Joe Biden has long had a reputation as a warm, empathetic man, and he deserves it. During the Bosnia genocide in the 1990s, he was a passionate voice for doing more to save lives. And during the Darfur genocide and humanitarian crisis of the early 2000s, he pushed me to write tough columns calling on President George W. Bush to ease the suffering there. So I've been wondering: What happened to that Joe Biden I knew? Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel's war in Gaza and has continued to provide a seemingly never-ending flow of 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons even as the civilian death toll soars, even as children starve to death. He is clearly distressed by the way Israel has carried out the war and would clearly like to see more restraint and more aid getting in — but although his rhetoric has become tougher, his policies haven't much changed. The upshot is increasing discontent, especially among young people, with Biden's policies in the Palestinian territories. We're seeing that this week on college campuses around the country, and we may see that at Democratic campaign events this year and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. As I write in my column and explore today in an audio conversation with Sarah Wildman, Gaza has become the albatross around Biden's neck. It is his war, not just Benjamin Netanyahu's. It will be part of his legacy, an element of his obituary, a blot on his campaign — and it could get worse. Among the things presidents need to deal with, foreign policy presents more problems than solutions, and Biden faced an immensely difficult challenge after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. He was right to support Israel then, and to recognize that Israel had a right — even an obligation — to defend itself and to re-establish deterrence. But Biden was slow to recognize how reckless Israel's bombing campaign would be, leveling entire neighborhoods, and far too slow to push back as Israel throttled aid entering Gaza, leading to starvation. When Israel wouldn't allow more aid in, Biden didn't use his leverage to push harder. Indeed, at the United Nations, he continued to protect Israel diplomatically, using the threat of a veto to block the creation of a U.N. inspection system to circumvent the aid bottleneck. What Biden did do was order airdrops of food, which in some cases landed on starving Palestinians and killed them — a vignette of a bumbling and heartbreakingly ineffective American response to the humanitarian crisis. I think President Biden is a good man. I think he overall has a smart foreign policy, particularly in Asia, and first-rate aides around him. So the column below is one I wished I didn't have to write. But it felt necessary, and I hope you'll read it and listen to the audio conversation. Read the column, and listen to the conversation:
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Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Opinion Today: Biden’s war
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