Many of us will remember the scene in the classic movie Animal House, when the frat boys of Delta House, facing a permanent ban from campus, settled on the only available solution: road trip! Well, as Joe Biden tried to get out of Dodge this week, his not-so-excellent adventure from the White House up yonder to the United Nations was intended to serve the same purpose. After all, when the walls are closing in around you, as they are on this 46th president, the best option is usually to change the scenery – and the subject.
But while many presidents have sought refuge abroad when their troubles were mounting at home, Biden, in effect, did the reverse. He could have ducked the stage, as is his wont, and the barrage of questions over his mounting problems. Instead, he left the relative safety of the White House and traveled right to the scene of the crime – broadly speaking, the international stage – where he had been condemned by every nation which chose to speak out on his scandalous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the thousands left behind.
In continuing his single-minded mission to reverse all things Trump, whether they were working or not, this beleaguered president of ours decided on a setting that almost perfectly represents his own long-held worldview and the opposite of Trump’s: the United Nations. As he sought deliverance from the disappointment and outrage of allies who thought him at least competent – and just their type – he unleashed a torrent of threadbare cliches that promise not to advance the ball an inch. Foremost among them was his call for “relentless diplomacy” to solve all the world’s ills. “Today, many of our greatest concerns cannot be solved or even addressed by the force of arms,” Biden declared, later adding that “the U.S. is not seeking a new Cold War” – as if some thought we were.
What Biden appears to actually be promising is two-fold: The first, sure to be popular, is that he will keep us out of war. The second, dangerous if taken to the limit, is that he will do so at almost any cost. What message does this send to freshly emboldened terrorists doing a collective high-five over our humiliation in Afghanistan? Further, as he used the pandemic to extend some sort of olive branch to his globalist comrades, Biden did not see fit to mention China even once in his speech. Perhaps it was wise politics, for it would open wide the Pandora’s box that is the relationship between China and his Democratic Party.
But on the crucial matter of diplomacy uber alles, one wonders what level of naivete is required to believe that the Taliban – or the regimes in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or a host of other nations – will put on their best behavior in the face of relentless discussion and negotiation with no threat of remedial action.
Joe Biden
(Photo by Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images)
Of course, Biden can offer these world leaders who were flummoxed by Trump a wink and a nod, his assurance that, unlike his reviled predecessor, he won’t criticize them or force them to pay their agreed-upon share in NATO for the common defense. He won’t try to force them to take any oppositional actions toward the Chinese or the Iranians, and he’ll go in hook, line, and sinker on every one of their global climate change schemes. And, of course, he can employ the ever-swelling federal budget to bring enemies and skeptical allies to heel. If we can throw another $3.5 trillion down the progressive rathole for domestic “human infrastructure” programs while inflation soars and the national debt reaches unthinkable levels, what’s a few hundred billion extra in foreign aid to soothe – i.e., buy off – the savage beast of newfound and deep alarm about the presidency of Joe Biden around the world?
This call for “relentless diplomacy” is strikingly similar to Biden’s assignment of the embarrassingly impotent Kamala Harris to take charge of immigration – i.e., the border crisis – by determining the “root causes” of the problem. In both cases, the problems to be solved are depicted as intractable, the solutions tortuous, and the horizon set for solving them indefinite – in fine bureaucratic fashion. It is the classic rhetoric – the rhythm and rhyme – of the career politician. Joe Biden is doing everything in his power to change the subject from his recent spate of failures, but in seeking refuge from the storm in a group attuned to his globalist worldview, he has now paradoxically advertised to the world his own weakness and vulnerability.
~ Read more from Tim Donner.
