Biden Goes Off-Script During Speech and Makes Vow Likely to Start World War 3 If He Follows Through
I rarely believe anything any politician says.
That may sound cynical — it probably is cynical — but it’s true. No matter their motives, politicians can accomplish nothing if they can’t get into office and then stay there. That makes getting elected (or re-elected) the primary goal of any politician. That doesn’t mean that every politician will do or say absolutely anything in pursuit of that goal, of course, but it does mean that everything they do or say needs to be evaluated in light of that goal. No matter how much I may like a given politician, it would be unwise to simply take them at their word.
That’s a shame, of course, but that’s the system we’ve built in this country. Usually I dislike the fact that I can’t trust the words that come of out a politician’s mouth. But not this time.
This time, I’m glad President Joe Biden said something that I don’t believe he’s actually going to act on.
“Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran,” he said Thursday during a campaign event in support of California Rep. Mike Levin, who is running a tight race for re-election in a year that looks increasingly bad for Democrats.
One of the reasons it looks bad, of course, is that Joe Biden keeps saying things like this.
Maybe, in a moment of clarity, Biden realized what he’d just committed himself and the nation to — ironically, in the middle of talking about wounded American veterans — because he quickly backed off his statement a bit. “There gonna free themselves pretty soon,” he added.
So, that means what, exactly? We’ll free them if they can’t free themselves? We’ll support the protesters in Iran so that they can free themselves? You’re guess is as good as mine — and probably as good as Biden’s.
Iranians have been protesting the government following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died while in the custody of the country’s morality police over a month ago. The president had previously expressed his support for those protests.
“Biden has condemned the violence against protesters in Iran and warned that the U.S. would impose further costs on perpetrators of the violence,” according to The Hill. “The White House has also said that the U.S. is holding accountable Iranian officials and entities such as the morality police, the government’s enforcers of the Islamic code of conduct.”
The Biden administration only the day before had promised to try to push Iran off the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. (How did they ever get on it in the first place, one wonders.) But Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to the U.N., certainly made no promises to “free” anyone.
“Change in Iran should only come from within Iran,” she told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “But that does not absolve the world of the obligation to stand with the Iranian people as they protest for women, for life and for freedom.”
I’m OK with all of that. Promising to “free” the people of a sovereign nation is quite another matter, however, particularly when that nation is closely allied with both Russia and China. The U.S. getting directly involved in Iran could easily lead us into direct conflict with either or both those nations, which have reportedly held joint naval exercises for years.
Not to mention the fact that senior administration officials told members of Congress in mid-September that Iran was itself “basically on the eve of getting a nuclear weapon,” according to Rep. Darrell Issa.
Again, it’s hard to know what Biden meant, exactly. But both The Hill and NBC News referred to his statement as a “vow.” The question is, what kind of “vow” was it?
Was it a vow like Biden’s campaign promise to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, which Biden unfortunately kept after only a few months in office?
Or was it a vow like his pledge to block new fracking on federal lands, which he — less unfortunately — broke earlier this year?
Watch his comments here and judge for yourself:
Levin, for whom Biden was campaigning when he made these remarks, won in 2020 with about a 6.2 percent margin. According to a recent survey, Levin holds a 6-point lead this year, but that’s within the survey’s credibility interval, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Both RealClearPolitics and the Cook Political Report rate the race a toss-up.
The fact that Biden flew all the way out to California to stump for Levin in the first place is a strong sign that Democrats fear those survey results are overly optimistic — but with statements like this one, it’s unclear Biden’s appearance at the campaign event will mean for him.
Or what it will mean for Iran, the U.S. military or, for that matter, world peace.
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