JUST GO ALREADY!

“It is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God go.” Oliver Cromwell to the Long Parliament, 1653

This coming week, Bob Woodward’s latest book “War” will be released. It will feature several critical, profanity-laced remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attributed to President Biden.

It will also remind us of why Oliver Cromwell’s famous words to the Long Parliament seem so apt today. Joe Biden has about 3 months left in office. He cannot go too soon. 

According to CNN, which obtained an advance copy, in the Spring of 2014, Biden privately remarked: “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” He also referred to Netanyahu as a “fucking liar.”

“Bibi, what the fuck?” Biden yelled at Netanyahu in a July telephone conversation, according to Woodward’s book.

These examples of Biden’s penchant for – um, colorful – language, are not exactly news. Last February, Jonathan Martin of Politico reported that Biden called Netanyahu “a bad fucking guy.” Nor are they particularly newsworthy. American presidents dating back to George Washington have been known for voicing strong opinions in private.

A Rolling Stone article of a few year back recounts that President Obama referred to Mitt Romney as “a bullshitter” and Kanye West as “a jackass.” Vice President Dick Cheney advised Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck himself” after the two engaged in an argument over Cheney’s ties to Halliburton.  President Truman called General Douglas MacArthur a “dumb son of a bitch,” and he called Richard Nixon a “shifty-eyed goddamned liar.”  A recounting of President Nixon’s [expletive deleted] characterizations of his enemies would fill an encyclopedia.

What makes these recent Biden disclosures significant is the fact that, when judged in context, the remarks remind us of the incredibly poor judgment he has demonstrated throughout his career.

Benjamin Netanyahu is far from perfect. Having led the Israeli government when the worst intelligence failure in the country’s history occurred, he has much to answer for. But when he has clashed with Joe Biden, events have usually proved Netanyahu right and Biden wrong.

As Biden assessing Biden might put it: “That son of a bitch Joe Biden. He’s a stupid guy. He’s a stupid fucking guy!”

The occasion for the first Woodward-reported quote — “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!”—was Netanyahu’s decision to send the IDF into Rafah, on the Egyptian border. Biden was furious because he was certain that there was no way to evacuate the civilian population before conducting a major military operation. But that is exactly what the IDF did. It safely evacuated 950,000 people, then went in and discovered 50 major tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza. Netanyahu was right and Biden was wrong

The occasion for the second Woodward-reported quote — “Bibi, what the fuck?” – was the Israeli airstrike on Beirut that killed Fu’ad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander. Biden was apparently unaware that Fu’ad Shukr, in addition to killing Israelis, also played a central role in the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 American military personnel, and wounded 128 others. Biden may also have been ignorant of the fact that the U.S. State Department listed him as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” and posted a $5 million bounty on his head. In other words, Biden was furious with Netanyahu for killing a man the U.S. government wanted dead. Again, Netanyahu was right and Biden was wrong.

There is nothing novel about Biden’s errors of judgment. Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barrack Obama, famously observed of Biden: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

That certainly has been the pattern in the current fighting in the Middle East. In April, when Iran launched a barrage of approximately 180 ballistic missiles at Israel without causing major damage, Biden pressed Netanyahu to “take the win.” Netanyahu succumbed to his pressure and limited Israel’s response to a single, symbolic attack on a radar installation. The result of Israel’s self-imposed restraint? In October, Iran launched over 200 ballistic missiles, causing the entire country to shut down.

As Israel’s mulls its response, at least one of Biden’s aides appears to have learned from experience. “No one’s saying ‘Take the win,’” a senior administration official was recently quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Biden has publicly urged Israel to exclude Iran’s nuclear facilities and oil refineries from its retaliatory strikes. While there are valid arguments for avoiding those targets, to discourage Israel publicly is idiotic. If Israel succumbs to the pressure, it weakens its deterrence capabilities. If Israel resists the pressure, it publicizes fissures in the U.S. – Israel alliance.

This pattern of consistently poor judgment extends beyond the current fighting in the Middle East. Long before October 7, the Biden administration repeatedly displayed its ineptitude. A few examples:

In a foolish attempt to mollify the mullahs, the Biden administration transferred close to $100 billion in frozen assets to Iran, most of which has likely been used by that country’s Revolutionary Guard to arm and equip the proxies that are now firing missiles on U.S. military installations in the region.

In an equally foolish attempt to defuse tension in the run-up to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Biden announced that if Russia limited itself to a “minor incursion,” the West’s response would be more muted than if a full blown invasion occurred. The ironic result was to encourage Putin to launch a full blown invasion.

To its credit, the Biden administration has supported Ukraine with military aid since the invasion began.  But it has done so in a halting, erratic manner.  Again and again – in the cases of fighter jets, the Patriot air defense system, the High Mobility Artillery  Rocket systems, Abrams tanks, and long-range Army Tactical Missile systems – the administration has initially denied urgent requests from Kyiv.  Then, after months or years of delay, it has relented and provided the weapons systems, but only with the condition that they not be used inside Russia. As a consequence of Biden’s meandering, inconsistent policy, Ukraine has managed to stave off defeat but has been unable to achieve victory.

Of course, the Biden administration’s crowning achievement (if by “crown,” we mean dunce cap) was the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. To ensure that the withdrawal was completed before the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, Biden overruled his generals and insisted on a hasty, haphazard process. Hundreds if not thousands of Afghan allied personnel were left behind to face a fearful future under the Taliban. Thirteen American servicemen were killed at Kabul Airport. Tens of billions of dollars of top flight military equipment was abandoned. And millions of Afghan women were consigned to living a degraded existence under the Taliban’s medieval rule.

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have serious shortcomings as candidates to succeed Biden. Harris refused to attend a joint session of Congress which Netanyahu, at the invitation of both parties, addressed. She chose instead to attend a meeting of her college sorority. She has even refused to refer to the Israeli Prime Minister as a “close ally.”

Trump believes every foreign policy problems can be solved by his unique negotiation skills. He has no concept of the kind of theological passions that motivate the fanatics of Tehran, or of their Hamas and Hezbollah stooges.

But while it’s uncomfortable to imagine either Harris or Trump guiding American foreign policy, there is one reassuring fact, which Woodward’s new book reinforces. Neither candidate could be any worse than their predecessor.