Off the rails

The Biden administration can't stay consistent in message or action.

After five months of preaching solidarity with Israel, the Biden administration punted, allowing a terrribly-worded resolution to pass the U.N. Security Council that “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties,” and also “the immediate unconditional release of all hostages,” mixed with the blah-blah language of diplomatic dreck. What the resolution doesn’t do is condemn terrorism or the actions of Hamas on October 7th.

Photo by Ben on Unsplash

Abstaining America’s Security Council vote, and using the anti-Israel U.N. to send some kind of public message to Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu is the petulant stuff of the Obama years. It gives fuel to the terrorists, and harms Israel’s ability to do what needs doing. And as much as I would love to see the remaining hostages returned to their families, or at least their status as living or dead known, Hamas is in no rush to lift a finger while it sees America begin the slow turning away from Israel.

As anyone who has read my writing for any length of time knows, Hamas exists for the purpose of global jihad, to rid the Levant of Jews, and then the world. Its charter calls for these things. It was a terrible, costly mistake for Netanyahu to believe he could sideline, pacify, negotiate with, or finesse Hamas; and Netanyahu will pay. But he will pay because Israel is a democratic country, and its citizens will hold their government accountable.

But for now, Netanyahu’s (likely final) task is to have blood on his hands and rid Gaza of the terrorist infrastructure that has infested that patch of coastland for 19 years. In order to do that, the IDF must dismantle the smuggling tunnels that cross from Rafah to Egypt. Hamas will defend those tunnels aggressively, as they are the source for most of the group’s ill-gotten criminal cash—20% of all smuggling is the toll paid for the use of those tunnels.

It is solely the actions of Hamas on October 7th that brought this hammer down on Gaza. Israel acted stupidly, and let Hamas lull them into a false security based on fences, automated gun emplacements, surveillance towers, and sophisticated sensors. All the while, Hamas was planning the pogrom, and plans to reignite all of Israeli’s existential nightmares. Talk of a two-state solution, or diplomatic means to a solution, or even humanitarian pauses, is lost in the terrible task at hand.

To the extent the Israeli people want their hostages back, they want long-term security more. If the Israeli people didn’t want to continue the operation in Gaza, the reservists would stop showing up for duty. The pilots wouldn’t fly. The tanks wouldn’t run, and the engineers who risk their lives dismantling tunnels would stay home. Israel is not an authoritarian state: some soldiers have taken sick leave to rent an apartment because girls line up to hook up with soldiers on dating apps. That’s not the kind of thing you see in Russia, for example.

The Biden administration’s turn is not evidence of some schism between America and Israel. It’s evidence, like Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s criticism of Netanyahu, of the Democratic Party’s proud assertion that they have some say over what Jews running a country 10,000 kilometers away should or shouldn’t do. In other words: it’s American politics in an election year, which has no bearing on how many more people will die in Gaza.

The U.N. can’t stand Israel—its very existence is a burr in their backsides. Millions of Africans are starving in places like Sudan. Russians are gaining influence in West African nations like Burkina Faso and Niger, while western troops are instructed to leave. The U.S. may have to abandon a $110 million drone base after the junta in Niger ended its agreement to keep American troops there. The U.N. shrugs—it’s not their problem to deal with such things. But when Israel sneezes, the U.N. steps in with tissues for Hamas.

Mixed political messaging is not the way to go in 2024, not with the world about to light up in flames.

*** EV Phone Home ***

The derailing of Biden policy also goes for the EPA’s insane goals to all but eliminate most internal combustion powered cars by 2032. I really don’t have to go deep into this issue, since the editors of National Review have it covered. I am all for EVs. I own one (it’s in the shop :-( ). I think in ten or twenty years, EVs will be something worth looking at for national infrastructure. But not now, and not in the next eight years.

The costs, both economically and environmentally, to produce an EV, produce the electricity to run it, and to handle the entire life cycle of the vehicle from assembly line to junkyard, exceed the benefits at this time. EV owners are part of a grand experiment—one worth doing—but it is not the answer we need right now for everyone. All we are doing is betting our future on materials and resources that China is stockpiling to sell back to us (at a big profit, regardless of tariffs). Biden’s administration isn’t stupid—they know this—but it’s a political play.

Democrats know full well America isn’t going to eliminate private car ownership. At some point after the 2024 election, these “goals” and “targets” will become negotiable, then disappear into the dustbin when it becomes clear that we don’t have the capacity to make nearly enough EVs, and there isn’t a market willing to buy them.

Rivian is in trouble; it has suspended work on its gigafactory in Social Circle, Georgia (a semi-rural community in Walton County, near Interstate 20, which is also now home to a Meta data center). Rivian got tens of millions of dollars in road improvements, a build-ready site, and enormous tax benefits to build its consumer vehicles in Georgia, but there simply isn’t enough demand for their expensive pickup trucks and SUVs, so it will now build its new, lower-price R2 in its existing Illinois factory.

Tesla has cut production at its China factory. Chinese manufacturers are eating Elon Musk’s lunch there, and ready to flood America with plenty of EVs, if we are willing to buy them. Sure, EV growth will happen, but not until we solve some of the thorny battery issues, design issues, range issues, and infrastructure issues. These are real problems, and edicts by the EPA won’t fix them.

Israel and EVs are both evidence that the hand on the tiller of this country is incapable of steering a straight and consistent course, because the tides of politics have more power than he can muster. I never expected Joe Biden to be a paragon of doing the right thing, but at least give us consistency.