Category Archives: defense policy

Muddled?

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden wants our European allies to desist from moving to “rebuke” Iran over its pushing forward its nuclear weapons program, a program that’s already nearing fruition. He is, through his nebulously identified administration,

arguing against an effort by Britain and France to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s member state board in early June, the diplomats said. The US has pressed a number of other countries to abstain in a censure vote, saying that is what Washington will do….

On the other hand, Biden said through one of his officials,

We are increasing pressure on Iran through sanctions and international isolation….

Biden Those “officials” further claim that

Europe could do more to increase pressure on Iran, including cutting off Iranian banks that work on the continent and listing Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror group. They note they have coordinated sanctions efforts with Europe against Iran over its missile and drone transfers.

But those aren’t rebukes. Nope.

This, from the article’s lede, though, gives the game away:

[The Biden administration] seeks to keep tensions with Tehran from escalating before the autumn’s US presidential election, according to diplomats involved in discussions.

And this, bookending the article:

A second US official said it was “totally false” that Washington is aiming to avoid disruption with Iran before the US elections.

There’s the official denial that confirms the rumor.

Maybe Biden’s policy here isn’t so muddled. More likely, this is just Biden kowtowing to the mullah and putting his personal political prospects far ahead of what’s good for our nation, what’s good for Israel, what’s good for the Middle East at large. That, in my humble opinion, is disgusting.

Voters should keep this in mind when they go to the polls this fall.

What Does Biden Want?

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is continuing to dictate to Ukraine how it must fight its war against the barbarian invasion, an invasion that the barbarian chieftain Vladimir Putin has said in so many words is to erase Ukraine altogether and fold the geographic territory into Mother Russia. Biden’s diktats go so far as to tell Ukraine what targets it may not aim for: targets located inside Russia, targets like fuel and ammunition depots, bases and camps where Russian units gather preparatory to crossing into Ukraine to reinforce the barbarian hordes already present killing, destroying, raping.

Biden claims to be concerned about Putin’s response were American weapons used against targets inside Russia.

The Biden administration’s fear is that Vladimir Putin will escalate if Kyiv strikes Russian territory with missiles and drones bearing a “Made in the USA” logo. Mr Putin delights in spreading such fear.

Never mind that

Russia targets anything it wants in Ukraine—from military to civilian targets, from power plants to railway lines….

Biden doesn’t want Ukraine to strike back with American weapons.

Here are two such sanctuary areas, areas where Putin is massing his hordes and their ammunition, fuel, and other consumables just across the border opposite Kharkiv and in Belarus near Kyiv. Biden is desperate not to have Ukraine preempt this escalated invasion by hitting the hordes and their supplies before they can jump off.

This isn’t about Biden’s infamous timidity when it comes to Russia. It’s actually a matter of his not wanting Ukraine to be successful in its war for survival against the barbarian. He clearly does not want Ukraine actually to successfully defend itself.

On the contrary, Biden desperately wants to protect Russia as a sanctuary against Ukraine responses to the barbarian’s assault and atrocities.

Because he’s really that fearful? Or because he wants Russia to win after bleeding Ukraine dry?

US EVs and Critical Supply Chain Inputs

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Stephen Wilmot’s lede in his Wall Street Journal piece lays out a major outcome of the tariffs proposed by Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden on a variety of EV inputs sourced from the People’s Republic of China.

Making cheap electric vehicles in America is getting even tougher.

And

Based on a crude calculation, the tariff increase could theoretically add roughly $1,000 to costs per standard-range Model 3—not unaffordable, but inconvenient when Tesla is desperate to remove costs wherever possible.

There are moves afoot that seek to alter that sourcing.

A response more in the spirit of US government policy would be to bring LFP [Lithium-Iron-Phosphate] battery production onshore.

And

One of the strings attached to the $7,500 tax credit available for EV purchases as part of the Inflation Reduction Act is now that no battery materials can come from a “foreign entity of concern,” a designation that includes China.

The problem with those kinds of moves, though, is that they’re woefully incomplete. The original input to those products is lithium, and the vast majority of that is mined in the PRC, and the vast majority of the lithium that is mined is refined in the PRC—including being shipped from non-PRC mines to the PRC for refining. It’s functionally the same for nickel, another major component of EV batteries (LFP batteries aren’t yet ready for prime time), the only difference is that most of the nickel is mined in PRC-owned mines in Africa.

Leave aside the idea of whether battery cars are anything other than another form of personal transportation, like the various external combustion engine-powered cars we’ve tried out over the years, or the original battery cars of a bit over 100 years ago.

The situation extends far beyond some battery inputs. Leaving ourselves dependent on an enemy nation for any of the Critical Item inputs to our economy is far more than an inconvenience, and far more expensive than just dollars spent on alternative sources. Our national security, our national freedom, depend on eliminating that dependence.

The ICC and its Sham Concern for Civilians

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal correctly point out the failure of the ICC to differentiate between legitimacy and terrorism vis-à-vis the war Hamas terrorists have inflicted on Israel, a war the terrorists intend to prosecute to the destruction of Israel, no matter the cost to Gazan civilians. It is a failure, I claim, borne of the ICC’s cynically constructed false equivalence between the terrorists and Israel. It’s an equivalence, I claim further, that’s borne of the ICC’s intrinsic antisemitic bigotry.

The worthies of the ICC are, after all, among the most talented and highly educated of us.

There’s one point, though, that badly wants an emphasis that’s sadly lacking otherwise.

The ICC claims Israel is “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population….”

If, however, we take the terrorists’ claims of 35,000 undifferentiated Gazan casualties at face value, and the IDF’s claims that 10,000-12,000 of those were Hamas terrorists (the IDF uses the gentler term “combatants”), that’s a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of around 3 to 1. That’s an historic low ratio for urban warfare.

If the Israelis are deliberately directing attacks against the civilian population, they are truly atrociously bad shots.

Why Should It Take So Long?

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Ukraine has asked NATO leadership to have member nations, including the US, send military trainers to Ukraine to help train 150,000 new recruits into the Ukrainian armed forces. The US is exceedingly reluctant.

So far the United States has said no, but General Charles Q Brown Jr, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said.

To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes from another venue: over time, Ukrainians are all enslaved.

Worse,

For now, he [Brown] said, an effort inside Ukraine would put “a bunch of NATO trainers at risk” and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield.

Imagine that—soldiers in a war zone might be in harm’s way. But we’ll only protect selected ones. Brown also is ignoring the simple fact that critical Ukrainian infrastructure extends throughout Ukraine. And so does the battlefield, as the barbarian’s targeting by missiles, rockets, drones, even glide bombs, all launched from the Biden-created Sanctuary Russia, make clear.

Is this another example of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden cynically slow-walking aid to Ukraine? Or is this Biden and his too-woke military advisors being deeply chicken…t?