In his final address to the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, President Joe Biden attempted one last shameless victory lap.
Unfortunately for America, there aren’t many victories to celebrate on the world stage.
As our weakened commander in chief labored and babbled his way through his prepared text, allies and enemies alike could not help but see the resemblance to a weakened nation.
The saddest part is that Biden had little to say about his fellow citizens who have been held captive by Hamas’s gang in tunnels beneath the rubble of Gaza since October 7.
At least seven Americans are believed to be still in custody, three of whom may already be dead.
The leader of the free world will not mention their names.
But I will do it.
Keith Siegel, 65, Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Edan Alexander, 20, and Omer Neutra, 22, are believed to be alive.
Itay Chen, 19, Judith Weinstein, 70, and Gadi Haggai, 73, are believed to have died.
In his fourth and final address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Joe Biden attempted one last shameless victory lap.
At least seven Americans are believed to be still in captivity. Three of them may already be dead. President Biden has declined to name them. (Above) Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, and other families of hostages in Gaza outside the White House on April 9, 2024
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American Israeli, was executed by Hamas late last month as the Israeli Defense Forces closed in on his captors. His parents were speaking at the Democratic National Convention.
Didn’t they deserve to be recognized?
When Biden vaguely mentioned the hostages’ families, he said they were “going through hell.” He then quickly added that the people of Gaza are also “going through hell.”
This is the kind of nonsense that characterizes the government.
And it’s a habit the vice president has adopted, a woman who claims she can set the world on fire but refuses to say how she’ll do it.
While Biden and Kamala Harris will only argue that Israel has the right to defend itself, they will not say that the Jewish state has the right – or even the obligation – to keep Hamas and Hezbollah off its borders.
The White House warns Israel against unleashing a “broader war” in the region, but the company has remained silent for months as Iranian-funded Hezbollah rockets rain down on northern Israel, driving tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Biden and Harris are pleading for a “ceasefire,” but are afraid to confront Hamas and demand that the hostages be returned.
What has the Biden-Harris administration done?
They approved a $320 million “humanitarian” pier off the coast of Gaza, which collapsed without much happening.
They have withdrawn weapons from Israel and failed to impose truly crippling sanctions on Iran.
Biden at least admitted on Tuesday what Democratic spinners have long denied: that leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban was his idea, not something Donald Trump forced on him.
“I was determined to end it, and I did it,” Biden crowed, regardless of the price or the incompetence with which he did it.
Hersh Goldberg-Poli’s parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Didn’t they deserve to be recognized?
23-year-old American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin was executed by Hamas late last month as Israeli forces closed in on his captors.
Biden claimed he was thinking about “every day” of the 13 US service members who died during the 2020 withdrawal. However, during his disastrous June debate, he claimed that not a single US soldier had died on duty.
Harris continued that duplicity by claiming in her televised debate with Trump earlier this month that the US has no troops in combat zones – news for the 40,000 troops stationed in the Middle East. The Pentagon announced last week that an additional “small number” of US troops would be sent.
If you knew Biden’s record before he became president, you could have predicted the magnitude of this disappointment.
In 2014, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Biden “has been wrong on virtually every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past 40 years.”
Ten years later, Gates might revise that statement to “five decades.”
Biden did not speak to the UN about America’s porous southern border, the cartels that smuggle and abuse migrants, or Mexico’s descent into authoritarianism and warlordism.
He also apparently forgot about China’s threats against Taiwan, but did weakly thank the communist regime for its alleged help in controlling the fentanyl trade.
Harris claimed in her debate that America has no troops in combat zones – news for the 40,000 troops spread across the Middle East.
He trumpeted his support for Ukraine. But that country was of course at peace when Biden said he would tolerate a “small incursion” by Russia into its territory; now it remains locked in a bloody stalemate, two and a half years later.
The president closed with a speech about the importance of democracy and how he had ended his re-election campaign because “some things are more important than staying in power.”
Everyone in the room knows that he only withdrew from the race because he would lose.
Now Harris takes on the role of excuse for the man she once vouched for, even after his decompensation became clear to all.
This was Biden’s last attempt.
But replacing this old engine with a younger model doesn’t change the fact that they’re still going in the same wrong direction.