How to Blow Up the Middle East War in 5 Easy Steps

 

When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm. Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.

So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on Sept. 29, 2023—and just eight days before the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis—Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, could still brag that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?

In a word, theocratic Iran—the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict—was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.

The Biden-Harris administration adopted a five-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The result was a near guarantee that something akin to the Oct. 7 massacres would inevitably follow—along with a subsequent year of violence that has now engulfed the Middle East.

First, on the 2020 campaign trail, Biden damned longtime American ally Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”

He overturned the policies of both the previous Obama and Trump administrations by siding with the Iranian-supplied terrorist Houthis in their war on Saudi Arabia.

Biden accused the kingdom of war crimes, warning it would “be held accountable” for its actions in Yemen. Biden-Harris took the murderous Houthis off the U.S. terrorist list.

Almost immediately followed continuous Houthi attacks on international shipping, Israel, and U.S. warships—rendering the Red Sea, the entryway to the Suez Canal, de facto closed to international maritime transit.

Worse still, by the time of the 2022 midterms, when spiraling gas prices threatened Democratic congressional majorities, Biden opportunistically flipped and implored Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to lower world prices before the November election. Appearing obnoxious and then obsequious to an old Middle East ally is a prescription for regional chaos.

Second, Biden-Harris nihilistically killed off the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords.” That diplomatic breakthrough had proved a successful blueprint for moderate Arab nations to seek detente with Israel, ending decades of hostilities to unite against the common Middle East threat of Iran.

Third, Biden begged Iran to reenter the appeasing, so-called Iran Deal that virtually had ensured that Iran would eventually get the bomb.

Worse yet, it dropped oil sanctions against the theocracy, allowing a near-destitute Iran to recoup $100 billion in profits. And it green-lighted $6 billion in hostage ransoms to Tehran.

An enriched Tehran immediately sent billions of dollars in support and weapons to the anti-Western terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to attack Israel, Americans, and international shipping. Iran soon began partnering with China and Russia to form a new anti-American axis.

Biden-Harris also fled abruptly from Afghanistan, abandoning billions in weapons and American contractors. The humiliation thus virtually destroyed American deterrence in the Middle East, inciting enemies and endangering friends.

Fourth, Biden-Harris restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, but without any guarantees that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would desist from their past serial terrorist acts.

In the case of Hamas, U.S. and Western “humanitarian aid” simply freed up more fungible dollars in Gaza to arm Hamas and to expand its subterranean tunnel complex essential to its Oct. 7 massacres and hostage-taking.

Fifth, from the outset of the ensuing increased tensions, Biden-Harris began pressuring the Israelis to act “proportionally” in responding to the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and nearly 20,000 missiles, rockets, and drones launched at their homeland from Iran, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Such straitjacketing of our closest Middle East friend further signaled the Iranian-backed terrorists that there was now “daylight” between the U.S. and its closest regional ally. That opportunity provided still further incentives for Iran to test just how far it could safely go in attacking Israel.

But why did Biden-Harris so foolishly ignite the Middle East?

In part, the administration naively tried to resurrect the old, discredited Obama administration notion of “creative tension”—of empowering a rogue Iran and its terrorists to play off Israel and the moderate Arab regimes, as a new sort of balance of power in the region.

In part, Biden-Harris was caving to increased antisemitism at home and the rise of powerful, pro-Palestinian groups on U.S. campuses and in critical swing Electoral College states.

In part, Biden-Harris was naive and gullible. The two bought into the anti-Americanism and anti-Israel boilerplate of our enemies. So, they thought to make amends by seeing Iran and its terrorists as the moral equivalent of democratic, pro-American Israel.

Their malignant legacy is the current Middle East disaster.

Try a Little Honesty About Israel

 

Both the Harris-Walz presidential ticket and now lame-duck President Joe Biden keep insisting that they are Israel’s best friend.

A snarly Biden recently bragged at a contentious press conference, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] should remember that.”

Yet the thin-skinned and triggered Biden’s prickliness poorly hid—or perhaps revealed—the truth: This current administration knows that it is responsible for the current explosion of the Middle East and the particular dilemmas of Israel.

Biden further revealed his blame-gaming of the Israeli government when asked another loaded question about purported Netanyahu election interference, saying, “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know.”

Election interference?

Biden apparently forgot who just flew Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into swing-state Pennsylvania, just as early and mail-in voting there began, to lobby for more aid even as he trashed candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance to a left-wing magazine.

Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris refused to say whether the Netanyahu administration is even an ally of the United States.

Her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, could not state whether the Democratic ticket would approve of an Israeli response—by either targeting the Iranian nuclear bomb program or its oil fields and exporting facilities—to some 500 Iranian missiles and rockets that hit the Jewish state.

Another Bob Woodward racy and gossipy tell-all book just appeared. It alleges that Biden despised Netanyahu and has reportedly smeared him to aides: “That son of a b—-, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f–king guy!”

What are we to make of this Biden-Harris-Walz mess?

It is an election year and one of the closest races in modern memory. Biden and his would-be successors, Harris-Walz, know that support for Israel is a bipartisan cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and critical for Democratic unity.

Yet they feel they must also pander to anti-Israel, Muslim-American voters who may determine the Electoral College votes of critical swing-state Michigan.

Democratic politicos square that circle by claiming they support Israel—despite damning the conservative Netanyahu. That way they seek to blame Netanyahu for alienating Arab and Muslim-American voters, while they do not alienate left-wing Jewish and pro-Israeli Democrats.

For all the invective, a demonized Netanyahu is now regaining public support in Israel. The Israeli public approves of his near-destruction of Hamas, the ongoing brilliant Israeli emasculation of Hezbollah, and Israel’s revelations that the once widely feared terrorist regime in Iran may in fact well prove to be a paper tiger.

Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan admitted just eight days before the Oct. 7 massacres that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

His boast was an admission that Biden and Harris had inherited from the prior Trump administration a stable Middle East.

So, what blew up Sullivan’s quietude?

Certainly not Netanyahu or Israel in general.

It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise-attacked and killed 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.

Their slaughtering, torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.

Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number more than 20,000.

It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until Oct. 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.

During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.

For over three years, the Biden administration had signaled Israel’s enemies that it no longer acted like a close ally of the past.

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: Attack the Jewish state, and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did, in unison.

Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

The final irony?

Israel has concluded that Biden-Harris foolhardiness can be toxic and endanger its very survival—and so, will not agree to its own suicide.

Instead, Israel seeks to finish a multifaceted war it did not seek. And one of whose beneficiaries from Israeli blood and treasure will be the U.S. itself, given Israel is now systematically weakening America’s own existential enemies.

Do We Want a Constitutional Government or Not?

 

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specific objects.  It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general.  Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Sadly, the answer to the question that is the title of this column is “no,” Americans no longer want a constitutional government (at least not our current Constitution), nor do we have such.  The author of both the quotes above is James Madison, the man given most credit for writing America’s Constitution.  If anyone should know what the Constitution means, it’s because he wrote it.   Please note his words carefully—“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.”  Indeed, (the second quote), where is the Constitution clause giving the national government the right to spend taxpayer’s money on charity?  As Madison said, the states can do it; that’s what the 10th Amendment authorizes.  However, nothing in the Constitutionally given powers to Congress says anything about spending taxpayer money on charity.  So says James Madison, the main author of our Constitution.

Republicans—most of them—have been gleefully bashing the Biden administration for being slow in responding to the needs of people in southern states due to the damages caused by Hurricane Helene.  “Where is the federal government?”  “They don’t care about red states,” and there is probably much truth to that.  Americans now believe when there is a national catastrophe, that the feds are supposed to jump in with whatever money is necessary.  Remember George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina?  He moved too slowly and was crucified for it.  Charity is now a power of the national government.

Where did we get that?  Certainly not from the Constitution, James Madison being our witness.  But then, 99% of what the federal government does today couldn’t be found in the Constitution if you read it until your eyeballs fell out.  Washington, D.C., except in some structural matters that do not relate directly to power, pays absolutely no attention—none, zero, zilch—to what the Constitution actually says.  And that applies to all three branches—Congress, the President, AND the Supreme Court.

There were reasons why our Founders did not assign charity as one of the powers of the national government.  They knew history and the tendency of government to grow in power at the expense of the freedoms of the people, and they intended to try to prevent that.  They also understood that charity and welfare were no business of government, and for very good reasons.  And those reasons mostly have to do with the nature and object of government and what government can and cannot do effectively.

Our Founding Fathers well understood that the nationalization of government is the nationalization of force because everything the government does is by force or the threat thereof.  Citizens know that paying taxes is necessary, but we don’t generally do it out of the goodness of our hearts, and most of us try to pay as little as possible.  But there is this thing called the “IRS.” They don’t ask for charity, and they don’t politely request we cough up our hard-earned cash.  And then say, “Oh, it’s ok if you don’t, it’s your choice.”  There is force behind everything the government does.

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And force is the very antithesis of charity.  “We are going to force you to be charitable.”  That is an oxymoron if ever one existed.  And so, the Founders didn’t put “charity” in the Constitution.  If we want the national government to force us to be charitable, which our Founders didn’t, then we need to put that in the Constitution.  Otherwise, don’t ever say the United States government has a Constitutional right to provide charity for hurricane victims.  Such is NOT in our Constitution.

The Founders also understood quite well that the people (especially government) who give you money can control you, can tell you what to do, and if you don’t do it, they can take away the money (or, in the case of government, worse than that).  Power-loving politicians know this principle very well.  Government telling you what to do isn’t exactly “freedom.” Every dime the government takes from me is one dime more power they have, and one dime less free I am.  Government takes, it doesn’t give, and when it DOES give, it is only because it has first taken something from us, thereby lessening our freedom by just that much.  And, to get what government gives us we have to do what government tells us.  You want government charity?  Then you’ll have to do what government tells you to do.  And “a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have” (Thomas Jefferson). 

Helping people in distress is certainly a very good, and needed, thing.  But it isn’t in the Constitution as a power given to the national government.  Charity comes from the heart, which a government does not possess.  Individuals, churches, charitable organizations—these are the groups, historically, helping the needy in times of distress, and millions of Americans have graciously and generously done so in the recent hurricane.  That’s as it should be.

My only point in this essay is, if we want Washington to do so much of our charity for us, then the Constitution needs to be amended to add that power, from the states, to the national government.  That’s what the Constitution says.  And then we’ll have to expect our government to grow in power at the expense of our freedom.  Which is exactly what is has done over American history.        

And that is exactly what our Founders warned us about and why we fought a civil war.

Kamala Just Gave the Wrong Answer on The View

 

Vice President Kamala Harris is in New York City Tuesday, a stop on her friendly media tour this week, and gave an interview to the ladies of The View. 

Throughout her campaign, which started in July when President Joe Biden abruptly left the 2024 campaign trail and she quickly ascended as the Democratic nominee, Harris has attempted to distance herself from Biden’s record — a record that is very unpopular with voters. 

Kamala Harris: “They’ve been very vague on the VP’s agenda because she’s trying to run away from the unpopularity of the Biden agenda and she can’t fall back on her 2019/2020 stances because they are very far left and unpopular with those outside of… pic.twitter.com/JrV4LGO1gk— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) August 19, 2024

Today, she fully embraced the Biden-Harris White House tenure and the Trump campaign took notice. 

“If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

KAMALA: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

🚨🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/kvS3zkMc4p— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 8, 2024

Harris’ comments come as Trump continues to lead with swing state voters on top issues of the economy and illegal immigration. Biden’s approval continues to sit in the high 30s and low 40s. 

The president’s party has never (at least back to 1980) won another term in the White House with so few Americans saying the U.S. is on the right track (28%, today).

The average when the prez party loses (25%) is far closer to today’s number, though there is a bit of a twist. pic.twitter.com/hZtWRMW9mn— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 4, 2024

How Is Anyone Backing Kamala?

 Nice President Kamala Harris spent some time on “60 Minutes” talking about…well, I don’t really know.

I know she was asked a bunch of questions and gave responses, but that didn’t clarify anything for anyone, really. In fact, following up on the discussion here a couple of days later, I’m left wondering who in the world is voting for her.

RealClearPolitics shows the race between her and Donald Trump is neck and neck, with her having a slight edge but inside the margin of error, so someone is saying they support her, but I’m left wondering why.

I get that Donald Trump is loud, brash, and annoys a whole lot of people. I’m not a fan of his style of politics in the least, though at least his policies are generally a far cry better than anything the Democrats have offered. That’s even true of the issues I don’t agree with him on if I’m being fair, though that’s all beside the point.

But while she was asked questions on “60 Minutes” and gave responses, she didn’t answer all that much. It was just the latest example of word salad from the league leader in that category.

And this is just after Harris’ interview on a podcast called “Call Her Daddy,” which, let’s just note, has nothing at all to do with parenting.

These, however, are two of the very few interviews the vice president has given, and based on the nothingness that comes out of her mouth, that was probably the smartest tactical decision her campaign could have made.

Harris also tried to pick a fight with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, saying he was ducking her hurricane-related calls.

Of course, President Joe Biden says he’s talked to DeSantis and offered support should the state need it with Hurricane Milton bearing down on it.

This isn’t the first time the president has stepped all over one of Harris’ talking points, either. Couple these with her claims that she worked at a McDonald’s that literally no one can prove she worked at. Not even a former coworker stepped up and said, “Yeah, I worked with her.” Nothing.

The media is largely silent on fact-checking the next Anointed One that no one seems to actually like, but if Trump gets a little boisterous or his running mate, Senator JD Vance, engages in some hyperbole about eggs, everyone comes out of the woodwork to debunk what they said.

Which might well explain much of it. 

Kamala Harris lacks substance in almost every way, but because she’s presented as if she’s the messiah for democracy, a lot of the lemmings who simply do as the media tells them will trot out to vote. I just can’t see how anyone can look at her, follow the campaign, and still decide she’s the best choice.

It boggles the mind that anyone could be that stupid.

Then again, a lot of those folks don’t know what bathroom to use or what a woman is, so I don’t see why I’m so surprised.