We can’t say we weren’t warned. Joe Biden’s abject incompetence at foreign policy is legendary.
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” former President Barack Obama reportedly warned a fellow Democrat during the 2020 primary. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in 2014 that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Biden’s record somehow has only gotten worse since he became president.
President Barack Obama, standing with Vice President Joe Biden, gives a press conference about the Iran Nuclear Deal, on July 14, 2015, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik – Pool/Getty Images)
His Afghanistan withdrawal strategy lead to chaos, horror, and death – including for children and American servicemen. His Ukraine/Russia policy undoubtedly played a major role in Putin’s decision to invade. China has routinely humiliated the U.S. on the world stage. Biden is more responsible than any single person for the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border. His efforts to keep America’s Southern border opens confirms that, stunningly, national security is simply not a priority for the U.S. President.
So, yeah, he’s wrong on every major foreign policy decision.
He staffed his foreign policy machine with grifters, dissemblers, and ideologues. Those who didn’t spend the Trump years hawking their services to the highest bidder were perched at think tanks, where they were no less at the mercy of foreign interests. Just last week, the Pentagon announced a probe into a Biden appointee over her cozy relationship with Iranian officials while promoting the nuclear deal as a scholarly “expert.”
Once in power, these phony “experts” have rarely even hinted at progress toward Middle East peace of any kind.
In fact, the region has been markedly more chaotic than the relative calm of the Trump years.
Despite Biden’s campaign promise for a return to “normal” foreign policy, this weekend’s blood bath carried out against Israelis by Iran-backed Hamas terrorists may well be his biggest foreign policy failure. For starters, Biden’s team appears to have been blindsided by the attacks. This should shock no one, since these same people have spent most of his term wrangling with allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel while trying to appease Iran (which wants us all dead).
Hamas militants celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Eslaiah)
Rockets are launched by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
A man passes the scene where a rocket fired from Gaza strip hit a building on October 7, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In fact, in response to Hamas attacking Israel, the United States’ Office for Palestinian Affairs called for Israelis to “refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” (They have since deleted the offending tweet.)
There is a word for granting moral equivalence between terrorists and their victims: evil.
Upon taking office, Biden chilled the U.S.-Saudi alliance. President Joe will rarely, if ever, defy his left-wing base, and his base had become obsessed with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudis. This made it impossible for Biden to engage with the Saudis at a level necessary to forge a stronger peace in the region. Additionally, as my colleague Joel Pollak has noted, Biden paused arms sales to Saudi Arabia and “reopened negotiations with Iran toward a new nuclear deal over Saudi (and Israeli) objections.” Russia would be a key partner if a new Iran deal takes shape. The same people who told us that Vladimir Putin is the world’s greatest threat are perfectly fine pushing for a deal that elevates him on the world stage while empowering Iran. This is incoherent and irresponsible.
Since Biden has been president, the U.N. nuclear watchdog found that Iran has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade.
That doesn’t seem to bother Joe Biden, who recently released $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran as part of deal that included a prisoner swap. Iran funds and arms Hamas. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared “victory” after the latest terror attack in Israel. While the $6 billion hasn’t arrived yet, and it is supposed to be used specifically for peaceful purposes, money is fungible and padding Iran’s bank account obviously frees them up to fund more terror. Only liars and demagogues would pretend this is not how money works. What’s more, people (and countries) spend when they have the expectation of money coming in; they don’t necessarily wait for the check to arrive. That’s basic economics.
In fact, the Iranian President has said he’ll do whatever he wants with the money.
He is laughing at us. Literally.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a rally outside the former U.S. embassy in the capital Tehran on November 4, 2022, to celebrate the 43th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis against Americans. (ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
But wait, there is more: Biden inexplicably revoked the terrorist designation of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group. He also pulled U.S. support for Yemen’s government against the Houthi rebels — in a country that sits across a narrow strait from a key U.S. naval base in Africa. All of this strengthens Iran.
Meanwhile, Biden has been icy to Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Bibi’s efforts to engage productively with President Joe. Biden and his team refused to meet with Israel’s duly elected government. They also restored funding to Palestine over internal objections that the aid could be diverted to Hamas.
U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan — another catastrophe Joe Biden failed to see coming — are also believed to now be in the hands of Hamas.
As I document in my new book, Breaking Biden (the definitive book on Joe Biden’s record with a strong emphasis on his disastrous foreign policy), the Pentagon reported that the U.S. left $7.12 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan upon our departure. This includes aircraft, air-to-ground weaponry, other military vehicles, munitions, and communications equipment.
Here is some of what has reportedly fallen in the Taliban’s lap:
- 208 aircraft, including UH-60 Black Hawks and M-17 helicopters, between 2003 and 2016
- 61,000 military vehicles of all types, including more than 2,000 armored vehicles and Mine-Resistant, Ambush- Protected (MRAP) vehicles
- 258,000 rifles, including M-16s and AK-47s
- 56,000 machine guns
- 31,000 rocket-propelled and handheld grenade launchers
- 18,000 “gravity” bombs
- 16,000 aviation rockets
- 1,845 D-30 mortar systems with more than a million mortar rounds
- 224 D-130 howitzer artillery guns 30 million rounds of ammunition 17,400 night-vision devices
- 95 small drones
- body armor
- biometric security equipment
There were likely other beneficiaries of this bounty besides the Taliban. As I note in the book, sophisticated weaponry and convoys of military vehicles could easily have fallen into the hands of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or other hostile actors in the region. Two months after the evacuation, in October 2021, U.S. supplies were already for sale by Afghani gun dealers.
Hummers from the U.S. Army left behind at Bagram air base in Kabul, Afghanistan, are seen on September 1, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)
Armed Taliban security personnel ride a military vehicle as they parade near the U.S. embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2023, during the second anniversary celebrations of their takeover. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Men watch as an armed Taliban security personnel rides a vehicle convoy as during a parade near the U.S. embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2023, as Taliban celebrates the second anniversary of their takeover. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Taliban security personnel display seized weapons in Mazar-i-Sharif on July 13, 2023. (Atif Aryan / AFP) (Photo by ATIF ARYAN/AFP via Getty Images)
An Afghan shopkeeper sells used U.S. military headphones and vests at Mujahideen Bazar in Kabul, Afghanistan, on October 12, 2022. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
It looks like we now know who got some of them: exactly the people we all feared.
As the disasters in the Middle East have mounted, the typically stubborn Biden has occasionally reversed course, meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent weeks. We were finally back on track for an historic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the framework for which was established under the Trump administration.
But this is all far too little, far too late. After Hamas’s terrorist attack, it would be a miracle if such a deal gets done now.
If it were in a vacuum, all the brutality would already be unthinkable. The systematic slaughter and murder of women. The preying on innocents. The stacking of bodies in the street. All of this is horrifying even for a region of the world known for constant war.
Yet it’s not in a vacuum. There is context. And the context is that the United States government under Joe Biden has signaled a weakening of our relationship with our allies in Israel, it has elected to fund the funders to terrorism, and it has repeatedly entertained a nuclear deal with the hideous Iranian regime that hopes to eviscerate both us and Israel.
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Alex Marlow is the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News and a New York Times bestselling author. His new book, Breaking Biden: Exposing the Hidden Forces and Secret Money Machine Behind Joe Biden, His Family, and His Administration, is available now. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @AlexMarlow.
