By Andrew Malcolm | RedState.com
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Joe Biden has done it again. But this time, he’s put even more of our valiant military volunteers' lives at risk.
Over the weekend, Iran-backed militants managed to slip an armed drone past the alert system at a U.S. Army base in Jordan. The explosion killed three members of the military and wounded more than three dozen others.
I don’t know precisely how you measure pressure in the D.C. Swamp, likely by the decibel level of publicly squawking to media. This time, it was mostly Republicans calling on Biden to take some form of retaliation other than his standard silence. Biden's weakness in foreign affairs is a major theme of the campaign.
Biden, you may recall, was not forced to seek the presidency. He volunteered to become commander in chief, though he had no military experience, like his two immediate predecessors.
Biden is well-known among Washington-types for his oft-stated disdain for and distrust of the military. He's also well-known for being 81 and acting even older.
You might remember how moved he was at the solemn return of the military bodies from the homicide bombing at the Kabul airport during the botched Afghan troop exit, checking his watch at least three times as the bodies were unloaded.
That whole exit chaos was caused by Biden ignoring military advice to leave some troops there to oversee an orderly evacuation. Biden didn’t. The evacuation turned into days of deadly panic and chaos, which Biden continues to call “an extraordinary success.”
Then, of course, there’s Biden’s intentional end to U.S. energy independence and intentional opening of the southern border, which has now permitted some nine million illegal immigrants, including Chinese and Europeans, to enter and embed themselves throughout the country.
Biden was also the only member of Barack Obama’s inner circle to vote against going after Osama bin Laden when the CIA finally found him because he didn’t trust the SEALs.
By the way, the brave Pakistani doctor who ID’d the world’s most wanted fugitive by entering his secret hideaway to acquire a DNA sample remains rotting in prison there still.
Everything Joe Biden does that he’s aware he’s doing has some political angle. Or money. But we’re talking politics here.
The left in his Democrat Party (is there a middle or right remaining?) is worrying out loud that this president is going to get us into another war, as every modern president has except Donald Trump.
Obama did get the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing. That was before, without congressional notice, he ordered the military to join the European military coalition for months of bombing in 2011 to oust Libya’s dictator. Never mind the West had promised to leave Moammar Gadaffi alone if he turned over his entire nuclear weapons program. Which he did.
Anyway, Monday’s news was filled with Politico and Hill stories about how Biden "weighs" his options for retaliation on Iran. That was to calm Republicans down.
Biden’s favored option during the past 1,105 days has been to do nothing when confronted with foreign challenges.
Remember when Russia downed one of our intelligence drones in international air space over international waters last year? Biden said nothing.
Remember when China sent an immense intelligence-gathering array of electronics floating by balloon across the entire country, loitering over key military installations like Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base that controls half of our underground nuclear missile silos?
Biden said we couldn’t shoot it down because it would be destroyed, and then we wouldn’t learn what it was doing. So, he waited and ordered the balloon downed over the Atlantic.
It was destroyed anyway. But the good news for China is that the extra drift time allowed the electronics to transmit all their findings safely back to Beijing via satellite.
So, this being an election year, Biden knew he had to appear to do something. Key word: appear. It took a while.
My colleague Nick Arama had a post Monday evening detailing a) that Biden examined a range of targets and b) had decided to attack, possibly in the next few hours. A very helpful warning for Iran’s proxies.
Are you sitting down? Biden aides also publicly released a list of potential targets.
Read that again.
The president of the United States, who for years illegally kept Top Secret documents in his garage, has intentionally alerted Iran, the world’s largest exporter of terrorism, to the details of his retaliation plans.
As a result, in the next little while, if not already, our highly-trained volunteer pilots and/or special operators can head out in their country’s service to avenge fallen comrades in the firm knowledge that their commander in chief has told the enemy their targets and when they might be arriving.
That should give the targets plenty of time to hide their equipment and themselves, ensuring that the "retaliation" is nothing but a PR stunt.
Joe Biden says he intends to remain president until 2029.
