Prof. ST Hsieh
Director, US-China Energy Industry Forum
626-376-7460
November 12, 2023
The tragedy of Biden’s administration is that the US becomes toothless paper tiger armed with only war of words. The US is at war. Domestically, we are at war with ourselves: drug wars, border wars, not to mention gun violences. It is not entirely Biden’s fault, but we only hear Biden’s words without any real actions or results.
Globally, the US is actively engaged in two wars: the proxy war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war in middle east. Not only the US does not have any exist strategy or peace plan, Biden and his foreign policy team can only talk. Unfortunately, the US is providing billions of dollars of military equipment and financial support to Ukraine and Israel. Yet, Biden has no influence over these wars. However, these wars can easily get out of hands and expand to endanger the world. Under Biden, the world becomes less safe, yet Biden proclaims that our democracy is stronger than ever!
Biden’s withdraw from Kabul was a disgrace, it symbolized that under Biden, the US will NOT commit US forces to foreign wars anymore. People around the world now understands that Biden will not fight real wars anymore, but he’s policy approach is still the same with previous US administrations: US is the only superpower and calls all the shots, including proxy wars.
The Israel-Hamas war is a major challenge for the US, especially Biden’s words have had no effect in Israel. Even Israel uses made in USA bombs and intelligence killing innocent people, including non-combatants and children, in front of the world day and night. It creates a poor global image for the US and divides the US public opinion, which will not be easily repaired.
Biden’s words: “It’s taken a little longer than I hoped” are irresponsible as lives being lost, human beings are suffering every minute. Biden has to stop the killings right now. Or Biden should bow out of the reelection bid and allow another team to take over this administration.
News Analysis: U.S. coming up short in full-court diplomatic press with Israel and Arab world
Tracy Wilkinson
Fri, November 10, 2023 at 2:00 AM PST
Israel’s war with Hamas, which has killed thousands of people in a single month, is reverberating across the globe, roiling U.S. politics while sowing division in universities and workplaces — and inside the Biden administration.
Yet the administration’s efforts to contain a widening and disastrous conflict appear to be falling short, despite intervention by President Biden and the most muscular diplomatic push to date by his top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
Israel has repeatedly rebuffed advice from the U.S., its staunchest ally. And friendly Arab nations that initially joined U.S. condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel that triggered the war have gradually distanced themselves from Washington.
The chaotic dynamics have fueled uncertainty over how the conflict will play out, how it will end and what the resulting landscape will look like.
Biden said Thursday that he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone call Monday to suspend military operations for several days to save Palestinian lives, ease the humanitarian crisis and press negotiations to release hostages.
But Netanyahu refused, Biden said. The president was asked whether he was frustrated with Netanyahu, with whom he has had a decades-long friendship.
“It’s taken a little longer than I hoped,” Biden told reporters as he left the White House.
Instead, the White House said, Israel on Thursday agreed to a daily four-hour pause in bombings and other military operations to allow Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to move south to safety and the international community to transport shipments of food, medicine and other aid into the besieged coastal enclave.
Many Palestinians resisted leaving their homes, afraid they will never be allowed to return. The forced displacement of civilian populations is considered a violation of international law.
U.S. officials said the pauses, if they come to pass, would be a good first step, albeit a limited one — any deal to free hostages would not be directly connected. Separately, hostage negotiations were taking place in Qatar, where Hamas has offices and where the government has relations with the militant group. CIA Director William Burns was reportedly present Thursday.
Backed by the U.S., Israel has steadfastly refused to consider a cease-fire, even as demands for one have grown worldwide, from the United Nations and numerous Arab and other countries. Israel argues that any cessation of hostilities would allow Hamas to regroup and rearm in preparation to attack Israelis again.
The pauses announced Thursday are not a cease-fire, Israel said; fighting would only be suspended in specific areas.
Nonetheless, pressure has mounted for Israel to shift its tactics as the death toll in Gaza from massive Israeli airstrikes has soared past 11,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, including at least 4,000 children. UNICEF called Gaza a “graveyard for thousands of children.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John F. Kirby said “many, many thousands” have died. “I think we would agree that too many civilians have been killed,” he said.
Netanyahu also vexed U.S. officials when he told ABC News this week that Israel would have to assume “overall security responsibility” over Gaza “for an indefinite period,” suggesting plans to occupy the strip of land that, at least before the war, was home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
The Biden administration has been adamant that postwar Gaza should be free of Hamas but not occupied by Israel, and that it remain Palestinian — ideally part of a future Palestinian state.
“The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war,” Blinken said, pointedly responding to Netanyahu after urgently crisscrossing the Middle East holding talks in six countries in a matter of days. “No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.”
Israel has also ignored U.S. entreaties to rein in hard-line Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, where they have attacked Palestinian villagers. Israeli officials tell their U.S. counterparts that they will comply, but don’t, according to people familiar with the talks. Instead, members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet have been handing out more guns to the settlers, whose presence in the territory is considered illegal by the U.N. and most nations.
Administration officials have repeatedly defended Israel’s right to retaliate against Hamas, but said they have consistently cautioned Israeli officials to obey international law, which requires the military to make every effort to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to attack with proportionality. But U.S. officials have publicly declined to judge whether Israel is following the guidelines laid out in the Geneva Convention and elsewhere.
“There are steps, additional steps, that we believe Israel can and should take to minimize civilian casualties and to minimize the suffering of people,” Blinken said Wednesday in Tokyo, while acknowledging it can be difficult because of Hamas’ well-documented tactic of embedding fighters, weapons and equipment within the civilian population.
But, Blinken said, “Israel still has an obligation to distinguish between terrorists and civilians.”
Still, discord over the way the Biden administration has handled the most explosive Middle East crisis in generations has spread, including within U.S. foreign policy agencies.
Several petitions or letters of complaint have circulated within the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
One State Department employee quit in protest, another accused Biden of complicity in genocide. A memo criticizing unbridled support for Israel and urging a cease-fire was submitted to the department’s Dissent Channel, an internal mechanism through which foreign service officers can freely express disagreement with policy.
“This conflict is incredibly fraught,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said. “This is an incredibly trying and taxing time. … We expect people in our workforce to have different personal beliefs, different beliefs about what U.S. foreign policy should be. And we encourage individuals to continue to make those opinions known.”
But once Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began, with images of multistory residential buildings collapsing in smoke and bodies being pulled from rubble, several Arab states became the most vocal proponents of an immediate cease-fire. The leaders and their populations could not tolerate the massive casualties, they said.