“We are ending an era of endless wars.”

Say what you want about Trump but he was right to say this to a graduating West Point class. Only it didn’t last long.

Warning, rant to follow.

Exit stage left, one of the most controversial presidents in American history, and enter his replacement, the establishment candidate of the left, Joe Biden.

His foreign policy circus tent smells like elephant dung and there are dodgy carnies everywhere. That’s the kind of feeling I get when I see what’s happening.

Biden’s Presidency has picked right back up with the beat of an out-of-touch foreign policy strategy that has left the Nation’s veterans with no seat as the music comes to a stop.

We have skyrocketing veteran suicide in this country, a Veterans Administration that actually does more harm than good for its patients. The suicide rates go up 30% when a veteran enters the Department of Veteran Affairs healthcare system. “Thank you for your service.”

The department is spiraling out of the sky as it continues to outsource the outsourcing in true Dunder Mifflin fashion.

Our active-duty military is fraying at the edges from having been over deployed for over twenty years, and most of the great officers have been run off by political hacks and we’ve traded great leaders like General McChrystal for the current Joint Chiefs of Staff that more resemble a covid patient on a respirator struggling to breathe than they do leaders of the finest fighting force on the planet.

Is it too much to ask for Biden to address the Nation and let Americans know what the plan is for dealing with increasing tensions with Iran, Russia, and China? Can the President address America?

We have very serious decisions to make as the leader of the free world. People abroad, heads of state, and foreign citizens all still look to America for leadership, and right now to say we are collectively knee-deep in cow dung with our boots sucked off our feet would be an understatement.

The handling of the Russian buildup on the Ukraine border is another example of reactionary policy rather than proactive strategic thinking.

To put it in Queens Gambit terms, we are playing checkers while Russia and China are playing chess.

Ukraine’s President was right to call out Biden for throwing around the Russian invasion talk in the media like he was throwing a nerf football around at Sunday backyard barbeque.

Nobody likes to be played with like this, and Ukraine deserves better.

But American Foreign Policy has been a traveling circus for over two decades and both parties are to blame.

Bush went into Iraq with no real grounding, with no strategy or conclusion to Afghanistan beyond 2003. He toppled Saddam’s regime for no other reason than apparently dealing with some “Daddy me make you proud one day.” issues. Now we have civil war in Syria, BREXIT, and a refugee crisis in the EU thanks to no foresight.

The Obama Presidency saw more civilians killed by drone strike than under Bush, and for the first time in History, the President would order the extra-judicial executions of two American citizens abroad. Awlaki and his 16 year-old son; visiting his grandparents in Yemen. This was the same president who wanted to close Gitmo because the foreign terrorists being held were being denied their supposed civil rights under U.S. law.

Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister.

Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” Abdulrahman’s grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post “to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman,” which explained: “Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies. His Facebook page shows a typical kid.” Full story here on the Intercept. 

You didn’t see the New York Times running that headline because they, and a majority of news media largely gave Obama and Biden a pass. Right wing news entertainment isn’t helping solve the problem either.

Biden’s Long Trail of Betrayals

• In 1975, Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government(Which Congress had previously promised to do) during its war against the North, ensuring the victory of the Communists and causing a mass exodus of refugees.
• In 1991, Biden opposed the Gulf War, one of the most successful military campaigns in American history. Not only did he later regret his congressional vote, but in 1998, he criticized George H. W. Bush for not deposing Saddam Hussein, calling that decision a “fundamental mistake.”
• In 2003, Biden supported the Iraq War—another congressional vote he later regretted.
• In 2007, he opposed President George W. Bush’s new counterinsurgency strategy and surge in troops in Iraq, calling it a “tragic mistake.” In fact, the surge led to stunning progress, including dramatic drops in civilian deaths and sectarian violence.
• In December 2011, President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden withdrew America’s much-scaled-down troop presence in Iraq; the former had declared Iraq to be “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant,” and the latter had predicted that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” Their decision sent Iraq spiraling into sectarian violence and civil war, allowing Iran to expand its influence and opening the way for the rise of the jihadist group ISIS.
• According to Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, Biden had advised the former president to take more time before launching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to keep “his options open.”  Whatever the Hell that means.
• Ten years ago, Biden said in an interview that “the Taliban per se is not our enemy.” He added, “If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.” Indeed.

*Sourced from, The Atlantic, full story here. 

To be fair, President Bush and Obama both supported black site interrogations, and stripping people of their rights under the American Constitution, to hold them indefinitely without due process at GITMO. This is not me speaking in favor of terrorists, but our own laws.  The law doesn’t just constrain those of us who live under them but also the makers of the laws themselves.

Is this the America that inspires and unites or one that continues to divide the world.

The majority of ours news media also continues to divided us as they pour gasoline on a world on fire in the name of more clicks and advertising revenue.

The news has been a problem for a long time now, but I have hope Americans and the rest of the free world have grown tired of it and are looking to other sources for news.

I believe SOFREP will be one of the few places you can go to get fact-based, no hype, Defense and Foreign Policy news. It’s what we have done for over eight years, and sometimes to great pain and duress but, we never shy away from a shot of 100 proof truth bomb.

“Congressman, why are we in Afghanistan again?”, I’d ask numerous times of numerous elected officials and appointed career bureaucrats.

Responses usually sounded like, “Well, that’s a good question, I’m not exactly sure.”, as the person looked similar to dog staring at a ceiling fan go round and round.

The only thing clear as mud to me is that there is no plan, just reactionary tactics, and short sighted sound bytes.

If you haven’t noticed Putin is playing the American President like a cheap coffee shop community guitar and I am frankly, as I’m sure you are, ready for a different song.