Where is the world’s police chief?
After the most heinous and despicable terrorist attack since 9/11, all eyes turned to America to see what response the most powerful country on the planet would have to the barbaric slaughter of 900 people in Israel.
And the answer was astounding for its optical awfulness.
President Biden pledged his administration’s “rock solid” support for Israel on Saturday, then hosted a staff barbecue with his wife at the White House on Sunday — within hours of Israel declaring war on Hamas.
Yes, you read that right: a bloody barbecue!
Attendees were even reported to have enjoyed a live band near the Rose Garden as they gorged on ribs and burgers, a hideously tone-deaf thing to be doing so soon after 260 people were massacred at a live musical festival early Saturday.
Days after the attacks, Biden still hadn’t been seen in a public show of support for the traumatized Jewish people, not even visiting a synagogue.
Meanwhile, Hamas-sympathizing left-wing lunatics filled the void of Democratic leadership by hitting the airwaves, the streets and social media to shriek their deranged support for terrorists who murdered nearly 1,000 people and wounded and kidnapped many others in the most barbaric and inexcusable manner imaginable.
It’s no surprise that Biden has once again failed to read the room properly given the constant stream of hugely embarrassing physical and verbal gaffes that have plagued him since he won the presidency.
The 80-year-old leader gives the increasing impression that he barely knows what day it is, let alone how best to react to an atrocity of this scale and horror.
But what is even more disconcerting for the watching world is that at this absolutely critical moment, the US Congress appears paralyzed.
There’s currently no speaker of the House because of a woefully irresponsible act of self-harm committed by rebel Republicans and aided by gleeful Democrats, who are more intent on political posturing and point-scoring than serving the interests of either their party or their country.
The hardline GOP rebels were warned when they moved to oust Kevin McCarthy that the unprecedented coup would be very damaging and could cause utter chaos.
Now, within a week, those chaotic chickens have come home to roost.
And given that this has never occurred before, nobody seems quite sure what happens in the temporary vacuum before a new speaker is chosen, which may not be until the end of the week — or longer — given all the enmity still swirling around McCarthy’s ouster.
Does the stand-in speaker, Patrick McHenry, have any real legal power or authority?
If not, how does Congress pass any new resolutions to help Israel in its immediate need?
These are incredibly important questions, and bad people are watching intently to exploit the situation.
“It wasn’t my idea to oust the speaker, and I thought it was dangerous,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN.
“I look at the world and all the threats that are out there. What kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern, when we’re dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House?”
Let me help: The message is that America’s weak and rudderless right when the world most needs it to be strong and in charge.
And this is a message that’s been intensifying ever since Biden’s sudden, catastrophic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan that allowed the Taliban to creep right back into their medieval brand of ruthless, murderous, brutally misogynist power.
That debacle told America’s enemies that it may no longer have the stomach for a fight.
Within months, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
And today, many of the Republican presidential candidates for 2024, including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, have signaled they would stop military aid for Ukraine.
Ramaswamy has even suggested a so-called “peace plan,” where Russia would be allowed to keep all the land it has stolen since February 2022 with its genocidal rampage.
That’s not a peace plan — that would constitute an abject surrender to a dictator and a total betrayal of a sovereign democratic country.
From across the pond here in Britain, it’s hard not to agree with Mike Pence when he says that these are “voices of appeasement” who are “signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.”
It was thus entirely predictable that Hamas terrorists might choose this moment to launch their biggest strike against Israel.
They will have watched the Afghanistan fiasco, and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and then Biden’s recent decision to allow the transfer of $6 billion of frozen Iranian funds back to the mad mullahs who fund Hamas as part of a prisoner-swap deal, and they will have concluded that America has simply lost interest in being the world’s guardian and protector.
I don’t think it has, but complacency is as bad as disinterest.
“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said confidently last week.
Well, it’s not quiet anymore.
It’s become a raging inferno again, and America’s politicians on all sides need to wake up and show some proper leadership.
They also need to urgently put petty partisanship aside and come together to present a unified front in the face of such huge global challenges.
Israel needs it.
Ukraine needs it.
The world needs it.