Americans and the world have learned the worthlessness of Biden’s ironclad commitments.
By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine
Biden recently visited the Holocaust Museum and delivered a speech in which he pledged an “ironclad” commitment to the “security of Israel”.
On Wednesday, Biden sat down with CNN and announced an arms embargo on Israel.
This is bad news for the Jewish State, but it’s also bad news for every nation to whom Biden had offered his “ironclad” commitments in the past. And that turns out to be much of the world.
In March, Biden had greeted Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the White House and vowed that, “America’s commitment to Poland is ironclad.”
In April, ahead of a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Biden promised, “The United States defense commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad. They’re ironclad.”
Then at a press conference with Prime Minister Kishida, Biden touted another, now discredited, ironclad promise. “As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad. Let me say it again: ironclad.”
And in troubling news for Ukraine, Biden agreed in a 60 Minutes interview that his commitment to that war was also ironclad.
But is there a country out there that doesn’t have an ironclad commitment from Biden?
Last year, Biden held a joint press conference with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and assured him that, “our mutual defense treaty is ironclad.”
Biden has been throwing out ironclad commitments around the world like a peddler selling secondhand goods. As Obama’s veep, he boasted to Jordan’s King Abdullah of “America’s ironclad support”. And he more recently told the Greeks of our “ironclad friendship.”
The Gulf nations looking for an “ironclad security pact” with America may get one, but the price of iron isn’t what it used to be. Especially iron out of the ice cold forges of Washington D.C.
While he has been offering a lot of “ironclad” commitments to the rest of the world, it’s not just individual nations that may be reevaluating the value of Biden’s ironclad assurances.
“My commitment to NATO and Article 5 is ironclad,” Biden had claimed in 2022 as Sweden and Finland had lined up to join the security alliance.
“Our sacred commitment to NATO remains ironclad,” the White House recently posted.
At a meeting with the leaders of 9 Eastern European countries and the NATO Secretary General, Biden assured them all of America’s “ironclad commitment to NATO’s Article 5.”
To paraphrase Oprah, you get an ironclad commitment, you get an ironclad commitment, and you get an ironclad commitment. And it’s worth about as much as those empty words.
The rest of the world has learned that Biden’s ironclad is rusted through, but what about his past “ironclad” promises to Americans?
Biden had described social security as “an ironclad commitment” and the White House claims that “President Biden’s 2024 budget shows an ironclad commitment to protecting Social Security and Medicare against all cuts.”
The reality is that Biden’s inflationary wasteful 2024 budget further bankrupts Social Security. Biden’s iron isn’t good at home or abroad.
In further bad news for Americans, Biden also claimed that the budget “fulfills my ironclad promise that no one earning less than $400,000 per year would pay an additional penny in new taxes.” So assume that the tax hikes on everyone are coming.
Last year, we were told that “the President has an ironclad commitment to supporting communities across the Nation as they recover from disasters.”No wonder America has become a disaster area.
Ironclads were battleships impervious to the weapons of the day because they were covered in heavy armor. It’s not really the best metaphor for a commitment, but it’s a perfectly good metaphor for Biden’s imperviousness to telling the truth or remembering what he once said.
When you offer “ironclad commitments” to everyone you meet, they’re worthless. A commitment to everyone is a commitment to no one. That is one of the great gaping flaws of globalism.
Adding “ironclad” or any particular word to a commitment doesn’t make it stronger. Iron may add more armor to a warship, but it doesn’t add anything to a man’s word. What makes a man’s word count is the strength of his character and that is shown by his willingness to keep his word.
Biden betrayed Israel because he had made a lot of ironclad commitments. He had made commitments to Jewish voters in New York City and Hamas supporters in Dearborn, Michigan. His administration had made commitments to leftists and to moderates. In the face of escalating fire from leftists, his ironclad armor buckled and he sank in the shallow mud off Foggy Bottom.
This is a problem for America more than anyone else.
International relationships, like all human relationships, are built on trust. Treaties are just pieces of paper and handshakes are so routine that diplomats need wrist braces. The Pax Americana is more than anything else an empire of trust.
We held off WWIII for three generations because most of the world believed that we meant what we said about things like nuclear retaliation, NATO’s Article 5 or anything else. Whatever you believe about those policies, American power and influence would be a non-starter if the president’s word were worthless.
When a president draws a red line and then does nothing, more wars are likely to follow. If he offers defense commitments that he doesn’t keep, our enemies are more likely to attack. If America stops defending its allies, those enemies will then test if we will defend ourselves.
And if we don’t, they will attack the United States of America.
Our military is short of recruits, our Navy is short of ships and our Air Force has a whole lot of planes that won’t fly. In war games, China tends to win and we tend to lose. What keeps China from pushing farther is all those nukes sitting quietly under Iowa cornfields. Will we use them?
Beijing doesn’t know for sure, but every time Biden offers another worthless promise, the odds look better for the People’s Republic of China and all our other enemies. And worse for us.
Americans and the world have learned the worthlessness of Biden’s ironclad commitments. None of us know what the future will bring, the one thing we know is whom we can’t trust.
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