new rules of war will be paid in the blood of civilians around the world for generations to come, and the responsibility of the United States to introduce, defend, and normalize these new rules, and their horrific, inhumane consequences, will not be forgotten. »
Hala Rarit, a career diplomat who resigned from the State Department in April in protest of Biden’s policies, struggled with the long-term consequences of Biden’s pandering to Israeli militarism. Writing in NationalRarity shows:
This failed and intransigent Biden-Harris policy has achieved none of its stated goals, primarily the release of all Israeli hostages or the destruction of Hamas. It only guarantees an endless cycle of violence, revenge, extremism and hatred. The generational trauma experienced by the children of Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon will have a lasting impact.
Although Biden has completely failed his own terms, there is little hope for a course correction in the short term. At least Donald Trump is seeking to give Israel a free hand against its neighbors, as was Biden, sharing the bipartisan dream of a Saudi-Israeli defense pact that would ensure permanent American hegemony in the Middle East. Kamala Harris found herself in an awkward position when she became the Democratic presidential candidate without a primary, so she did not want to distance herself from Biden in any way. While it’s entirely possible that Harris will follow a different path if she becomes president, the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus and institutional continuity of the foreign policy elite will make it difficult for her to break away from her predecessor.
The anti-war movement is much weaker now than it was in the years after the Iraq War, when the fact that it was Republicans who started and supported the war allowed anti-war sentiment to find a home in the Democratic Party. While there have been strong protests against Biden’s policies — especially on college campuses — many anti-war Democrats are reluctant to rock the boat in an election year. Since Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign, there has been a noticeable weakening of the protests.
The question is whether anti-war sentiment might revive if Harris is elected and Trump is no longer a force in presidential politics. If so, it must be an anti-war movement willing to challenge both political parties.
Joe Biden, despite his often noteworthy domestic achievements, is destined to be remembered for leaving behind a foreign policy disaster of truly epic proportions. Whoever wins the presidency will have to govern in the shadow of this disaster.
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