Big Hat – No Cattle!

As former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates once said, “Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”   So why didn’t America listen to him?  Well the answer seems obvious; times were good, the economy was booming, more minorities were employed than at any time in U.S. history, gas prices were low, a ‘supply chain crisis’ was a term not yet invented, violent crime was decreasing (save for the Black Lives Matter riots of course) America was energy independent, the world-wide price of energy (primarily oil) was low, our military was being re-built, ISIS had been crushed, Afghanistan had wound down to become a war where casualties were a thing of the past, terrorists leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Qasem Soleimani had been taken down by American military forces and Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian aggression had been held in check.

But Trump issued mean tweets and was known to make crude comments like, “Grab ’em by the pussy.”  So, what else could a woke nation do except elect a Washington insider with 47 years of experience (without a single acknowledged accomplishment), a known plagiarists who never had an original legislative idea but who told us he could stand “toe-to-toe” with Vladimir Putin – “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president.  He doesn’t want me to be our nominee, if you’re wondering why – it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him”—Joe Biden, February 2020.

I’ll refrain from using banal hyperbolic expressions such as, the president has blood on his hands, but one fact is inescapable –as a practical matter, Joe Biden’s foreign policy decisions have permanently altered the lives and well-being of 82 million men, women, and children.  One would have to look back to Mao’s takeover in China in October 1949 to find a time when so many millions of innocent people have been so adversely affected by the decisions of a single man. Nineteen million Afghan women and girls now live in burkas; few if any will ever receive an education, many will be sold into modern-day slavery while others will become victims of honor killings.  Meanwhile, we don’t yet know what Ukraine will look like when Putin is finished, but one thing is certain, 43 million once free citizens will now likely under the yoke of a modern-day Russian czar.  I cannot imagine a more tragic situation for the citizens of both countries.

To bring this matter closer to home, allow me to ask, how do you think you would feel if tomorrow you learned your daughter could no longer attend school, as is the case in Afghanistan, or if you woke up to find the laws you’ve been living under since the fall of the Berlin Wall have suddenly changed and the ‘new order’ would be enforced by paramilitary goons taking orders from Moscow?  I would be frightened senseless.

But the real tragedy is that it didn’t have to be this way—all of what has transpired on Biden’s watch was predictable.  America had suffered but a single casualty in Afghanistan during the 18 months preceding our shameful exit, but Joe Biden wanted to make a splash on the anniversary of 9/11, so he blind-sided our allies pulling the rug out from under them as he made everyday life unbearable for 39 million Afghans.  And regarding the Ukraine invasion, history evinces that when the world-wide price of oil is high and filling Putin’s coffers, the Russian dictator becomes aggressive.  However, when the United States was the world’s largest energy producer and the world is awash in oil and prices were falling for Russian oil, Putin remained static, save for a few of his mercenaries in Syria that Trump quickly dispatched with U.S. forces, and he (Putin) never said a word.

Let’s be candid here, Joe Biden is a blowhard, and the title of this commentary provides us with an apt metaphor – “Big hat, no cattle!” – but the truly frightening aspect of all this is that Putin, Xi, Kim and the Mullahs, see it too.  President Biden isn’t just bereft of geopolitical acumen, he’s also patently arrogant and so caught up in progressive policy that he fails to understand how in the 21st century energy can be used as a weapon and Putin uses it as leverage to further his goals.

Think about this for a moment, prior to the Trump years when America was energy independent, Putin invaded Georgia and Crimea.  Now that the president has slashed oil production at the behest of climate activists such as Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Putin has invaded Ukraine.  Oh, how we yearn for the Trump years when the only news concerning Putin was about a fabricated collusion, rather than an invasion of a democratic neighbor nation.

After the 2016 election, the Trump Administration killed Russian mercenaries in Syria, extricated us from an unfavorable missile deal, sold offensive weapons to Ukraine and maintained sanctions on Russian oligarchs, and all without a whimper from Vladimir.  To paraphrase Victor David Hanson, when Biden slashed American energy production, energy prices skyrocketed.   And in response, the president begged Putin to please pump more dirty fossil fuels to help American commuters.  In contrast, when Trump expressed guarded willingness to work with Putin, especially in terms of triangulating to check Chinese aggression, he did so with an ace in the hole – U.S. energy independence.

Vladimir Putin never knew what Trump might do in any given crisis, other than that it would be in American interests, unpredictable, and possibly deadly.   Some may say that’s opinion, but as noted, Vladimir Putin invaded and occupied Crimea during the Obama years, and now he’s invaded Ukraine, but when Donald Trump was in office his armies remained at home.   Do we really need to wonder why?

Quote of the day: “There are two things I don’t believe in, coincidence and leprechauns”—Buffy and Vampire Slayer