A Gallup poll of several months ago asked, "On the whole, would you say that you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the position of the United States in the world today?"
Only one-third, 33%, said they were satisfied. This down from 53% in February 2020 at the conclusion of Donald Trump's presidency.
It's a wonder that even a third of Americans are comfortable with President Joe Biden's disastrous leadership. Many scholars now liken the world today to the 1930s, the years preceding World War II.
Latest is Biden's new proposal to resolve the conflict in Gaza.
The proposal ignores Israel's main objective, final removal of the presence and influence of the terrorist organization Hamas from leadership and control in Gaza.
Of the 120 hostages that remain from the 251 originally abducted Oct. 7, 2023, it is not even clear how many are alive. Yet, in exchange for release of an unspecified number of hostages, Israel is asked to pull its troops out of all populated areas of Gaza.
I pray that, for the sake of Israel but also for the sake of all remnants of decency in today's crazy world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resists pressure to accept this horrible arrangement.
Why is the United States negotiating with terrorists and giving legitimacy to those who commit atrocities beyond the pale of minimally decent human behavior?
The widespread backlash against Israel's campaign in Gaza is supposedly because of the large number of civilian casualties.
But those criticizing Israel should look in the mirror to see who has led to these casualties.
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If Hamas, who hides their fighters and equipment among civilians, whose priority is the death of Israelis and not saving lives of their own people, was immediately condemned and isolated by global leadership, Israel would not be left to take unilateral military action as its only option for its national security.
Let's recall that immediately following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, rather than condemning Hamas, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Israel.
The attack "did not happen in a vacuum," said Guterres. And he then justified it, saying, "The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. ... Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing."
Guterres chose to ignore that it was the organization that he leads, the U.N., that endorsed partition in 1947 to create a Jewish state and a Palestinian state -- an arrangement accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs, who chose, instead, war.
Hillary Clinton appeared on "The View" last December and reminded viewers that her husband tried to broker a peace deal in 2000, inviting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for talks in Camp David. Barak accepted the Clinton plan, and Arafat rejected it and, per Hillary Clinton, returned home and launched an intifada that would claim the lives of 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians.
But why, when the U.N. secretary-general started with his distortions of truth, did the United States U.N. representative sit by in silence?
We saw nothing like this when Nikki Haley was the U.N. representative during the Trump presidency.
When Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the U.N. voted 128-9 criticizing the U.S. Nikki Haley stood before the U.N. General Assembly and said, "To its shame, the United Nations has long been a hostile place for the state of Israel. ... It's a wrong that undermines the credibility of this institution, and that in turn is harmful for the entire world."
The United States is one of 193 nations in the U.N. yet provides some 22% of its budget -- $18 billion in 2022. The U.N. gives a vote and a say in world peace to unfree countries, countries led by dictators and despots.
How about redirecting that $18 billion into our own sagging defense budget?
It's time for a new era of principled American leadership. This is the only path to peace.
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