Posted on 01/16/2025 5:34:21 AM PST by MtnClimber
Biden’s farewell boasts ring hollow as his foreign policy missteps—from emboldening Iran and Hamas to the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal—undermine his claims of global achievement.
Departing President Joe Biden offered a farewell brag this week to his State Department about how his tenure had improved America’s stature abroad. In his now accustomed weird mix of whispering and fiery shouting, Biden apparently felt he had to lie or mislead about almost every one of his “achievements.”
Yet to the extent that anything improved abroad on his watch—the weakening of Iran or the near destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah—it was due despite, not because of, Biden.
Biden, bowing to election year political pressure, did all he could to restrain and block Israeli retaliations to the October 7 massacres. Only after he was repeatedly proven wrong does he now shamelessly take credit for what Israel ironically achieved by ignoring his own threats directed at Israel.
Biden is correct only that Iran is “weaker than it’s been in decades.” But Tehran was aided, not hurt, by Biden’s nonstop efforts to lift sanctions, to allow Iran to make billions in oil revenues, to pay the theocracy billions of dollars in hostage ransom, and to beg the mullahs to reenter the ill-starred Iran deal. Everything Biden did makes it much harder for Israel to survive.
So, Iran is now weakened only because Israel ignored Biden’s nonstop ankle-biting and finger-shaking not to retaliate to Iranian aggression. Instead, the Netanyahu government systematically destroyed Iranian air defenses after killing most of Iran’s foreign terrorist operatives.
Biden referenced the end of the Assad regime in Syria, but it imploded not due to any effort by Biden. It was overwhelmed instead only after the Israeli decimation of Hezbollah and humiliation of Iran—coupled with the election victory of Donald Trump—that encouraged Assad’s enemies
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Wasn’t Joe Biden the first to walk on the moon too.
Why does VDH persist in pretending that the POTATUS is anything more than a front for the cabal that installed him?!
VDH ping
He’s just fisking the speech.
Same with Obama.
But nobody wants to talk about ‘the man behind the curtain.’
Like people complaining about ‘woke’ this or that.
Who controls the education system? What about Cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School?
We’re looking at the symptoms (Biden) and not the disease (we live in an oligarchy run by globalists and Deep State puppeteers.)
Biden’s US military aid for Israel tops $17.9 billion since Oct. 7, 2024
Most US tax dollars sent in one year. Estimated since Israel does not disclose US aid totals
Plus Biden “hiding amounts of aid and types of systems via bureaucratic maneuvering.”
pbs.com, Oct 7, 2024 1:43 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.
The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.
READ MORE: As Israel marks a year since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, war rages on six fronts
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.
The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of U.S. wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Here’s a look at where some of the U.S. taxpayer money went:
Record military aid to Israel
Israel — a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.
Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.
Much of the U.S. weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs. Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.
Unlike the United States’ publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said. They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”
Funding during a war has exacted a heavy toll on civilians and divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in U.S. politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”
But Biden did more than any other recent president to weaken the U.S. military. Under his tenure, the Pentagon suffered a real reduction in its budget. And it never quite recovered from the Afghanistan debacle.
Maybe he WOULD have been better never to have read this speech early in the day. Pow by Prof Hanson!
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
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thanks for these VDH posts.
More gaslighting by Traitorjoe’s puppetmasters to hide their aid and comfort to the domestic and foreign enemies of the United States.
Biden self-congratulatory exit speech was as low as it gets he acts like he had something to do with the Hamas deal the only thing Biden had was 3 years 11 months of fail no deal no nothing except hot air.
Trump says what he will do a month ago a bingo a deal pops up.
The Hamas Deal is already falling apart.
Not Trump’s deal they know what will happen if they fail to comply.
Remember that this moron POS Biden lifted all Iran oil sanctions that Trump had slapped on. This enabled the Ayatollahs to sell an extra 2.5 millions barrels of oil per day. That they were unable to while Trump was president.
Biden lifting Iranian sanctions, was 99% probably done at Obama’s direction. He was Iran’s best friend ever in the US white House
And wasn’t that where he drove a big rig?
BTTT
HIS BIZARRO WORLD INCLUDES ALL ACHIEVEMENTS BY EVERYONE ELSE—— NOT JUST STOLEN VALOR——BUT STOLEN MERIT.
With the Kissinger accords, beginning about 1983 the USA provided significant funding (more than a billion dollars annually) to both Egypt and Israel. These payments have continued to this day and have helped to neutralize Egypt.
Everyone still speaks of Biden as the singular person who did all this, but then in the second part of each sentence they return to the fact that he has advanced dementia.
These last four years the show was being run by an Obama Central Committee. Let’s forget the shell of a President and talk about this Central Politburo. These are some evil people and they almost nosedived the nation.
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