What is abundantly clear is that the United Stats of America has a major dilemma, and so does the rest of the Western world. The Democrat Party deserves severe punishment for foisting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the USA whether by fair or foul means. Both are extremely public and obvious examples of the Peter Principle, whereby they have been promoted beyond their levels of competence.
It is clear to anyone that Biden is in all reality cognitively challenged, even if every now and then he may pep up for a minute and express anger or whatever. His actions are highly questionable as, for example, approving the Nord Stream Russian gas pipeline construction from Russia to Europe whilst cutting off any development in the USA of the Keystone Pipeline which would give the USA complete independence regarding oil.
The immediate question is why, followed by recalling the alleged $3.5 million paid to Biden’s son Hunter by the former mayor of Moscow’s wife, Elena Baturina. Of course there is much from Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” that is revealing, but this engenders a great disinterest from the media and DOJ. If it was Trump’s son we would all know every single binary code on that laptop and the Department of Justice and FBI would be ferreting out whatever they could find.
Kamala Harris, according to Peter Schweizer’s book “Profiles in Corruption”, shows an ambitious woman who would do almost anything to further her career and had a questionable and highly assisted rise in her career. Her time as Californian Attorney General as well as her prior term as San Francisco AG have some serious questions about her running of those offices. During the 2020 Democrat Primaries, which didn’t particularly have a great choice of candidates, Harris was the most unpopular and first to fall out.
But it is here that the rub developed. Bernie Sanders emerged as the leading candidate and it was obvious that he was not acceptable to even the Democrats who by then had to find an alternative to push. There remained Joe Biden who had been a Vice-President, was a well-known name and had been a senator for something like forty seven years during which he was on occasions quite vociferous, and therefore visible, but essentially did nothing. He had stood for the party’s nomination a few times before and lost.
I stood next to Biden at AIPAC when he ran against Hillary and Obama. I had just heard Mrs Clinton speak. Obama had left by then, so I wandered into the hall where Biden was addressing the crowd and found myself standing next to him. As a foreigner I had no idea who he was and had never heard of him before. He got up on a chair and addressed the crowd and I immediately thought this man, whoever he may be, had a cheek to put his name forward as he was so amorphous, so colourless, essentially a paralysed force filled with motionless gestures. I gained the impression of him being an empty suit. That was my impression then and I still believe it today. Now that I know who and what Biden is, my initial impression has not changed and still applies.
As the 2008 elections progressed, Obama, who had gained the Democrat nomination for all the misguided politically correct and guilt filled reasons and also sold by a compliant media as the anti-Bush, picked amorphous Joe Biden as his running mate. I concluded that the only reason Biden was chosen was because of the very reason that he would not be a challenge to Obama in any way. If anything, having a compliant, smiling white sycophant at his side during elections would also be a great boost showing Obama as no threat to the white American population as potentially the first black person to seriously challenge for the Presidency.
Now we get to the current state of the Presidency. Kamala Harris was probably chosen specifically because of the colour of her skin to appeal to black voters, who Trump was weaning away from the Democrats. Let us ignore the politically correct imposed silence and call a spade a spade. The fact that she was universally disliked obviously made no difference to the Democrat powers that be. It should be understood that this was all about gaining power and not about who would be best suited for the positions. This in essence means that the interests of the United States would come second to Democrat interests of gaining power and outing the hated Donald Trump who was such a challenge to everything the Democrats stood for.
Enough background and build up. Four years in politics is a long time. America and the world faces the threats of Iran, China, Russia and North Korea just for starters. Turkey isn’t exactly behaving itself either and there are essential issues in Lebanon and Syria, to which must be added the Turkish ambition to destroy the Kurds. The first six months of Biden’s presidency so far have not been great or filled with lustre.
First of all, we seem to have an incompetent President and his vice-President isn’t someone who we can have too much confidence in either. Her attempts at avoiding issues by giggling simply don’t work. Both Biden and Harris, I remind you, are already beyond their levels of competence.
So who is running America? Clearly the Obama apparatchiks are all back where they were in Obama’s time. I believe we are experiencing Obama’s third term with him pulling the strings of Biden and the administration. Nevertheless, whilst America has a powerful, competent and strong military, it still presents weakness through Biden’s incompetence and “leadership” ability, or rather, lack of leadership ability.
The resurrection of Obama’s support of a potential nuclear Iran is a more than an obvious monumental mistake and America, through Biden, has broadcast weakness far and wide. No matter what is decided or agreed upon in the JCPOA resurrection negotiations, the clear path is that Iran will have a nuclear bomb in less than five years if it sticks to whatever the rehashed agreement is or not, probably or not. This is assuming Iran is not stopped before she is able to put a bomb together and test it.
It is not as if Iran has to live through the development stages of a bomb as the technology is known and I have no doubt assistance has come from North Korea and Pakistan, the latter having passed the know-how from their bomb developer AQ Khan on to North Korea and then in turn onto Iran. It is worth remembering the land connection of North Korea to China which is connected to Pakistan which is connected to Iran. What I imply by this is the easy transfer of technology and whatever.
I have no doubt the American military have planned for a nuclear Iran or a pre-nuclear Iran. However, they cannot implement any action without the go ahead from the Commander-in-chief and Congress. If the Commander-in-chief is a weakling, they cannot move.
Obama threw America’s allies in the Middle East under the bus in favour of Iran and this abandonment lead to the Abraham Accords. However, with Obama and his apparatchiks running America, obviously they will support and follow Obama’s policies and Iran will get a bomb. But before this happens I am absolutely sure Israel will intervene. Not an easy task with the nuclear facilities all over Iran with a difficult mountainous terrain with bunkers deep inside the mountains. Bunkers all have entrances and whilst the deep bunkers may be bomb proof, their entrances and exits are not. Many facilities are above ground and I am sure are known to Israel and America and plotted on their GPS’s.
My thoughts as an armchair general are if it comes to no option but to act, there will be multiple missile and plane strikes to overcome the anti-aircraft missiles and the anti-missile missiles. We already see this regularly in Syria where some Israeli missiles may be shot down, but other do get through and destroy the target. We even saw it with Hamas’ unsophisticated rockets where 90% were stopped, but 10% did get through. Ballistic missiles may be almost impossible for Iran to stop.
There is no question Iran has to be stopped. There is no MAD, mutually assured destruction principle that can be applied to Iran as was the case between the USSR and the USA. Iran is driven by medieval religious fervour, ruthlessness and extreme arrogance, a messianic belief that in a conflagration the Mahdi, the twelfth imam, will appear and a deep desire to resurrect the ancient Persian Empire and spread its religion and control across the world and convert the entire world to Islamic Shi’ism. What the West regards as logic cannot be applied or expected from Iran. Madness indeed, but a madness that must be confronted and stopped sooner rather than later.
It is guaranteed that Israel will not allow Iran to have a nuclear bomb. If Israel attacks Iran, it will also let loose immediately attacks from the Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel’s north, and Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s south. What will happen is that southern Lebanon will be and has to be quickly flattened as Hezbollah hide their 150,000 missiles amongst the population in and amongst their houses. Gaza will also have to be quickly shut down, which implies massive bombing of a more general kind rather than the selective bombing up until now, followed by ground troops on both fronts as the air force will be particularly needed on the Iran front. Syria is also a potential base for attacks and missiles as is Yemen with the Houthis. This is a lot for Israel to handle coming from all sides.
Although Turkey and Iran are ultimately in competition in terms of religion, Turkey being Sunni and Iran Shi’ite, and both have ambitions of regaining lost historical empires, Turkey may also enter the fray to assist Hezbollah and Hamas and may as a result enter through Syria to Israel’s border. Erdogan is capable of this and will take advantage.
Before this point is reached, the USA will have to enter, but then we will have China and Russia who are supportive of Iran. If this is the case, G-d forbid, we could or will have another world war.
This gets back to the early and main problem and solution, Iran has to be stopped sooner rather than later, not only initially for the sake of Israel and the Middle East, but ultimately further afield. Iran is messing in Venezuela clearly to potentially threaten the USA ala the Cuban Missile Crisis. Procrastination and appeasement will not work and hopefully the world has learned this lesson from Neville Chamberlain and the Nazis. What is always the great weakness is that a new generation arises that knew not Chamberlain or Hitler, which is exactly where we find ourselves a mere seventy six years later. The Greatest Generation has passed on and we have a world filled with madness and weak leadership almost everywhere in every country.
Finally we get back to what happens to Biden. More than likely the time will come when the 25th Amendment will be instituted and Biden will either resign or be declared incapable of continuing as President. Probably the former to save face. Then we will have Kamala Harris. Once the hoopla about being the first woman President and a woman of colour dies down, we will be faced with the same problem. A new vice-President will be appointed and Harris will be surrounded by advisors galore. Whether she can cope and handle the Presidency is anyone’s guess. I think not, although she has the potential to be quite imperious, judging from her periods as attorney generals. However, the last two years of this presidency are guaranteed to be as a lame duck. Her chances of re-election are slim as I think the American electorate have been severely bitten by Democrat policies and behaviour, not to mention the Democrat’s Stormtroopers in the form of BLM and Antifa.
Furthermore, I repeat, Harris was the most unpopular Democrat candidate and so far has done nothing to endear herself to the American electorate, in fact apart from a recent trip to Nicaragua, where she was highly unpopular, she has done nothing, not even gone to the border which she was put in charge of months ago, but then she hasn’t been to Europe either, which was her strange response to why she had not been to the border, of course followed by her defensive giggling as if to shoo the issue away.
The biased and agendised media may build Harris up as much as they can, but I think there is now a healthy scepticism that has set in amongst the voters. Cultural madness such as Cancel Culture, the ridiculous Critical Race Theory et al, not to mention the self-righteous self-appointed social media morality police and “community standards” checkers and judges have all gone a long way to annoying the American public and this will mitigate against the Democrats who have been behind all this madness and encouraged it.
The likes of Facebook and Twitter, having the effrontery to ban or suspend the President of the United States, clearly means that when a Republican President comes into office, these two social media and the likes of Google will be reined in severely, assuming a truly free and fair election.
Assuming the Republicans come back possibly in the shape of Donald Trump, or someone else, together with control of the House and Senate, common sense may return to economic, immigration, illegal immigrants, international policies and more. Nevertheless three and a half years is a long time to wait with all that faces the United States, Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Undoing the damage of the Biden/Harris years will take time, effort and money.
Let us give the last word to the Chinese by saying that we live in interesting times, even if we haven’t in this article gone into the danger they represent to the world.
David Hersch is Chairman of SAIPAC, the South African Israel Public Affairs Committee. Former chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (Cape Council) as well as a former national vice-chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF). Also a former member of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council). Retired businessman and broadcaster.