President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek re-election in 2024 has cemented the Biden-Harris administration’s astonishing record of foreign policy failure, from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Two developments in the past week have further indicated Americans likely can’t expect much better in the six months until President Biden departs the White House – and can expect even worse if Kamala Harris takes over.
The first was Biden’s snub of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrived in the United States earlier this week to address the U.S. Congress. Though the president met with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, he notably declined to greet Netanyahu at the airport, as is customary. While Biden’s communications team claimed that the president was recovering from his latest bout of COVID-19, the administration also declined to send Vice President Kamala Harris or even Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his stead.
Taking their cue from President Biden, a number of high-profile Democrats were also glaringly absent from Netanyahu’s speech before Congress – including Vice President Kamala Harris, who would normally have sat behind Netanyahu in her constitutional role as President of the Senate. Some of those who did attend held up signs reading “war criminal” and “guilty of genocide.”
Meanwhile, just a few blocks away at Washington D.C.’s Union Station, the pro-Hamas rioters who have been egged on for months by Democrats vandalized historical monuments and clashed with police in scenes eerily reminiscent of the BLM riots four years ago. One masked rioter spray-painted “Hamas is coming” on a statue, along with an inverted red triangle, a common anti-Jewish hate symbol.
Other rioters burned American flags and raised Palestinian flags above the nation’s capital – a fitting and harrowing symbol for how Biden and Harris have capitulated to the most extreme anti-American elements within their own party and allowed them to dictate the administration’s response to Israel’s campaign to eliminate Hamas. The chaos that Biden and Harris have sown abroad has now come to the doorstep of Congress.
In yet another sign of just how desperate Harris is to appease anti-Israel radicals, the presumptive Democrat nominee publicly called for a “ceasefire” in the conflict after her private meeting with Netanyahu, potentially undermining Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas.
Meanwhile, just a few days before Netanyahu touched down in the U.S., the Israeli government also confirmed that two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers were killed while securing a beachhead for Biden’s humanitarian “aid pier.” The project, launched by the White House on March 7 as an effort to deliver food to Palestinian civilians by building a pier off the coast of Gaza, was abandoned earlier this month amid gross failure and mismanagement.
At the time, all 12 Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee signed an open letter to Biden expressing their concerns. They specifically argued that the administration’s plan “appears to ignore force protection issues entirely against an enemy that tries to kill Americans every day” and pointed out that there was “no apparent plan to secure distribution, to keep aid in civilians’ hands and out of Hamas’.”
A recent government report also revealed that the Pentagon likewise cautioned the White House that the project was unlikely to work. According to ABC News, the Pentagon told Biden that the pier would “require the deployment of several hundred troops.” The pier also wouldn’t be operational if sea levels rose too high – a factor that the report said would be “increasingly problematic in August into fall.” The Pentagon also cautioned that there was no plan on how to distribute the aid or provide “security” for truck drivers.
But Biden plowed forward anyway, determined at the very least to deliver a symbolic victory for his activist base at home in an election year.
Construction on the pier began on March 9, and the first aid convoy crossed into Gaza on May 17. By May 21, 569 tons of aid had reached shore. However, the Pentagon admitted that none had actually been delivered out of “safety and security” concerns. Only days later, the pier was damaged by “poor weather.” Over the next month, inclement weather would force the pier to close and reopen multiple times.
Then, in May, three U.S. service members assigned to the pier mission were injured – despite Biden’s promise that the project would present no risk to any American lives.
Finally, on July 17, the administration announced that the pier would be permanently dismantled. At a cost of $230 million, just 600 trucks of aid were actually delivered to Gaza – or more than $383,000 per truck. Still, the administration had the audacity to call the operation a “success.”
The failed aid pier was yet another microcosm of Biden’s failed foreign policy record. While not doing anything positive of note, the White House managed to waste enormous sums of taxpayer dollars and put the lives of Americans and American allies at risk – and potentially emboldened a terrorist organization.
Unfortunately for the U.S. and the world, Democrats now appear to be coalescing behind Kamala Harris to replace Biden on their presidential ticket this fall. Should she win the White House, the country can expect a different face in the Oval Office but more of the same dismal results.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
