“Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” said President Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a couple of years ago.
And now President Biden is wrong about two current national security issues: Our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fatally flawed Iran Nuclear Deal. And he’s probably wrong about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine too.
That’s not a pretty picture for Democrats as the midterm elections approach, but it’s the Biden administration’s sorry record on major foreign policy and national security issues going into the second year of our elderly president’s administration. So, let’s examine Biden’s apparent eagerness to sign a new nuclear agreement with Iran, very similar to the one former President Trump cancelled shortly after taking office.
Retired Gen. Chuck Wald and retired Adm. John Bird are two of 46 retired general officers who recently signed an open letter urging President Biden to walk away from the new IND because “such a deal is too dangerous for America.” In a recent opinion column published by The Hill, Wald and Bird wrote that “the nuclear agreement currently being finalized with Iran will directly endanger the national security of the United States and our regional partners,” including Israel.
Given Biden’s dangerous decisions to sign a new IND with Iran and to cancel Title 42, which allows U.S. Border Patrol officers to deport illegal immigrants because of health concerns, no wonder the president’s approval ratings are down in Trump territory, below 40 percent.
These ratings could spell disaster for Democrats who support an unpopular president, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. That’s why we’re finally hearing from our low-key senior senator after she’s been in Washington, D.C., for more than five years.
Back to the IND, which was negotiated by former Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration, Wald and Bird note that “its core selling point was that Iran would need at least a year to produce enough fuel for a bomb. By contrast, Tehran’s ‘breakout time’ under the new agreement would be only six to seven months.”
“Rather than a ‘longer and stronger’ accord that safely confines Tehran in a ‘box,’ as the Biden administration puts it, this new deal is even shorter and weaker than the original IND,” the flag officers asserted. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va), one of four Democrats who voted against the original IND, vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Meanwhile, John Kerry’s fingerprints are all over both deals because he’ll sign anything with anyone anywhere in the world provided that he scores a page one photo op out of the deal. That’s why the arrogant and self-important diplomat eagerly signed on to the lopsided Paris Climate Accords, which allow “developing countries” like China and India to play by their own rules. Yes, really.
Wald and Bird concluded their powerful opinion piece by warning that “the new nuclear agreement will give the radical regime in Tehran tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief which… will fuel heightened regional aggression against U.S. soldiers… at a time when American strategists must prioritize strategic competition with China and Russia.” Well said!
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Local elections: As we approach the primary election in June, be on the alert for school board candidates who use words like “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusive,” because those “woke” candidates might be open to teaching the racist Critical Race Theory in our public schools. Just sayin’ …
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal’s senior political columnist.
