You don’t have to be a genius or an economist to foresee the consequences of actions taken by Joe Biden. You just have to read what passes for news these days and interpret it correctly.
Enormous government spending causes inflation because too much cash is chasing too few goods and services. Opening our nation’s borders, as many of us have been pointing out since Biden’s inauguration, creates a major-league national security risk because the people who come in aren’t all seeking a better life. They’re seeking to destroy ours. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Biden Wants Hamas To Win)
Which is what FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week. Asked how he viewed the terror threat now, Wray said, “What I would say that is unique about the environment that we’re in right now in my career is that while there may have been times over the years where individual threats could have been higher here or there than where they may be right now, I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time.”
Wray added, “I see blinking red lights everywhere.”
Translating Wray’s bureaucratese into plain English, he said that all or most of the major terrorist threats are elevated right now.
That should be a surprise to absolutely no one, not even Biden or whomever is pulling his strings. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there have been 1.5 million “gotaways” who have entered the country illegally since Biden was inaugurated in 2021.
“Gotaways” are people who have slipped into the country and successfully evaded the Border Patrol and DHS agents. They haven’t been identified, photographed or fingerprinted. Nobody — least of all the Biden White House — knows who they are and no one can say where they are or what their intentions may be. It is entirely logical to say that many of those people had good reason to avoid the Border Patrol and DHS because they intend to commit crimes or acts of terrorism.
And yet, to this moment, there is no thought emanating from the Biden crew to chase down the illegals or even slow the flow across our uncontrolled borders. That flow is at another all-time high.
Republican efforts to legislate some improvement in border control has met with insurmountable opposition from Biden and his congressional hordes. Whatever the result — another 9-11-like attack or any other major terrorist attack here — will be on Biden’s limp shoulders. Not that he’s concerned about it one little bit.
And what is our intelligence community, including the FBI, doing to prevent such events? They may be attempting to interdict the “gotaways,” but they’re too busy with the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to do much.
You must remember FISA. It was the law badly abused by the FBI to spy on Trump’s 2015-2016 campaign. They did so with the knowledge that, as Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation revealed, according to a trusted foreign source, the FBI knew that the whole Russia hoax was a production of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
FISA expires if not reauthorized by December 31. Last May, I was told by a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that a “clean bill” — one that contained no changes to FISA — would not pass. And yet House Speaker Mike Johnson has been persuaded, probably by the FBI and other intelligence agencies, to reauthorize FISA without any changes. Johnson has reportedly agreed to do so as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
As I have written elsewhere, FISA should be mended or ended. It needs to be reformed to prevent more political abuse. It probably can be done in several ways in addition to the one I proposed. But that’s apparently not going to happen.
If FISA reforms don’t force it out of politics, you can count on more political abuses probably aimed at Trump’s campaign. And there will be others. Meanwhile, and probably against their judgment and interests, the Israelis are bending to Biden’s wishes.
As I wrote last week, Israel has been under intense pressure from Biden to establish “safe zones” for people in the Gaza Strip. The problem with such zones is that the Hamas terrorists are certain to hide in those zones.
NATO would be far better, and stronger, if Sweden were a member and Turkey weren’t.
Because of that pressure, Israel has established “deconfliction zones” to supposedly protect UN aid workers, hospitals and such in Gaza. As one Israeli official told the Times of Israel, “We learned lessons from our northern Gaza operations and we are implementing them. Civilians will be able to receive humanitarian and medical treatment in no-strike zones and shelters.”
There is absolutely no way for the Israelis to prevent Hamas fighters from sheltering in those zones. The upshot of this action — again, you don’t need to be a genius to foresee it — will be that Hamas, and probably some of its leaders — will survive the war to begin planning their next genocidal attack on Israel. (READ MORE: Israel Fights, Too Many Democrats Rage)
Secretary of State Tony Blinken has reportedly told Israel’s government that it has to wrap up its Gaza operation by three months from October 7, the day of the Hamas attack. That leaves Israel only a bit more than three weeks to succeed in killing the Hamas terrorists.
Timetables in war, like war plans, are only valid until the first contact with the enemy. Biden and Blinken apparently don’t care.
Biden is counting on us to not pay attention to all of this because of the presidential campaign that never ends. As it happens every couple of years, the United States is being totally absorbed by the presidential campaign. Our solipsism — denying the value of any other news — is going to do us harm.
Consider what our least reliable ally, Turkey, is doing these days without a whimper of criticism from the Biden crew. Turkish President Recep Erdogan said on October 25 that Hamas wasn’t a terrorist organization but only a liberation organization fighting to protect Palestinian land.
As I predicted months ago when Erdogan said he would approve Sweden’s NATO membership, he was bound to find further objections to stall it. He has.
Now Erdogan is playing at blackmail. He’s insisted that the U.S. sell Turkey billions of dollars worth of additional F-16s (and modernization kits for those it already has) as the price for Turkey’s ratification of Sweden’s membership in NATO. He wants the sale of the F-16s to happen simultaneously with that ratification.
We don’t know yet whether Biden will give in to Erdogan’s blackmail. If he does, Erdogan will come up with something else to stall Sweden’s NATO membership. NATO would be far better, and stronger, if Sweden were a member and Turkey weren’t.
The whole Turkey-Sweden mess is a foreseeable result of Biden’s inept diplomacy. As Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying, weakness is provocative.
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