Biden’s Phony Red Line
After Americans have been killed and wounded by Hamas, what is the commander-in-chief willing to do about it?
On Tuesday at the UN, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointedly warned Iran regarding any attack on American forces by Iran or its proxy terrorists, which he cast as standing strong with Israel. “The United States does not seek conflict with Iran,” Blinken said. “We do not want this war to widen. But if Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake. We will defend our people.” And we’ll do so “swiftly and decisively.”
Iran had already crossed Blinken’s red line before he even painted it, so what will the U.S. do?
Under a weak and feckless Joe Biden, almost certainly nothing.
This is the same guy, after all, who unfroze $6 billion in Iranian assets before trying to act tough about that money. He’s the same guy who has been working for his entire term to reinstate Barack Obama’s foolish nuclear deal with Tehran, the same guy whose administration removed any mention of Iran in a draft UN resolution on the Israel-Hamas war.
On October 7, Iranian-backed and trained jihadists launched their assault on Israel, killing 1,400 people including 33 Americans. Several more Americans are Hamas hostages. Since then, Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. assets in Syria and Iraq in more than a dozen missile and drone attacks, injuring at least two dozen U.S. troops.
“The Biden administration, for days, has withheld those details,” reported The Washington Post Tuesday. Biden certainly didn’t mention it in his speech last week.
White House spokesman John Kirby acknowledged Monday that Iran is “actively facilitating these attacks.” But Senator Tom Cotton knew of “multiple attacks against Americans by Iran’s proxies” back on October 19.
Regardless of timing, what is Vacation Joe going to do about it?
Besides ignoring it for American forces, our commander-in-chief keeps pushing Israel to delay doing anything.
After weeks of carefully targeted air strikes, the Israel Defense Forces launched a small advance ground operation last night. “In preparation for the next stages of combat, the IDF operated in northern Gaza. IDF tanks & infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,” the IDF wrote in an official statement following the incursion. “The soldiers have since exited the area and returned to Israeli territory.”
Yet a larger incursion will wait until the U.S. firms up missile-defense systems meant to protect American troops. There are roughly 3,500 American troops stationed in Iraq and Syria, with more in Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Another reason for the delay, however, is Biden’s call for a humanitarian “pause” during which to distribute more aid to the Palestinians Hamas. We certainly don’t want innocent people to suffer, but as we noted yesterday, a great many Palestinians are hardly innocent, even when they’re not quite taking up arms against Israel.
Israel needs to do “everything in its power to protect innocent civilians,” Biden said yesterday, though that’s awfully hard to do when terrorists deliberately put civilians in harm’s way. As for aid, Hamas decides what aid gets to which people. And the people love them for it all.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims more than 6,500 dead — primarily civilians, of course. But don’t trust a word or number that comes from Hamas. Remember that supposed hospital attack.
Even Biden understands that much: “I have no notion the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people were killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed … but I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are giving.”
Good for Biden for that much, but this entire story is one of America’s utter and dangerous lack of deterrence under this president.
Congressman Dan Crenshaw said it powerfully last week: “If you want to prevent war, you have to be able to threaten it and threaten it credibly. And that takes statements that make people uncomfortable. President Trump did this all the time. He had an intuition for what deterrence actually was.”
Not so for Joe Biden, who is himself the red flag and the warning shot across America’s bow.
Update 10/27: The U.S. conducted air strikes against Iranian assets in Syria, in the first signal that Biden might just do something for deterrence.
