Few areas of public policy lend themselves less easily to big-picture doctrinal sorting and various "-ism" labeling than does foreign policy. That is perhaps now truer than ever, as America's two major political parties continue their already ascendant realignment, with Democrats abandoning their working-class roots in favor of a professional-managerial ruling class and Republicans ditching the libertarian-inspired corporatism of yesteryear in favor of a "deplorable"-inspired populism. Foreign policy is an inherently nuanced subject, and speaking in broad strokes about it during a once-in-a-generation political realignment can risk analytical error.
Those caveats aside, we should still feel comfortable making what may, at least superficially, seem like precisely such an overly broad statement: The Democratic Party's mainstream foreign policy priorities, in 2021, are completely morally perverse. That moral inversion simply cannot be overstated; the events of this week help underscore why.
On Tuesday, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when religious Jews were offline, House Democratic leadership caved to the outspoken, anti-America, anti-Israel Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led "Squad" and stripped about $1 billion for funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system that was included in a must-pass continuing resolution. House Democratic leadership did so due to the staunch opposition of funding Iron Dome by the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-M.I. and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-M.N.
Democratic leadership initially claimed the Iron Dome funding will reappear in a later defense budget bill a few months from now but, perhaps realizing the subpar optics of refusing to fund Iron Dome to the tune of $1 billion in a massive CR that included $28.6 billion in disaster aid, introduced late on Wednesday a standalone bill to fully fund Iron Dome. But the fact that House leadership was forced to resort to such a gambit is itself telling. Steny Hoyer may be House Democrats' majority leader, but the House Democrats' real leader is now crystal-clear: Ocasio-Cortez. The Hamas Caucus has struck again.
Amazingly, at around the same time Democrats were defunding Iron Dome -- a remarkably successful and thoroughly humanitarian missile defense system that saves countless Jewish, Arab and Christian lives while dramatically minimizing the chances of another bloody, all-out Israel-Hamas land war (while also heavily redounding to the U.S.'s own missile defense research and development) -- some party members were apparently keen to fund the Taliban -- the very same seventh-century-aspiring Sharia supremacist terrorist organization that coddled al-Qaida before 9/11. To wit: The Biden administration was, before changing its mind due to pressure from the likes of Sen. John Kennedy, R-L.A., a proponent of the International Monetary Fund's allocating of $650 billion of "special drawing rights" money, including more than $400 million in funds sent to the Afghan government.
In the aftermath of President Joe Biden's disastrously executed withdrawal from the Afghan backwater, that would have translated to $400 million directly subsidizing the Taliban. That's the same Taliban-run Afghan government that, as FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted to Sen. Rob Portman, R-O.H., during a Senate hearing earlier this week, counts eponymous Haqqani network member Siraj Haqqani as its interior minister. Haqqani remains wanted by the FBI, and there is a $10 million bounty for his capture. Some Democrats would apparently rather fund Haqqani's government than protect innocent Jewish, Arab and Christian lives in the Holy Land using state-of-the-art missile defense technology. Indeed, many Democrats would presumably still rather send amorphous "humanitarian aid" to Afghanistan which, due to ubiquitous venality, would of course just subsidize the Taliban, than fund the inherently defensive Iron Dome system.
That is, quite simply, perverse.
But at this point, it also should not be surprising. For years during the Obama administration, Democrats embarked on a broader Middle East-centric foreign policy realignment crusade by which the U.S. would create distance between itself and its formerly staunch Israeli and Sunni Arab allies, and cozy up to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Years later, the purported rationale for such a realignment remains unclear. The Iranian regime is the world's leading state sponsor of global jihad, and regime propagandists quite literally chant "Death to America" in the streets of Tehran. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, for whom the Biden administration nixed in February the Trump administration's previously affixed "terrorist" label, have as their official slogan: "Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam." They sound like nice people.
Democratic Party foreign policy is in complete shambles right now. Much of that intellectual descent goes back to the Obama, and even the Clinton, administrations. But it has rapidly accelerated in recent years, as the tail that is Ocasio-Cortez's Jew-hating "Squad" has come to lead the dog that is the broader Democratic Party apparatus. Unapologetic antisemites and anti-American zealots, sadly, are now steering one of America's two leading political parties. That is now an inescapable truth.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member