A Tale of Two Faces

“Talk softly and carry a big stick”

President Theodore Roosevelt – 1903

My how the world has changed. Today, President Joe Biden (D) has eviscerated Mr. Roosevelt’s pledge – a pledge that had served the nation well until 2008. That’s when a nobody from Illinois, Barack Obama, was elected President of the United States by soundly trouncing the spiteful Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who saved his vitriol and criticism for his Republican primary opponents and laid not a glove on Mr. Obama during the general.

It was Mr. Obama that could not find a single laudable thing that the United States had done and thus embarked on an apology tour that left friendly nations bewildered and rogue states emboldened. Mr. Obama had a particular animus toward Israel and its leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a wistful comity towards Muslim nations, including those which participated in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. During his entire tenure as President of the United States, Mr. Obama was unable to refer to the continuing deluge of attacks on America as the acts of Islamic terrorists. In fact, it was tortuous to see representatives of his administration dance around the issue. While President, Mr. Obama needed the support of America’s Jewish community and, therefore, refrained from directly blaming Israel for the animosity of the Muslim countries or for the existence of Islamic terrorists. But those restraints are now gone and Mr. Obama is now engaged in the sort of word duplicity that allows him to have it both ways. In a recent address to his former staff on November 24, Mr. Obama made two grotesque statements. An article in the New York Times on November 4, 2023, Lisa Lerer wrote:

Barack Obama offered a complex analysis of the conflict between Israel and Gaza, telling thousands of former aides that they were all “complicit to some degree” in the current bloodshed.

The essence of that comment sought to blame others for his own actions. What a loser. The article continued:

“’What Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.’ former President Barack Obama said on Friday. ‘And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.’”

The essence of that comment was to say that there was no justification except the occupation of Gaza – again having it both ways. Not just a loser, but a disgusting loser*. But Mr. Biden is eagerly following in his footsteps.

Well, that’s not really true because Mr. Biden has a long and rich history of trying to have it both ways. Mr. Biden is a self-described “devout Catholic” who attends Mass regularly. He has the accoutrements of devoutness – profiled attendance at daily Mass, attendance by the Church’s hierarchy at family baptisms, marriages and funerals, honorariums from Catholic organizations, and private and public meetings with the Pope generally accompanied by crosses and/or rosaries blessed by the Pontiff. All similar to his friend, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) – another nominally important Catholic politician.

Except they are not.

Mr. Biden has supported taxpayer funded abortion on demand for over fifty years. He has for all of that time – at least prior to his nomination as the Democrat presidential candidate in 2020 –used the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal funds the use of federal funds for the provision of abortions, as cover from providing billions of dollars** of funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortions centers for all of that time. Mr. Biden would claim to oppose abortion and state that money given to Planned Parenthood was being used for purposes other than abortion because of the Hyde Amendment. It was only during the 2020 Democrat presidential primaries that Mr. Biden was called out by the pro-abortion advocates demanding that he would support eliminating the Hyde Amendment thus admitting publicly that which he denied all of these years.

But Mr. Biden’s actions are replete with that kind of hypocrisy. He vowed to shut down the petroleum industry to promote clean energy and immediately suspended new drilling permits. And when the reduced energy production caused shortages and price increases Mr. Biden turned to Russia, Venezuela and the Middle East to replace the lost production. The net results were high prices, dirtier petroleum and a new dependence on some of the most despotic regimes in the world.

But the scale of hypocrisy is best noted by his most recent actions regarding the terrorist attack by Hamas on unarmed civilians – including women and children – resulting in the deaths of over 1,200 and the kidnapping of over two hundred Israelis and visitors (including at least 10 Americans). And while Mr. Biden publicly denounced these atrocities, he simultaneously released billions more to Iran – the chief sponsor and funder of terrorist activities by Hamas and Hezbollah. Mr. Biden then declared that Israel had the right and the duty to defend itself and supported Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas and that the United States would not interfere with Israel’s conduct of the war so long as it abided by “the rules of war” (usually described as the Geneva Conventions). But within forty-eight hours, Mr. Biden and his merry band of “surrender monkeys” at the State Department were “warning” Israel at every turn of the screw. Even to the point that they are demanding that Israel not follow Hamas into the southern part of Gaza from which Hamas continues to pound Israel with rocket attacks and sporadic gunfire. Before long, if this continues its current path, you will see the Biden administration first refrain from voting on motions condemning Israel at the United Nations and eventually voting to approve them.

But we should have expected all of this. Mr. Biden has repeatedly announced his full support for the Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion while simultaneously allowing Russia to escape sanctions for the war and slow rolling the supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine’s military.

There is no friend like a duplicitous friend as Israel and Ukraine are learning and the rest of the world is observing. If you look up the word “duplicitous” in the dictionary, there you will see a picture of Mr. Biden and looking over his shoulder, Mr. Obama.

The new saying for America apparently is:

Speak loudly but carry a big schtick

God save us from this ilk.

____________________________________

* One should remember that Mr. Obama is the singular person responsible for releasing over $150 Billion, including $1.7 Billion in cash loaded on cargo planes and delivered directly to Iran, which in turn led to the expansion of support by Iran to Islamic terrorists for use in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. And additionally the transfer of $122 Million to the Palestinian authorities in the waning days of his term despite objections from Congress. While Mr. Obama claimed that the money was for “humanitarian relief” he knew full well that money is fungible resulting in freeing an equal amount of money from other sources to enrich the terrorist activities of Hamas and Hezbollah. One would hope that the millions of dollars pledged or given by the American Jewish community to build Mr. Obama’s presidential library (current cost estimates in excess of $700 Million) would be redirected to the poor that Mr. Obama displaced to construct his paean to duplicity.

** As noted above, money is fungible. In this case, money provided by Congress was arguably used to pay the rent, utilities, administrative salaries, transportation, and virtually every other expense of Planned Parenthood except the actual abortion procedures which were claimed to be funded by private donations – donations that would have had to been used for all of the other purposes previous listed.