About five years ago, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates reached what was then considered a startling conclusion: Joe Biden, who was at that point the vice president, had been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
On Afghanistan, Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and more, Biden’s influence proved disastrous, Gates alleged in his tell-all, Duty. This was unsettling, in part because former President Barack Obama had selected Biden as his running mate partially because the longtime senator had what he lacked: foreign policy experience. To then hear from your defense secretary, who had stepped down from the Obama administration in 2011, that Biden’s role in the White House helped create a “category five shitstorm”? That surely struck a nerve.
Gates’s summation, however, has aged well. Biden’s foreign policy resume is full of errors that date back decades. In the 1980s, for instance, he opposed Ronald Reagan's military buildup and Strategic Defense Initiative that helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it, the end of the Cold War. He has continued to blunder his way through international relations since Obama left office and President Trump stepped in.
On Trump’s recent decision to order the killing of Iranian terrorist in chief Qassem Soleimani, Biden concluded that Trump had allowed Iran to take the “driver’s seat” in the Middle East. This is not true. The situation in Iran is complex, and Soleimani’s death certainly exacerbated tensions between Iran and the United States, but the U.S. still has significantly more power and control over the circumstances than Iran.
Biden has also overstated his initial opposition to the Iraq War, a conflict he supported in 2002 when he voted to authorize President George W. Bush’s use of force against Iraq. On the campaign trail, Biden is saying he did so because Bush misrepresented his intentions to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Biden was then the chairman. But Biden’s words in 2003 need no explanation: “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again."
Biden’s vote of confidence in the Iraq War hurt his presidential bid in 2008, and as a result, he became much more cautious of military intervention. But Biden’s hesitance arguably hurt the situation in Iraq almost as much as the initial invasion. He failed to negotiate a long-term strategy with the Iraqis, and the lack of stability in the region allowed Islamic extremists to gain ground in both Iraq and Syria — a consequence the U.S. is still wrestling with.
Biden is hardly the only person to blame for the U.S.’s failed Iraq policy, nor should he be assigned complete responsibility. But his distrust of the military, which made up the crux of Gates’s complaint, affected much of Obama’s foreign policy. On the killing of bin Laden, thankfully, Obama ignored Biden's advice to reconsider the raid.
Biden seemed to trust drones more than military personnel. He openly advocated for a strategy he dubbed “counterterrorism-plus”: a combination of drone strikes and raids by special operations forces. This essentially became Obama’s approach to fighting terrorism in the Middle East. Obama ordered hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and other countries, and we’ll never know exactly how many civilian lives they cost.
The Democratic presidential front-runner was also one of the first lawmakers to support the 1999 bombing of Serbia and call for the arming of Bosnian Muslims. My colleague Tiana Lowe has argued that the bombing violated international law because President Bill Clinton, joined by NATO, specifically targeted civilians and did so without the United Nations’ consent. The bombing also helped dissolve the pro-democracy movement within the region, pushing the Serbian people back into the arms of the country’s dictator.
Several other Democratic candidates have already pointed out Biden’s questionable foreign policy decisions, but he continues to make his diplomatic credentials a central part of his campaign pitch. The U.S. needs “respected, responsible, and dignified leadership” internationally, he said shortly after Soleimani’s death. And he’s right. But given his track record, Biden isn't in a position to provide it.
US Democrats want to elect a man who has consistently undermined Israel, despite his claims to the contrary. Though not quite as bad as Obama or Carter, he is no Trump (best pro-Israel POTUS ever by far.)
1. Biden enthusiastically plans to return to Obama’s policy of appeasing Iran, by restoring the very dangerous Iran deal that greenlights Iranian nuclear weapons soon.
2. While VP to Obama, Obama made “most anti-Semitic act in the world in 2016 and Biden said nothing. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/27/obama-refusal-israel-vote-most-anti-semitic-2016/
3. Biden assembling Obama’s Israel -hating foreign policy team. And to win over Bernie bros, he wants a unified platform. How do you unify platform with anti-Semite Bernie who called the Israeli government “racist”. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/09/biden-likely-embrace-bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-ideas-coronavirus-pandemic/
4. Biden Said NOTHING when Bernie called Israeli government “racist” on debate stage and Aipac “bigoted”
5. Warmly accepted endorsement from anti-Israel and Iranian and Soros funded JStreet
6. Biden says he will REVERSE Trump recognizing Jerusalem as capital.
7. Warmly accepted endorsement from terrorist associated Muslim groups https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/16/top-muslim-political-group-backs-biden-190136
8. Biden threatened Israeli Prime Minster with funding embargo when he was a Senator. https://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/the-lid-jeffdunetz/when-begin-eviscerated-biden-for-threatening-him/2019/04/30/
9. Biden says Israeli communities in West Bank violate International law. Trump administration says they do not.
10. Biden record on never being correct on a foreign policy issue. https://jewsfortrumpchgo.blogspot.com/2020/04/has-joe-biden-ever-been-right-on.html
11. 11. Biden supported Obama’s UNSC resolution declaring much of Jerusalem ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED, including the Western Wall!!
12. VS TRUMP’s BEST EVER record on Israel. https://strongandresolute.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-so-far-on-israel-1.html
Trump so far on Israel;
1. Nixed Obama's catastrophic Iran deal. Warns Iran against the resumption of the program. https://www.bloomberg.com/…/trump-warns-iran-of-severe-cons…. 98% of Israeli leadership knows the Iran deal was genocidal for them and applaud Trump's nixing of Obama's (who is despised in Israel) perfidy. This is also supported by our traditional Arab allies, Saudis and Gulf States.
2. Recognizing Jerusalem as capital
3. Reversing State Dept. claiming Judea and Samaria are "occupied"
4. Got Taylor Force ACT, denying use of our tax dollars for Palestinians to
fund murderers of Jews.
5. Told Israel US has its back
6. Says only 20,000 Palestinian refugees, not millions https://worldisraelnews.com/us-report-only-20000-palestini…/ https://worldisraelnews.com/us-report-only-20000-palestinia…
7. Mitigated impact of Obama's "most anti-semitic act in the world in 2016. betrayed by Obama's most-anti-Semitic act in the world in 2016 (according to Simon Wiesenthal nazi Hunting org) when Obama abstained in UN resolution making much of Jerusalem illegally occupied territory. The impact of that odious Obama act has been mitigated and reversed by the Trump State Dept. no longer calling Judea/Samaria "occupied territory" and by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital.
8. largest aid package ever approved august 2018
9. Peace Plan supported by Bibi, and the first time ever Arab nations not taking the Palestinian side re flexibly.
10. The United States recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel through a presidential proclamation signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on March 25, 2019 ...OOn
1.Biden enthusiastically plans to return to Obama’s policy of appeasing Iran, by restoring the very dangerous iran deal that greenlights Iranian nuclear weapons soon.
Democratic US presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop in Los Angeles, California, US, March 4, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Mike Blake.
Amid the hovering coronavirus danger, it might be a useful distraction to remember the past and anticipate the future.
In the upcoming presidential election, incumbent Donald Trump and prospective Democratic nominee Joe Biden are likely to battle against each other. Health concerns momentarily aside, and with optimism that there actually is a future both for the United States and Israel, it could be helpful to consider their sharply contrasting positions on the Jewish state.
President Trump is, in brief, the most pro-Israel president since Harry S. Truman.
Overriding the vigorous opposition of State Department officials, Truman recognized the Jewish state eleven minutes after Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed its birth at midnight on May 14, 1948. There have been no such dramatic and consequential proclamations by President Trump, nor could there be. But his relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights were stunning changes in decades of American policy. His plan to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, Jewish settlements in biblical Judea and Samaria and a swath of adjacent territory formerly known as Jordan’s West Bank would, if fulfilled, be momentous and transformative.
In yet another instance of a civil society institution in the US becoming infected with the virus of anti-Zionism, a...
Enter Biden, by now virtually assured of the Democratic party nomination. He could, if elected, easily erase the substantial benefits to Israel of Trump’s policy and return to the previous status quo. Whether he would do so is too far down the path of unpredictably to know. But it is not too soon to hazard an informed guess, based on Biden’s past positions toward Israel, preceding and especially during his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Biden has repeatedly proclaimed his strong support for Israel. But nearly forty years ago, during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing, he warned Prime Minister Menachem Begin that if Israel continued to establish new settlements American aid might be terminated. An infuriated Begin sharply responded: “Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats.”
By 2008, Biden proudly claimed that his support for Israel “begins in my stomach, goes to my heart and ends up in my head.” Indeed, he referred to Israel as his second home. He would not have joined Obama as vice president “if I had any doubt, even the slightest doubt, that he shares the same commitment to Israel I share.” When that proved false Biden loyally embraced his leader’s repeated chastisement of Israel, claiming that “no nation, including Israel, is immune from legitimate criticism.”
More recently, at the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference, Biden insisted that the “Israel’s government’s steady and systematic process of expanding settlements, legalizing outposts and seizing land is eroding . . . the prospect of a two-state solution.” Shortly after a Palestinian terrorist bus bombing in Jerusalem, Biden told a J Street gathering that the Netanyahu government’s “steady and systematic expansion of settlements” were “moving Israel in the wrong direction.”
Last November, on “PBS NewsHour,” Biden told Judy Woodruff that while he would not reverse President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, “I wouldn’t have done it.” A month later he insisted that Israeli leaders “must recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for statehood,” adding, “It’s not possible to have a Jewish state in the Middle East without having a two-state solution” — as though Israel’s existence for the previous seven decades had not happened.
In a recent campaign stop, Biden imaginatively reminisced: “I’m so proud of the Obama-Biden administration’s unprecedented support for Israel’s security.” In a strong expression of moral equivalence he declared: “Palestinians need to eradicate incitement on the West Bank” and Israel “has to stop the threats of annexation and settlement activity.” Such words and deeds “are taking Israel further from its democratic values.” Biden pledged: “I will insist on Israel, which I’ve done, to stop the occupation of those territories, period.”
To be sure, Biden has often spoken kindly, and reassuringly, about Israel. But Biden was a loyal follower of Obama, who headed the most hostile administration toward Israel since its birth. Their insistence that Israel return to its pre-1967 boundaries, if implemented in a Biden presidency, would be catastrophic for Israel.
Could a Biden presidency be good for Israel? Unlikely.
Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of ‘Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016.’
The top ten lies that have been spread about Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
the top ten lies that have been spread about Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. There are certainly plenty more
10. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus
In early March, the World Health Organization said that 3.4 percent of coronavirus patients had died from the disease. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 (the disease spread by the virus) cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.” Trump said this number was false, as the mortality rate was actually much less because their number didn’t take into account unreported cases. In an interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump challenged WHO’s number. “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” Trump said, asserting that the actual mortality rate is “way under 1 percent.”
9. Trump lied when he said Google was developing a national coronavirus website
When President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, he announced that Google was developing a website to direct people to coronavirus testing locations nationwide.
"I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said during a press conference.
Google confirmed this in a tweet after Trump’s remarks, but the media seemed intent on calling Trump’s claim false. HuffPost literally called Trump’s claim a lie because the site was actually being developed by a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This ultimately forced Google to confirm, again, that they were partnering with the federal government to develop a national coronavirus website. “Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information,” Google said on Twitter.
After Google backed up Trump, he thanked them and ripped the media for spreading fake news. "I want to thank the people at Google and Google communications because as you know they substantiated what I said on Friday," Trump said. "The head of Google, who is a great gentleman, called us and he apologized. I don't know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace. As you know, this is from Google. They put out a release and you guys can figure it out yourselves and how that got out. And I'm sure you guys will apologize, but it would be great if we could get really give the news correctly. It'd be so, so wonderful."
8. Trump "dissolved" the WH pandemic response office Two days after Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece by Elizabeth Cameron, who ran the White House pandemic office under Obama, alleging that Trump had dissolved the office in 2018. She claimed because of this, “the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus isn’t a surprise.”
This claim spread like wildfire, even though it was completely false. Days after WaPo ran the piece, they published another article by Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council, who debunked the allegation made by Cameron and other former Obama administration officials.
What good is there in spreading false information, as Elizabeth Cameron did? “This is Washington. It’s an election year,” Morrison laments. “Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.”
7. Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic
The Washington Post again was the source of another bogus claim when they reported that intelligence agencies warned about a possible pandemic back in January and February and that Trump “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.”
It was fake news. The Trump administration had begun aggressively addressing the coronavirus threat immediately after China reported the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization. In addition to implementing various precautionary travel restrictions, the administration fast-tracked the use of testing kits, set up a Coronavirus Task Force, and implemented a travel ban with China, several weeks before WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
Back in February both Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg (who hadn’t dropped out of the Democratic primary yet) accused President Trump of cutting funding to critical health agencies during a primary debate. “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing," Bloomberg claimed.
The Obama-Biden administration "increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort," Biden claimed.
They were both wrong.
According to an Associated Press fact-check, proposed budget cuts never happened, and funding increased. They acknowledged that some public health experts believe that a bigger concern than White House budgets “is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness,” but, they note, “that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”
The AP also noted that “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”
5. Trump "muzzled" Dr. Fauci
In late February, the New York Timesclaimed that the Trump administration had “muzzled” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), by preventing him from speaking publicly about the coronavirus without approval from the administration.
It wasn’t true. But, the claim was echoed throughout the mainstream media, and ultimately was brought up in a press briefing, and Trump was asked directly about it, and he let Dr. Fauci clear it up.
“I’ve never been muzzled, ever, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan,” he said. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration.”
Despite the fact this claim was debunked, Joe Biden kept repeating it as if it were true. “And, look, right now you have this president, hasn’t allowed his scientists to speak, number one,” Biden said on ABC's This Week a couple days after Fauci said unequivocally he wasn’t being muzzled. “He has the vice president speaking, not the scientists who know what they're talking about, like Fauci."
4. Trump didn’t act quickly and isn’t doing enough
If you listen to Democrats, Trump didn’t act quickly enough and is botching the government response. Joe Biden has tried to perpetuate this falsehood by giving press briefings telling Trump what he should be doing.
In addition to this, one of the most significant actions taken by Trump, the travel ban with China, was actually opposed by Joe Biden, and Trump’s critics on the left. Unfortunately for them, WHO experts admitted Trump’s actions saved lives in the United States.
Fox News contributor Liz Peek noted back in February, “Even before a single case of the virus erupted organically in our country [...] and even as the administration had acted preemptively and effectively to keep virus carriers out of our country, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others were eager to stoke fear and blame Donald Trump.”
Dr. Ronny Jackson, who served as White House physician from 2013 to 2018, also credited Trump for his decisive response to the coronavirus epidemic. "The president has done everything he needed to do in this case," he said. "He’s acted quickly and decisively. He did what he always has done ... he went with his instincts."
Jackson added, "What’s going on in Italy and Iran is not going to happen here I think, because of the president's quick and decisive actions. I think we are going to be more in line with what’s going on in South Korea and things of that nature.”
3. Trump told governors they were “on their own”
In a tweet sent last week, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed that during a conference call with governors about the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump told them they were “on their own” in getting the equipment they need. “‘Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,’ Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.”
She lied. Ms. Gay deliberately misrepresented Trump’s words. Trump actually told governors on the call: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
The false narrative that Trump had told governors they were on their own, essentially to expect no help from the federal government, spread like wildfire.
2. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO
A Politico hit piece from early March claimed that the World Health Organization offered the United States coronavirus testing kits, but Trump refused to accept them. This claim spread quickly, and Joe Biden even alluded to it during his March 15 debate with Bernie Sanders, claiming, “The World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them.”
It wasn’t true. "No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris explained. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity." According to WHO, its priority was to send testing kits to "countries with the weakest health systems."
So, why did testing get off to a slow start in the United States? Ellie Bufkin at our sister site Townhall noted that “Testing in the United States was fraught with difficulty in large part due to the slow approval by the Food and Drug Administration to allow testing kits developed by private companies outside of the government-controlled CDC to be used at a local or national level. Those FDA policies are consistent with the Obama Administration's response to H1N1 and Ebola in 2009 and 2014 respectively.”
1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”
To this day the left (and the media) claim Trump called the coronavirus a hoax. He said no such thing. While the country was distracted by impeachment, the Trump administration was busy addressing the coronavirus outbreak, taking various measures to limit the spread of the virus in the United States. Impeachment quickly faded, so they decided to aggressively politicize his response to the coronavirus outbreak. Joe Biden even called Trump’s travel ban with China an overreaction, and accused him of trying to scare the public. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia ± hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
