The next front in America’s global war – the Texas border Joe Biden’s foreign policy has floundered under myriad pressures. But the greatest problem of all is right under his nose Charles Lipson
The Biden administration is risking American lives with two failing policies. One has left the southern border open. The other has failed to deter attacks by Iranian proxies on our troops in the Middle East.
The two may seem largely separate, but they share one common danger: both involve deadly threats from Islamic extremists. Terrorists like those who fire at American servicemen in the Middle East and ships in the Red Sea can also sneak across our porous borders to attack Americans at home. They aim to kill.
The failure on the southern border is obvious. The Biden administration methodically dismantled Trump-era policies that limited illegal migration. Those included requirements to remain in Mexico while applying for asylum, building a barrier wall, and convincing the Mexican government to station troops near the border to prevent transit.
The new policies have encouraged a flood of illegal migrants from around the world. US Customs and Border Patrol has officially counted 6.9 illegal border crossings during the administration’s first three years. Among them, the gravest danger comes from the 1.5 million “gotaways,” who were detected but never caught. They must have strong reasons to evade Border Control. Of course, we still don’t know how many were never detected at all.
This influx has affected the country in two palpable ways: deadly drugs brought in by Mexican cartels and crushing financial burdens imposed on state and local governments. The latest evidence of those burdens comes from Arizona, where Governor Katie Hobbs presented fellow Democrats in Washington with a bill for over half-a-billion dollars, the cost of services her state has provided for illegal migrants so far.
Gov. Hobbs has now ordered the National Guard to deploy on the southern border and criticised Biden for refusing to deliver aid. She is not alone. The mayor of New York has complained vociferously, proposed raising city taxes, and started cutting police, schools, and other essential services. The mayor of Chicago is so clueless and overwhelmed that he is now suing the bus companies that bring migrants to his beleaguered city.
The immediate danger posed by the open border is a surge of heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and fake prescription drugs, imported by Mexican cartels. Like bootleggers in the 1920s, they have established distribution networks and begun fighting each other for control of the streets, where they conduct this profitable trade. These networks, like those of the Mafia, will be impossible to dislodge.
Pressing as these effects are, there is a third, less obvious danger lurking. An unsecured border is a powerful attraction for terrorists to sneak in and strike the Great Satan. It is also an invitation for China, Russia, Iran, and other adversaries to infiltrate sleeper cells.
FBI director Chris Wray highlighted the threat in chilling testimony last week, telling Congress he had never seen so many elevated threats at once. His warnings were underscored when European police interrupted a Hamas terror plot that stretched across several nations.
The prospect of Islamicist terror at home parallels attacks by Iranian proxies on American servicemen abroad. Since Hamas began its war on October 7, Iranian proxies have launched at least 100 attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq, with more to come. So far, no servicemen have been killed, but it’s not for lack of trying. Recently, another Iranian proxy, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, expanded those attacks to include international shipping in the Red Sea.
So far, the administration’s response has been to fend off those attacks without deterring them or inflicting serious punishment. The dismal results are predictable. Will the administration abandon policies that aren’t working? Not yet. They are sticking with strong words, defensive measures, and pin-prick counter-attacks.
Behind the scenes, though, national security aides are beginning to consider bigger changes. The issue will be joined when the attacks kill the first American in uniform. When that happens, the Biden administration’s confused efforts to constrain Iran will collapse. American voters will be reminded of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and furious at yet another display of dangerous incompetence.
Not all Biden’s regional policies have failed. The president was certainly right to order two US carrier groups to the region. That move plus Israel’s military power have restrained Hezbollah and its puppet masters in Iran. So has Israel’s bombing of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, and transit points for Iranian weapons. Unlike the US, the Israelis have hit hard whenever those proxies open fire on the Jewish state. The combined effect has been to restrain Hezbollah from launching a full-scale war. The administration deserves some credit for that success.
Still, the administration has stuck to its relatively weak response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the array of terrorist militias it sponsors in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. The administration’s fear, obviously, is that a stronger, more sustained response could lead to regional war and draw in America.
As the Biden administration reconsiders and toughens its policies abroad, it needs to do the same thing on the southern border. Politicians hate reversing their own major policies, however obvious the failure, because doing so implicitly admits the old ones were mistakes. Political opponents are sure to pounce.
Refusing to acknowledge failure is hardly unique to this administration: it’s true of all politicians. But only one, Joe Biden, holds America’s highest office today. It is his failed policies that pose such serious risks. It is he who bear that responsibility. It is foolhardy to stick with those mistakes and patiently await disaster.
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