Botched

 The View from the Middle

 

While I disagree with almost all of Joe Biden’s policies, there are three critically important areas where he has made, “unforced errors”, and that is according to senior Obama administration officials.  I disagree, for example with President Biden’s decision to abandon the Keystone Pipeline, while allowing Russia to complete its Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany.  I disagree with his decision to reengage with Iran, the world’s largest sponsor of terror, which included financial support and reengagement in the impotent nuclear deal.  I also disagree with rejoining the Paris Global Warming Accord, and I have published pieces that explain my positions on all of these policy decisions.  We can debate all of these strategic choices, but there are three layups (a basketball term for an easy shot) that Joe has blown that even his most sycophantic followers are beginning to question.

First, there is President Biden’s handling of our southern border.  While he can claim that he inherited this problem, the facts on the ground do not support that assertion.  In Trump’s final year we averaged about 35,000 border apprehensions per month and for all four of the Trump administration years we averaged about 40,000 per month.  This was because of policies like “Stay in Mexico”, the elimination of catch and release and Title 42 expulsions which allowed Border Control to return illegal immigrants due to exposure to covid-19.  Joe Biden decided to reverse all of those effective policies and since we have been averaging almost 200,000 apprehensions per month and we are headed for a two million apprehension year for 2021.  Plus, who knows how many people are not being apprehended.  These are called “got-aways”, and are the most dangerous illegal entries for obvious reasons.  Border Patrol is projecting that we will experience 500,000 of these “got-aways” this year.  Joe Biden could have and should have just done nothing which is what makes his handling of the border a total botch.

Next, we have the Biden Administration’s handling of the Coronavirus vaccine implementation.  Despite the fact that President Biden tried to suggest that the vaccine didn’t exist before he became President, the truth is that it was developed in record time by the Trump administration and Joe received his first shot in December of 2020.  Joe’s job was simply to get the vaccine shots into the arms of the American people.  

Joe and Kamala, in their thirst to be elected, began to sow the seeds of distrust of the vaccine way back during the Democrat primary when they both indicated that they wouldn’t trust or take a vaccine developed under the Trump administration.  Then, when they took office, they obviously had no idea what was going on.  Joe promised that he was going to get “a million shots per day” into American arms.  Then, someone on his staff reminded him that the Trump administration was already ahead of that pace before they left office.  This lack of awareness did not inspire confidence in the American people and resulted in an immediate drop in that daily vaccination rate. 

Finally, Joe could have gone on a campaign to build trust in the vaccine and thus convince the American people to get vaccinated.  He and his administration, unfortunately, chose to shame and demonize the American people who were hesitant to get vaccinated.  There has been a big miss with black Americans who, for good reason, harbor a mistrust of big government. Only about 30% of US blacks have gotten the shots compared to a 60% level for all of our citizens.  He could have given the previous administration some due credit and pursued a positive message, but he didn’t.  This could have been easy, but he blew it and dramatically missed his goal.

And now we have our withdrawal from Afghanistan.  To be fair, I’m not going to blame Joe for getting us into Afghanistan, although he was part of a unanimous vote in the Senate to fund our actions there.  I won’t even blame him for staying there beyond accomplishing our initial mission, which probably happened in 2002, even though he was Vice President for eight of the last 20 years.  There are plenty of people, Democrat and Republican alike, who can take credit for all of those mistakes.  But Joe must take full responsibility for botching the very tactical withdrawal.

Most of us are not politicians or diplomats or four-star generals, but we do have brains and some common sense.  Common sense would suggest that you should not give your enemy a firm timetable of your withdrawal with no connection to conditions on the ground.  Common sense would tell you NOT to execute that withdrawal during the peak “fighting season” of your enemy.  Common sense would suggest that you have over half of your withdrawal of equipment and personnel completed before you tell your enemy anything.  Common sense would tell you not to remove the military before you remove American citizens and Afghan collaborators.  President Biden decided to ignore all of that common-sense advice and now must own the carnage that is about to ensue.

The Taliban is going door-to-door right now to find the Afghan men who cooperated with us and they are looking for women to become their sex slaves.  The next month will be brutal in Afghanistan.  There will be blood in streets, and that will be just the beginning of the suffering and dehumanization for the women there.  The good news for Joe Biden is that the Taliban are not the most transparent people so the world will probably not see much of the savagery.

And finally, this will impact our foreign policy for years to come.  What ally will trust us in the future (think South Korea, Taiwan and Israel) and our enemies will not fear us and will see this as an opportunity to take advantage.  How many terrorists can cross our southern border over the next few months, and how much damage can they do here.

All of these were unforced errors.  That’s three layups missed in just six months.  Joe, if I were your coach, you would be benched.