Humpty-Dumpty America, or How Did We Suddenly Fall Apart? Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign Policy
There have been plenty of foreign policy disasters over the last 60 years since the Vietnam Era. But even in our failures, there was no inherent intent to destroy ourselves and to deliberately harm efforts to improve our security and stature overseas.
Not now.
Why are we experiencing one of the worst military recruitment crises of the last half-century? Why did we drive out over 8,000 of our most experienced soldiers for not being vaxxed, the majority with acquired immunity from prior Covid-19 bouts?
Why was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs proud that he had called his Chinese counterpart to warn him of the supposed volatility of his own American Commander-in-Chief? Why did General Milley and Secretary of Defense Austin promise Congress to chase unicorns of “white rage” and “white privilege,” without any supporting documentation of systemic racial discrimination in the ranks? Were they unhappy that white males died at twice their population proportion in our recent optional wars abroad?
Did they think all their virtue-signaling would increase recruitment, end internal dissension, and improve morale in the ranks?
If someone wished to humiliate and destroy the prestige of the United States, erode our deterrence, and greenlight anti-American aggression, he could not have done any better than the architects of the 2021 Afghanistan flight.
How did the U.S. manage to become so arrogant and impotent all at once?
We flew chauvinistically pride flags from our embassy, painted Georgy Floyd murals on Kabul’s streets, and poured money into imported gender studies programs at Kabul University—while simultaneously leaving $50-70 billion in state-of-the-art arms to the Taliban terrorists, abandoning a new $1 billion embassy and the huge and recently remodeled Bagram airbase, and ignoring the needed evacuation of thousands of U.S. contractors and pro-American loyal Afghan allies.
Was the flight supposed to be timed for Joe Biden’s anniversary celebration of 9/11, as if he alone was to earn ceremonial credit for ending the misadventure in Afghanistan at the end of its 20th year?
After such humiliation, it was an easy transition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese balloon travesty, the serial threats to Taiwan, the Hamas invasion of Israel, the nearly nonstop Iranian surrogates’ rocketing of U.S. bases in the Middle East, the disdain for our sovereign border—all predicated on the certainty that a new weaker, indifferent U.S. would not respond to provocations or indeed felt that old ideas like deterrence and defending one’s allies and interests were so nineteenth century.
The U.S. created a newly aggressive Iran, emboldened it through its sanction-relief oil sales, and ensured it would have the wherewithal to reequip Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi, and various terrorist satellites. In other words, we took an isolated and weakened Iran of 2020 and resuscitated it into a newly energized enemy of the West.
Why did Hamas invade Israel in a plan to kill more Jews on any single day since the Holocaust? Did Iran see a green light in U.S. resumption of financial aid to Hamas, in America’s ending of Iranian oil sanctions, and in eliminating the terrorist branding of the Houthis?
Why was Joe Biden willing to pay $1.2 billion for each American hostage in Iranian custody, but said not a peep about 30 Americans killed and 10 taken captive by Hamas? Or for that matter, when Iran launches rockets regularly against American bases in the Middle East, why do we feebly strike back only now and then?
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