Biden Stuck Fighting Wrong Battles in Wrong Places

Friends and foes realize Biden has no strategy and is stuck fighting the wrong battles with the wrong enemies in the wrong places at the wrong time.

On Fox Business before the strikes began discussing our lack of strategy. Video: https://fxn.ws/3HLBeyQ

First things first—our thoughts and prayers are with the members of the U.S. military now engaged in combat. May they achieve their missions and come home safely.

That said, the public might be a little fuzzy on what that mission is—especially since President Joe Biden has never bothered to explain what it is.

Yes, the attacks that have begun in Iraq and Syria are retaliation for a strike on a U.S. outpost in Jordan that killed three soldiers. The government has fingered Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—the outfit charged with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution via terrorism and political warfare throughout the Middle East—with orchestrating that attack, along with a string of previous strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Such attacks should not go unanswered. When then-President Donald Trump lost patience with Iranian activities in Iraq, he ordered the successful targeting of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani as he visited Baghdad. Iran got the message that the United States was serious.

But why exactly do we have forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, and what has changed since Trump left office?

In August 2010, the last U.S. combat brigade departed Iraq more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of that country began in 2003. Upon taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama put then-Vice President Joe Biden in charge of negotiating the extension of the U.S. presence in Iraq, which should not have been hard since we were financing Iraq’s security and other government operations. But putting Biden in charge of something is what one does when one wants failure—which is what Obama wanted and received. Instead of taking the blame for leaving Iraq, Obama could say the Iraqis threw us out. It was they, not us, who paved the way for Iranian domination of Iraq—its fellow Shiite neighbor.

Alas, we had to go back. Out of the maelstrom of the Syrian Civil War—another goof of U.S. foreign policy during the Obama era—came ISIS. They were so brutal they made al Qaeda look somewhat civilized by comparison, and in fact many of their fighters were al Qaeda rejects. Obama went to war with ISIS but tied the U.S. military’s hands in dealing with them. The lawyers were in charge.

Trump ran on defeating ISIS by unleashing the U.S. military and its allies—a promise he rapidly fulfilled. Left behind were U.S. bases in Iraq used for the operation, along with Obama-era bases in Syria. Today, these small, vulnerable bases are an easy way for Iran to target U.S. forces through its proxies, which is exactly what they are doing.

After much criticism for inaction as Iran’s proxies have made war on Israel, kidnapped and killed Americans, and diverted commerce from the Red Sea and Suez Canal, Mr. Biden has reacted. However, our enemies and the rest of the world see the action for what it is: a gesture rather than a serious strategy to advance U.S. interests and backfoot the Iranian government.

Some historical events come to mind.

One is the hasty 2021 air strike arranged in Afghanistan after U.S. humiliation there at the hands of the Taliban early in the Biden administration, including the killing of thirteen U.S. servicemen. In order to be seen reacting, the military conducted an air attack that killed seven children, originally defending the action as a “righteous strike” but later admitting the target was a mistake. As is the fashion today, the U.S. commander said he would take full responsibility but then took none. Left unexplained and unexplored was how much pressure the White House put on the military to do something to give the appearance of reacting to the calamity. My guess is they demanded rapid action and got seven kids killed.

Another historical analogy is the defense of the remote Khe Sanh U.S. military base in South Vietnam, which came under siege in 1968. It was defended at great cost to preserve credibility for the U.S. military. After the enemy was successfully repelled, the largely irrelevant base was torn up and abandoned.

The pathetic administration of Jimmy Carter also comes to mind from history. Carter oozed weakness, something both the Soviet Union and our other adversaries sensed. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan to expand their empire and Islamists in Iran took down a U.S.-allied government there that was not exactly run by boy scouts, but was far less repressive and dangerous that what succeeded it: the regime in Tehran we are still dealing with today.

Carter sensed the need to do something, especially after the Iranians took American diplomats hostage in Tehran. He ordered a commando operation to rescue the hostages, which failed. He also ordered the arming of Afghan resistance fighters targeting the Soviets, but it was a picayune effort against a Soviet Union then pushing its advantage in Central America, Europe, and Central Asia.

That’s about where we are now. We are at war without a strategy or explanation—and not just one war. We are not striking Iran directly—nor should we do so flippantly. But we also are not even enforcing existing sanctions on Iran, which has refilled its coffers mightily with oil exports to China. We do not have a strategy even to frustrate Iran politically. Biden did little even to verbally support protests against the Iranian regime by Iranians themselves. Since he took office, he has sought to revive a 2015 Obama-era deal with Iran that left the country with the means to develop a nuclear weapon.

Today’s response as well as recent military action against Iranian-backed Houthi forces menacing international shipping is remarkably unilateral. The British contributed a sole destroyer to the anti-Houthi military operation. It appears that today’s strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria are solely the product of the U.S. military, including by bombers that had to fly from as far away as the continental United States.

It seems clear that our allies understand we are not serious. The most relevant countries in fighting the Houthi or the IRGC are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Biden intentionally antagonized the Saudis upon taking office and all but ignored Houthi ballistic missile attacks on those two countries.

Thus we find ourselves in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, where no vital U.S. interests exist, and in the Middle East, where we are fighting to defend indefensible bases in countries where they are not needed or wanted.

Deterring Iran is essential: the Islamist government there has seen itself as at war with America since it came to power in 1979. No matter how much oil and gas we pump domestically, we cannot ignore the Middle East. But we ought to be confronting Iran on our terms—and on grounds where we have the advantage. That means a focused Trump-like effort to put strain on Iran’s government through economic means and a military deterrence focused on a naval and aviation presence in the Arabian Gulf and nearby—not defending the remnants of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Syria from the last decade. We should also act with our Gulf Arab allies, who will be by our side when they see we our serious.

Furthermore, we must keep in mind that our chief adversary in the world is China. Luckily, a naval and aviation-based capability that can be used to deter and frustrate Iran can also deter and frustrate China if available in the Pacific. Putting our defense apparatus in a mindset of political warfare against Iran can also be illustrative toward backfooting the Chinese Communist Party. We need to get out of the business of paying for wealthy Europe’s defense and getting bogged down in the parts of the Middle East that matter the least and that keep our military focused on an obsolete counterinsurgency mission.

Instead, Biden is fighting the wrong battles with the wrong enemies in the wrong places with the wrong military. These attacks will be seen for what they are—a hasty, unilateral, minimal reaction to a political crisis rather than a serious strategy to defend U.S. vital interests where they matter most in the world.

Biden’s world is one that is increasingly perilous for America and its allies.

Simon and Whiton

In our latest episode, Mark Simon and I speak about the crisis in the Chinese economy accelerated by the liquidation of Evergrande and what it means for the CCP.