Why I am grateful that Joe Biden is our President
21 April 2024
I am grateful that the United States has Joe Biden, a seasoned, rational President in the Oval Office who focuses on the long term interests of the United States and is intellectually capable of balancing all the important factors:
From Jennifer Rubin’s newsletter, before Israel’s limited attack on Iran:
Contrary to some right-wing commentators’ complaints, Biden has not asked Israel to do nothing. He is urging Israel to select a response that does not set off a larger conflagration. The difference between knocking down Tehran’s power grid for a day and pummeling the city with missiles, for example, may be the difference between Israel gaining points with the international community and Israel starting a regional war.
Foreign policy expert Aaron David Miller puts it this way on X: “Israel scored a huge tactical security/political success in defending against Iranian missiles and partnering [with] US and Sunnis. [The] question now is how to turn that into a strategic opportunity [without] courting regional war. No Israeli government can accept Iran’s strike as new normal.”
Just as Biden’s warning seems to have prevented a civilian tragedy in Rafah, his latest admonition to calibrate Israel’s response appears to be working. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the Israel Defense Forces to provide a target list, according to an official familiar with high-level discussions, who said Israel is mulling retaliation that would ‘send a message’ but not cause casualties,” The Post reported.
Shortsighted defenders of Israel bristle at any sign that Biden is urging Netanyahu to show restraint. That’s foolish and contrary to the interests of the Israeli people who are demanding that Netanyahu prioritize the hostages’ release. Vicious anti-Israel critics who mouth Hamas’s chants (e.g., “From the river to the sea!”) and glorify violence want Biden to abandon our historical ally. Biden will take neither approach. Rather, his delicate intervention helps Israel maximize its own security without alienating critical Western allies.
Less informed critics accuse Biden of inconsistency. They have it backward. He remains a true friend of Israel, the sort of friend who cautions against rash action that would boomerang; who demands that Israel look beyond the moment to its long-term survival; and who, in his bones, understands the Israeli people want both democracy and security.
Both countries should be grateful that a seasoned president is in the Oval Office.
From David Ignatius, “The unspoken story of why Israel didn’t clobber Iran”
One rule for containing a crisis is to keep your mouth shut, and the United States, Israel and Iran were all doing a pretty good job at that Friday after Israeli strikes near the Iranian city of Isfahan. Maybe the silence was the real message — a desire on all sides to prevent escalation by word or deed.
Over the past week, we’ve seen what looks to me like a considered decision by Israel to subtly reshape its strategy for deterring Iran and Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Israeli deterrence is usually about massive use of offensive military force — a roundhouse punch that seeks to compel compliance through coercion.
But this time was different. When Iran launched a missile and drone barrage last weekend in retaliation for Israel’s April 1 strike on Iranian military leaders in Damascus, Syria, Israel used its Iron Dome defense system and help from allies to absorb the blow. The reported destruction of 99 percent of Iran’s incoming munitions was an astonishing display of missile defense. Some Israelis wanted to respond immediately with a big counter-barrage. But under pressure from President Biden, they waited.
The Biden administration has done a great job in an extremely difficult situation:
President Biden successfully pushed the recalcitrant House Speaker Mike Johnson to support aid to Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Ukraine and Taiwan. I suspect he intentionally downplayed his role, the sign of a competent leader because it would have been counterproductive to its success.
President Biden has effectively lobbied, to the extent possible, the Prime Minister of Israel, who has mostly done a terrible job for everyone, see Pray for the end to Netanyahu's rule, 29 March 2024.
President Biden is attempting a long term solution regarding the Palestinians with a rational and possibly achievable plan, see A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big, 8 February 2024 and President Biden is good for the Palestinians, 25 February 2024.
President Biden is working, to the extent possible, with the current Palestinian leadership. This may be the most difficult task of all because too many Palestinians in the U.S., Middle East, and worldwide, including their leaders, brilliant though they may be in their careers, have spent the past 75 years promoting Palestinian death and misery in furtherance of their obsession with destroying Israel, see Suicide by cop - the Palestinian version, 6 March 2024; The brainwashing of Palestinians and Trump supporters, 22 January 2024; The Palestinian sickness, 19 February 2024 and Palestinians need to hold their government accountable, 11 April 2024. For example, Palestinians elected Hamas, a known terrorist organization focused on destroying Israel, as their government in Gaza, and have only minimally protested its actions in starting a war that Hamas knew would kill large numbers of Palestinians:
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas is counting on human shields and the effect of their deaths on international opinion as their best way to restrain, if not halt, Israeli military force. Hamas considers two million Gazan civilians, including children, as martyrs, whether they want to be or not.
“We are called a nation of martyrs,” said another top Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad. “And we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” He promised more attacks: “There will be a second, a third, a fourth.” When asked whether he sought the annihilation of Israel, Hamad matter-of-factly replied, “Yes, of course.”
This is not simply terrorism, which is the use of illegal violence to achieve political objectives. It is cold-blooded human sacrifice, and on a scale that evokes the ritual slaughters of ancient times. The Hill.
The Biden administration and the Democratic Party deserve the support of all those seeking a stable Middle East in which the State of Israel and a State of Palestine are fully integrated into the broader region that includes most supporting Arab nations, see ROPES: Hope for the Palestinians and the Middle East, 2 April 2024.
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