Decades of Fraught US Foreign Policy Mars Biden’s Accomplishments
The boulder of belligerent US foreign policy is making Biden more of a Sisyphus every day. Hopefully it will not cost him the election, but we should be concerned.
Let me start off by saying I love Joe Biden.
That’s saying a lot considering he wasn’t even my second choice for Democratic nominee in 2020.
Yet over the past three years, he’s impressed me with his myriad accomplishments, the most significant include:
— signing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act
— forming the American Climate Corps
— forgiving $39 billion in student loan debt
— reuniting more than 600 children separated from their families at the Southern border during the Trump administration
— signing the “No Surprises Act,” “the Safer Communities Act,” and the “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America (CHIPS) and Science Act”
— pardoning thousands of Americans with simple marijuana possession convictions
— decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level
— replacing the nation’s lead pipe infrastructure
— appointing a Black woman to the Supreme Court
— joining a union picket line with auto workers
— traveling to two active war zones
That being said, I’m not in a cult. I criticize the president when he messes up.
First, let’s start in Israel, where President Biden’s “tough questions” to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in October failed to be met with the necessary withholding of “unconditional support” that should have followed.
Now Biden — facing re-election — is looking at losing massive support from the Muslim community at a time when the outcome of November’s election could literally mean the end of American democracy if a republican, specifically Donald Trump, gets elected.
While we aren’t privy to the private conversations going on behind closed doors, Biden is on record calling himself a “Zionist,” which doesn’t help the narrative he is holding Netanyahu accountable for the ceaseless slaughter being perpetrated against Palestinians with help from the United States.
In a sense, this is a more nuanced issue than just getting Biden to utter the phrase “CEASE FIRE”. America’s relationship with the Israeli government has always been controversial because of decades of foreign policy blatantly biased toward it.
Mitchell Plitnick, writing for Common Dreams, states in a recent piece:
As with virtually all of Biden’s foreign policy from the start of his administration, especially in the Middle East, the ideas generated by this “day after” thinking are rooted in American hubris and ignorance of the people they are dealing with, and are, therefore, doomed to failure.
He adds:
This is the same failed policy that Biden has been chasing since his first day in office, a policy that has consistently moved farther away from reality, not closer. It is a notion that, as one U.S. official told the Huffington Post, is “delusionally optimistic.”
I was having a conversation on Friday with a friend who is Muslim and very progressive with whom I usually agree 99% of the time. He claimed that since to him there is no difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s foreign policy, he is planning on voting third party in November. Despite my protestations and trying to tout Biden’s accomplishments, he wasn’t swayed. While I disagree with the third-party canard, I can’t say I blame him for being pissed off at the perpetual foreign policy bait and switch we shuffle around every four years. While I lay Biden’s stance regarding Israel at the macro level on exhausted American international policy, being the current occupant of the White House makes him culpable, no matter how complicated the issue might be.
Now onto Yemen, against which American foreign policy is making Joe Biden the fourth US president to launch air strikes without congressional approval.
The impetus of the current wave of strikes is repeated attacks against container ships in the Red Sea by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels based on Yemen, who are “essentially using a naval blockade in the Red Sea to prevent the blockade against civilians in Gaza.”
This act of 21st-century naval piracy is interrupting global shipping routes, which nations have the right to defend. However, where it gets dicey is a country’s right to target another country for being the home base of a terrorist organization.
In a statement, President Biden said:
These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation.
Those partners are the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and Bahrain — all of whom were assembled specifically to respond to the attacks with force without US Congressional approval.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) criticized Biden for violating Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, which states only Congress can “declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”
While Congress has stretched presidents’ war powers significantly throughout our history, we risk making the ability of a president to circumvent Congress to march to war permanent.
Aída Chávez of Just Foreign Policy commented:
It’s great to see the bipartisan opposition to this from the progressive left and populist right. It’s appalling that instead of acting to stop Israeli war crimes, the Biden administration chose to further damage both our global reputation and our Constitutional system by launching a new unauthorized conflict against Yemen.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) added:
The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another Middle East conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution. I will stand up for that regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.
Section 2C of the War Powers Act is clear: POTUS may only introduce the U.S. into hostilities after Congressional authorization or in a national emergency when the U.S. is under imminent attack. Reporting is not a substitute. This is a retaliatory, offensive strike.
While on the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden asserted, “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”
Joe Biden was never a progressive. He was always a moderate Democrat. He only embraced some progressive positions after winning the Democratic nomination and the White House in 2020. Since then he has supported policies more reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal than of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
But the boulder of belligerent US foreign policy is making him more of a Sisyphus every day.
Hopefully it will not cost him the election, but we should be concerned.