Biden's 'Moment of Truth'

While he pleads with Congress for more funding for weapons, there is an intensifying famine in Gaza created by the government that Biden insists on supporting and defending.

The president published another strange op-ed tying the wars in Ukraine and Gaza together. His immediate goal was to urge Congress to pass a bill funding more military aid for Ukraine and Israel, but to do that he insists on linking the two wars together as if they are comparable and equally worthy of support. This is the same line he has been pushing for months ever since he decided to try to use Congressional support for Israel to get more funding for Ukraine last year. It was a strained and unpersuasive argument six months ago, and now it is just insulting.

The U.S. shouldn’t be providing any military assistance to Israel for its current war(s). Not only has the Israeli government used U.S.-made weapons to commit war crimes, but it has also been impeding and blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid as part of a policy of using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. Further weapons transfers to Israel should be out of the question. There shouldn’t be one more cent spent on military aid to a government responsible for such crimes. U.S. forces shouldn’t be used to protect a bad client from the consequences of its actions.

It has been a terrible mistake to tie military assistance to Ukraine to support for the war in Gaza. Every time Biden tries to sell both as a package deal, he brings further discredit on his Ukraine policy by association with an indefensible policy in the Middle East. As it happens, Biden’s “pro-Israel” belligerence has done nothing to win over skeptics of his Ukraine policy, and it is odd that he ever expected that it would.

Biden refers to Iran’s recent retaliatory strike in his op-ed, but he conveniently leaves out the fact that it was a response to Israel’s own reckless attack in Damascus. He recites stale talking points about Iran wanting “to destroy Israel forever,” but he seems oblivious to the reality that the Israeli government is the one that has been provoking the attacks against its territory. Perhaps he thinks he has to use the language of brain-dead militarism to reach a predominantly Republican audience, but he is wasting his time. Committed Republican partisans aren’t going to work with him on this (or anything else), and all that he achieves with op-eds like this is remind his own voters why they are so disgusted with him.

The president ends the op-ed with a call for “leadership and courage.” That is grimly amusing since he has spent the last six months demonstrating neither as the Israeli government has laid waste to Gaza with the unflinching support of this administration. While he pleads with Congress for more funding for weapons, there is an intensifying famine in Gaza created by the government that Biden insists on supporting and defending.

It tells us everything we need to know about the administration’s failed policy that the president has nothing meaningful to say about the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. It is obvious that he doesn’t consider the famine a priority, and he is not going to make a serious effort to stop it. He will expend political capital to get more weapons for the government causing the famine, but he won’t bother to treat one of the worst humanitarian disasters in decades with the urgency it requires.