OPINION:
It was as prophetic as it was true when former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of then-Vice President Joe Biden, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Those words have been borne out as we have witnessed repeated miscues, missteps and miscalculations by President Biden since he took office in January 2021. His national security impairments are a real and present danger to our nation. Just as he often appears lost on a political stage after a policy speech, so too he is lost on the international stage as he wanders aimlessly from one foreign policy disaster to another.
We saw this in August 2021 when he orchestrated a disastrous and ill-advised withdrawal from Afghanistan that created an immediate vacuum for radical terrorists to retake control of that beleaguered nation. Thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives in that entirely avoidable evacuation debacle.
We then witnessed Mr. Biden’s naivete in failing to deter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin had massed his troops for months in advance of the invasion. Yet as war approached, Mr. Biden suggested publicly that Russia would face fewer consequences if the attack took the form of a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Mr. Putin was not deterred.
We then observed Mr. Biden’s Pollyannaish attempts to renew an unwise nuclear deal with Iran, seemingly unaware that Iran’s leaders are not and never have been dependable negotiating partners. They lie reflexively. That should have been clear to Mr. Biden. It wasn’t.
Iran’s hegemonic goals in the Middle East and hatred for Israel and the U.S. did not abate after Mr. Biden’s diplomatic fawning. Indeed, Iran has continued to use its terrorist surrogates across the Middle East to destabilize the region and assert its control through the acts of violent allies in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
Even now, we are witnessing Mr. Biden’s dismal national security skills after Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7. Israel is taking effective action in slaying Hamas. Yet Mr. Biden’s mixed message — one of supporting Israel while mollycoddling pro-Hamas campus protesters at home and abroad — is music to the ears of Iran’s leadership, which supports Hamas.
In response to U.S. military support for Israel, Iran’s surrogates in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen have repeatedly threatened Israeli and U.S. operations in the region. Mr. Biden’s response to those threats has been ineffective. Since the Israel-Hamas war exploded, Iran’s puppets have attacked American forces over 160 times with a mix of drones, rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. Now, three Americans are dead, and 34 seriously wounded.
Unfortunately, Mr. Biden’s pinprick retaliatory strikes against inconsequential Iranian targets are what the terrorist mullahs in Tehran now expect of him. They know Mr. Biden better than he knows them. They know him like Mr. Gates knows him.
It is time for Congress to be clear when Mr. Biden is not. We are at war with Iran. President Biden’s delusion and the collective denial of his administration are not characteristics of effective leadership. Iran knows it. This is why it continues to regard the U.S. as a collection of amateurs more inclined to rhetorical balderdash than any consequential response against Iran.
Congress should pass a Sense of Congress resolution that, in its estimate, we are in a state of war with Iran. It should call for the establishment of both an air and sea blockade — an act of war in response to the de facto war Iran is waging against the U.S.
Such a resolution will make clear that Congress’ taste for minuscule military strikes has expired, and that it supports action to bring Iran to its knees until and unless it (1) renounces support of its surrogates across the Middle East, (2) ceases all efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and (3) halts its provision of military aid to Russia in its war against Ukraine. Of course, such a resolution — while making Congress’ views clear — will not be accepted by Iran. But it will be declarative to friends and enemies alike.
In the meantime, the U.S. should form and lead a coalition to unleash attacks against Iran’s oil infrastructure as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s navy and seaports, air bases, and energy grid. And what of its terrorist surrogates? Take away their arterial support by attacking their circulatory system from the points where they draw U.S. blood back to the heart of the problem: Iran’s leadership.
We must demonstratively punish Iran’s violence, or Mr. Gates’ prophecy will become the epitaph of Mr. Biden’s incompetence.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).
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