Category Archives: defense policy

Israel for Sovereignty

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And against leaks. The headline and subheadline summarize the situation.

U.S. Frustrated by Israel’s Reluctance to Share Iran Retaliation Plans
The Biden administration hopes to avoid a repeat of surprise attacks, such as the killing of Hezbollah’s leader

Israel is behaving like a sovereign nation and not at all like a province of Biden’s dreamland. That frustrates him and his.

Why, though, would Israel want to “share” its plans vis-à-vis Iran (or Hezbollah or Hamas, come to that)? Biden’s administration will only leak those plans, and Iran (and its terrorist arms) would be the better prepared. ‘Course, in my cynical mind, it might be useful for Israel to share one set of plans and then execute another. What Iran was prepared for in the realization would tell a very powerful tale about those leaks, even whether they exist.

We also have this: while the Harris-Biden administration (as Biden sometimes terms it) was trying to force onto Israel finalize a Hezbollah-Israel cease-fire, the IDF successfully killed Hezbollah’s MFWIC Hassan Nasrallah. In an initial telecon immediately after the strike, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the strike had gone in, successfully. Then,

[d]uring a second call the same day, Austin asked Gallant if Israel was prepared to be “alone” when it came to defending itself, given the lack of notice.

This is the administration threatening Israel to kowtow and stop cutting out the US from planning Israel’s defense moves in the middle of the latter’s struggle for survival against an enemy sworn to exterminate Israel, and to do so without regard for the deaths and destruction to its own people.

“Defense officials” claim otherwise.

Austin was frustrated because the US didn’t have enough time to position its forces to potentially come to Israel’s defense or to protect nearby US troops, defense officials said.

Would these “nearby US troops” be the same US troops Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris insists aren’t there? The Navy’s fleets positioned in the Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea can’t do the job of “coming to Israel’s defense?” “Defense officials” aren’t even trying to be serious. Austin, along with the Biden-Harris administration in general, just want to control Israel’s behavior.

It would be all right if this administration devoted as much effort to reigning in the terrorists and their arms and money supplier, Iran, as they do trying to keep one or both of Israel’s hands…restrained.

Harris’ Position on Israel

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was asked in a Sunday 60 Minutes interview whether the US has any “sway” over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the war against Hamas continues. The show’s host asked about Netanyahu not listening to Harris’ and Biden’s administration demands.

Harris’ answer, in part:

Now the work we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create a cease-fire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and in the region, including Arab leaders.

Except for a couple of things: the Biden-Harris administration (or the Harris-Biden administration, as Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden occasionally puts it) has put no pressure at all on the Arab terrorist entities Hamas and Hezbollah, and they’ve wholly ignored non-Arab Iran, except in one way noted below. The Biden-Harris administration has put tremendous pressure on Israel—Netanyahu—to agree a cease-fire.

Another thing is that a cease-fire would benefit only the terrorists by giving them time to reconstitute, refit, rearm, and attack again, while giving Israel no respite at all, and yielding only minimal—at best—kidnap release.

Aside from that, keep in mind that Kamala Harris is a very intelligent, very committed woman and would make a wonderful President, according to her Progressive-Democratic Party compatriots. That makes her seeming word salad response not empty-calorie rhetoric at all but a deliberate obfuscation of her disdain for Israel and her sub rosa support for terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah, and it puts her in league with Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s overt protection of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

One Effect of Biden’s Favoring Iran

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This demonstrates the effect Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s moral equivalence between terrorist- and terrorism-supporting Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other—which amounts to favoring Iran over Israel—has on the situation in the Middle East:

The decision to approve the September 27 strike [killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah] from US soil without alerting the White House beforehand—and later to make public a photo of himself issuing the order—underscored the growing divergence between Netanyahu’s government and the White House.

Netanyahu was speaking directly to Biden with that decision and that method of delivery, but Biden wouldn’t listen.

Biden has done nothing useful in support of Israel, only pushing for—demanding, along with his Secretary of Milquetoast Antony Blinken—Israel to agree a cease-fire even as the IDF is on the verge of defeating decisively both Hamas and Hezbollah, a cease-fire Biden and his syndicate members know full well favors only the terrorists. Biden has been, occasionally, deliberately counterproductive to Israel’s interests, its very survival, by withholding, however briefly, the ammunition resupply the nation needs.

And this:

In the short term, Israel’s unilateral decision-making about striking Iran risks embroiling the Biden administration in another unpopular regional conflict. In the longer term, it could be another flashpoint for critics who say the US gives Israel too much leeway, not using its leverage to rein in its ally.

Rein in!? This is the arrogance of those in the Biden administration, and outside it, who insist, in all seriousness that Israel is nothing but a US satrap, if not a US territory—they’re insisting that Israel isn’t an autonomous, sovereign nation in its own right.

And this:

US attempts to rein in Israel in Gaza yielded only limited results, analysts say.

Analysts are carefully ignoring the major result from the Biden administration’s constant interference in IDF operations in Gaza. By holding Israel back, Biden and his have only prolonged the fight in Gaza, at the expense of more terrorist-caused civilian deaths during the prolonged fighting, increased Israeli casualties, and the murders of more hostages before IDF units could locate and get to them.

It’s no wonder the Israeli government increasingly dismisses Biden administration attempts to pressure and to determine Israel’s self-defense actions.

But it’s not just Joe Biden who’s badly failing here.

As Vice President, it’s hard for Kamala Harris to separate herself from her boss’ position. However, as Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate, it’s imperative that Harris make her position clear on this question. As the highly talented politician and impressively intelligent woman that Party now makes her out to be, of course Harris knows how to walk that seeming divergence. Thus: it’s clear from Harris’ silence on the specifics, and from her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders’ statements regarding the sincerity of her current words, that despite her loud claims of standing four-square with Israel, she agrees with her boss’ favoring Iran and its coming nuclear weapons availability over the security of Israel.

Joe Biden’s Passive-Aggressive Timidity

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The lede says it all.

Well, that was fast. Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles on Israel Tuesday, and a day later President Biden was already telling Israel what it shouldn’t do in response. Asked Wednesday if he’d support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the President said “The answer is no.”

Our Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is showing his desperation for Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, which he knows full well will be used, promptly, to attack and destroy Israel and to exterminate Jews in the Middle East.

He broadened his desperation:

He also hauled in the leaders of the G-7 democracies to add to the pre-emptive pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We will be discussing with the Israelis what they are going to do. All seven of us agree that they have a right to respond but they should respond in proportion,” he told reporters after a G-7 conference call. “We are giving them advice. I will talk to Bibi relatively soon.”

This is, as The Wall Street Journal editors put it, Biden tell[ing] Irans [sic] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the US will help the regime protect its most prized and threatening military asset.

Proportion. I discussed what true proportion is nearby. I can only hope that Netanyahu has the courage and the IDF has the wherewithal to carry out its necessary active defensive (which is to say offensive in respond to Iran’s murderous attacks) actions against Iran, and against those targets the IDF deems most useful to Israel’s national security, independently of Biden’s despicable interference.

Joe Biden’s behavior—favoring as he does Iran getting nuclear weapons along with his parallel antisemitic attitude toward the Jewish state—is both disgusting, and a national humiliation to rival his panicky running out of Afghanistan.

To Abuse a Metaphor….

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Iran has had its inability to defend itself against direct Israeli attacks, and Hamas and Hezbollah, although still fighting, have been severely damaged. The Biden-Harris administration wants a “proportional” response by Israel to Iran’s latest assault, a murderous-intended, ballistic missile attack all across the geography of Israel. They’re not alone. Michael Knights, Washington Institute for Near East Policy senior fellow:

Israeli retaliations always tend to match the reduction in its civilian morale, done as a reassurance that the Israeli qualitative edge is still there and that Israel can hit its enemies back harder than they can hit it. Now, in this case, these Iranian strikes didn’t seem to have hit very hard.

Proportionality: Iran keeps attacking Israel, directly now, through its terrorist clients north and south of Israel also. Our Progressive-Democrat administration’s version of proportionality is to just trade tit-for-tat strikes that do nothing to put an end to Iran’s repeated strikes, and as they continue, the likelihood grows that one strike will get through and severely damage or destroy Israel.

True proportionality would have Israel strike hard enough to prevent Iran from being able to strike again for a good, long time—generations, ideally. Dina Esfandiary, International Crisis Group‘s Middle East and North Africa senior adviser:

It [Iran] really is stuck between a rock and a hard place[.]

It’s time to slam the rock down hard on the hard place and severely damage, if not cripple, Iran. That’s the only way to prevent Iran from continuing its murderous attacks.