Limits

Progressive-Democrat Joe Biden, through his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is busily trying to tie Israel’s hands (plural) behind its back as it fights its war of survival against the terrorist organizations of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorists ensconced in Gaza Strip. Blinken’s words:

“…the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” He said Israel must take “more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians.”

This is Biden and Blinken continuing to be cowed by the mullahs of Iran, who want Israel defeated to the point of destruction.

If these two had any morals at all, they’d take up that “massive loss of civilian life and displacement” with the Hamas, et al., terrorists (excuse the redundancy) who are butchering those civilians through their use of them as shields and of their residences, schools, and hospitals as weapons caches, rocket launch sites, and command centers.

If these two had any sense at all, they’d recognize that Israel already is taking the most “effective steps to protect the lives of civilians:” Israel is killing the terrorist Hamas, PIJ, et al., so they can never inflict those butcheries again.

Instead, these two…politicians…are bent on betraying Israel, and intended or not, they’re betraying the United States in consequence.

Major Uncool

But part and parcel with Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s overall timidity.

Biden has apologized to American Muslim leaders for questioning the accuracy of the death toll figures from Gaza. What he apologized for questioning was this sort of thing:

According to data from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including many women and children, have been killed in the weeks-old war.

We have, though, as Biden at first said, no credible source for the Palestinian death and injury figures, only those terrorist-supplied claims. So why did Biden apologize for questioning the only numbers being bandied about? The reason is in the lede.

Pipe Dreams

The Editors of The Wall Street Journal have laid out their view of how Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden Can Deter China with respect to the Republic of China. They pushed forward a series of actions that Biden could take vis-à-vis arming the RoC and rebuilding our own defense establishment. I’ll elide the extended time frame such actions would take to come to fruition, even were the Progressive-Democrats in Congress to allow those actions to move apace, without holding them hostage to their extremist projects.

No, the editors are acting from a false premise—that Biden actually could deter People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping.

On the contrary, Biden is incapable of deterring Xi, and Xi knows it. Biden already has allowed himself to be intimidated by Russian President-for-Life Vladimir Putin into not supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs at the rate it needs them in order actually to defeat the barbarian. Biden is supplying the materiel only at a rate to keep Ukraine fighting and bleeding—and thereby letting the barbarian win through attrition.

Biden already has allowed the mullahs of Iran to intimidate him into not materially responding to Iranian/proxy repeated attacks on US forces in the Middle East beyond taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant buildings.

Biden already has allowed his own Executive Branch staffers to intimidate him into pressuring Israel to accede to a ceasefire, knowing full well that the sole beneficiary of such a thing would be the terrorists seeking to exterminate Israel.

When Xi invades the Republic of China, Biden will already have been intimidated into doing nothing more than taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant PRC buildings, and then meekly accepting the destruction of the RoC.

Best we can hope for is that Xi won’t move for a couple more years and that we get a President with more self-respect, more love of the US, more respect for our friends and allies. And more courage.

“The conflict erupted in the wake…”

The Just the News subheadline continued:

…of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

The subheadline is no accident, either. JtN repeated the distortion in the second paragraph:

The conflict erupted in the wake of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

Distortion: the conflict erupted when that terrorist gang broke into Israel and butchered those 1,200 men, women—many of whom were raped first—and children—many of whom were babies whose heads were hacked off—with many from each of those categories tortured on the way to their deaths, and kidnapped those additional 200 victims. Butchered victims that JtN so saccharinely euphemizes as “civilians,” with no clarification regarding who those terrorism victims were. “Hostages” that JtN so cynically lists separately rather than including them in the count, as though they aren’t, as a group, “civilians,” though some few of them were soldiers.

This is disgusting, and JtN should know better. The article itself centered on Vermont Progressive-Democratic Party Congresswoman Becca Balint’s coming out in favor of an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire. Her foolishness, though, is beside the point of this post.

Eight Ways

The Biden administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is pushing Israel, even as that nation is in the early stages of a war for its very survival, to concern itself with what happens afterward, should it win that struggle. Never mind that this is a Party that has never had a coherent strategy for exiting a war, much less any idea of what victory conditions would look like, from Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War and Party’s refusal under Ford to give the south a survivable way off the field, to Barack Obama’s disastrous decisions in quitting Iraq, to Joe Biden’s cut-and-run from Afghanistan.

Blinken’s diktats include no less than Five Nos and Three Musts, to use The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial terminology:

No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza…. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.

And

must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of postcrisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. And it must include…a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.

Whether or not any of those Nos or Musts are good ideas, it is not for this administration to dictate terms to Israel. It’s solely Israel’s responsibility to dictate terms to Hamas.

Instead, Blinken, to paraphrase a French President and philosopher:

…is not really engaged in responsible behavior. His is not well brought-up behavior. He missed eight good opportunities to keep quiet.