Biden’s request for new defense spending was a step in the right direction. But his speech left much to be desired.
The headlines in the morning papers will praise Joe Biden’s Thursday evening Oval Office speech for his rhetoric calling for America to be a “beacon to the world.” Biden will be praised for saying that he stands by Israel and for linking the Israeli struggle against Hamas’s barbarism to the Ukrainian fight against Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. He will be credited for (finally) naming Iran as the region’s foremost malign actor, both for Tehran’s support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and for its patronage of jihadist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah in their war against Israel. Biden will also be hailed for his decision to submit an “urgent budget request” — $100 billion in additional spending — to Congress in order to “fund America’s national security needs” and lend material American support to both Jerusalem and Kyiv.
I’m not mocking any of this. It’s good that a president of the United States should say this out loud because it all needed saying. Biden’s presidency has featured numerous missed opportunities to explicitly lay out the case for why Americans should see Russian or Chinese or Iranian aggression as fundamentally a problem for America.
And Biden is correct when he explains that “all Ukraine is asking for is help, for the weapons, munitions, the capacity, the capability to push invading Russian forces off their land.”
We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas. And so much more.
What Biden should be criticized for, however, is the speed and scale of America’s rearmament. As the NR editors wrote this week, it’s been nearly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. In that time, we’ve helped the Ukrainians with needed weapons and munitions, and we’re slowly beginning to ramp up our defense-industrial production, but Biden hasn’t treated the need to rearm to deter the growing anti-American axis of China, Russia, and Iran as the urgent national priority that it is. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot more from the Biden administration about its efforts over the last two years to transition to a green economy and electric cars than the need to dramatically increase the number of artillery shells and guided missiles that the U.S. is producing.
The speech was also marred — I’ll be polite — by Biden’s condescending lecture to Israel that it “operate by the laws of war.” This, of course, is an outrageous statement directed at our ally and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Does the United States publicly scold our allies in Kyiv to remain a civilized people in their struggle against Russia? Were Taiwan to be attacked by the communists, would Joe Biden lecture Taipei to resist Beijing’s aggression but to be careful to not harm any civilians? Of course not. That Ukraine or Taiwan or other U.S.-aligned democratic allies should abide by the law of armed conflict and the Western conception of honor in war would be left assumed and unsaid. I’ll leave it to you to wonder why only the world’s single Jewish state gets browbeaten on this issue by this president as it tries to defeat a murderous jihadist enemy.
Finally, Biden continues to inexplicably deemphasize the American hostage situation when as many as two dozen of our citizens were brutally kidnapped by a terrorist organization. In his speech, Biden said he “told the families of Americans being held captive by Hamas” that “we’re pursuing every avenue to bring their loved ones home,” and that “as president, there is no higher priority for me than the safety of Americans held hostage.”
But I find it amazing that the United States has not acted with more muscle to force the release of the Americans being held hostage. The Biden administration acts like we don’t have any leverage over our “friends” the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and other governments that can speak to Hamas. The Qataris and the Turks are, after all, American “allies” along with being open patrons of Hamas. And the Saudis have been working to negotiate a formal mutual-defense pact with America. Has the Biden administration warned these countries that their cozy relationship with the U.S. and our protection will be at an end if they don’t make every effort to get our people back? If not, why not?
And why are we not playing hardball with Hamas directly? Why are we not targeting Hamas ourselves? If 32 Americans had been brutally murdered and two dozen Americans had been kidnapped by, say, Boko Haram in Chad or Nigeria, would the U.S. government be acting so obsequiously? Would we not go get our people out — using military force if necessary? Why is it any different with Hamas?
These questions have not been answered satisfactorily by the American government to date. And Joe Biden did little to answer them on Thursday night.