Biden’s legacy of failure

OPINION:

President Biden’s two farewell speeches were what we should have expected from an “elderly man with a poor memory,” as special counsel Robert Hur’s report said of him. Most presidents’ farewells try to enhance their legacies, but Mr. Biden exaggerated his accomplishments at the expense of the facts.

He went much further in his Jan. 15 speech, claiming all the credit for the apparent deal between Hamas and Israel to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and denying any credit to incoming President Trump. Mr. Trump, in Mr. Biden’s words, would only implement what he’d already accomplished.

As this column has often pointed out, the Biden-Blinken team has done nothing to obtain the release of the Hamas hostages, including three of seven Americans believed to still be alive. If the cease-fire deal holds (it may not, because Hamas is violating its terms already) and if it results in any hostages being released, the credit should – and will – go to Mr. Trump and his team, not Mr. Biden’s bunch of fools.

You should judge for yourself. Here are the facts.

As this is written, we know much about what that deal provides. It says that, over about six weeks, Israel will set free about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, virtually all of whom have been convicted or accused of terrorist acts. In return, Hamas (and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Iranian proxy terrorist force) will, over that same period, release 33 Israeli hostages.

Israel also will withdraw much of its forces from Gaza and enable larger shipments of aid into Gaza.

This is a formula for a cease-fire that has been available to both sides since last May. What has changed so suddenly that the formula became an agreement?

On Jan. 5, Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that “whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel, and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages.”

So whenever Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken pressured the Israelis to end the fighting – without placing pressure on Hamas, which they never did — the terrorists backed away from every deal. Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken are so stupid that they expect different results each time. They could have learned from their experience over the course of more than a year, but they didn’t.

In a Jan. 12 call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Biden pushed yet again for an immediate cease-fire and Mr. Netanyahu ignored him again. That’s what Mr. Biden and his crew are touting as proof of his influence.

Three days before, on Jan. 9, Mr. Blinken admitted that the State Department was “handing off” some of the foreign policy initiatives — including the Israel-Hamas war — to the incoming Trump administration. Representatives of incoming President Trump were (and are) meeting with Israelis and representatives of Hamas in Qatar. Biden & Co. are not-so-innocent bystanders.

Wonder why?

On Dec. 5, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that if “…the hostages are not released before January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity.” He added, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”

Mr. Trump’s statement wasn’t aimed only at Hamas but also at Iran, which controls Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ. It hugely affected all of them and gave birth to the cease-fire deal. And then Mr. Biden gave his speeches.

In his speeches, Mr. Biden extravagantly praised his foreign policy team and claimed credit for actions that were taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or in which Mr. Biden was irrelevant, such as the Hamas-Israel cease-fire.

In his first farewell, Mr. Biden repeatedly claimed credit for increasing America’s military, technological and economic powers over what they were during Mr. Trump’s first term. Of course, none of that is true. Mr. Biden added that Russia and Iran are much weaker than four years ago.

Iran is weaker than it was four years ago, but not because of anything Mr. Biden has done, such as the sanctions relief he has given it. Iran is weaker because its principal proxy forces – Hamas and Hezbollah – have been effectively destroyed by Israel. Russia is weaker because of its long Ukraine war, not because of anything Mr. Biden did.

There is much more of Mr. Biden’s speeches that were fiction, too much to recount here. He bragged, for example, about his Afghanistan withdrawal, which was a debacle that cost American lives. He said NATO was stronger and that 20 nations joined us to deter the Houthis. If NATO were stronger, the Russian war in Ukraine would have ended, and the Houthis would have been deterred. Neither is the case.

President Ronald Reagan used to say that “status quo” was Latin for “the mess we’re in.” Mr. Trump now has the enormous task of restoring our foreign and defense policies to the status quo ante Joe.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.