Democrats Unveil a Bizarre Foreign Policy Platform

The foreign policy section of the Democratic Party platform is a bizarre mishmash of celebrating (and whitewashing) Biden’s record and attacking Trump for being insufficiently hardline and aggressive.

The foreign policy section of the Democratic Party platform is a bizarre mishmash of celebrating (and whitewashing) Biden’s record and attacking Trump for being insufficiently hardline and aggressive. This bit on Iran policy was especially bad:

All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump's fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere “headaches” – and again, took no action.

There were many serious flaws in Trump’s Iran policy, but it is deranged to fault it for being too passive. When Trump was president, Democratic critics rightly attacked him for being reckless, not feckless, and they challenged him when he brought the U.S. to the brink of war instead of trying to goad him into launching more attacks. Trump’s decision not to retaliate over a downed drone in 2019 was one of the only decent decisions he made in connection with Iran. Criticizing him for “inaction” is the sort of idiotic thing one would expect to hear from Tom Cotton or John Bolton. As Stephen Wertheim put it, ““Pompeo was right” is quite a message for the Democratic platform.” Very few people will read or pay attention to what the platform says, but to the extent that this still reflects the mindset of party leaders on foreign policy it is a very bad sign for the future.