The President's Self-Inflicted Crises

Mr. Biden's average approval rating is currently hovering at 50% and trending downward. There are probably a number of reasons for the decline - rising inflation, the ambiguous messages from the administration about Covid, rising rates of violent crime, and despite the president's attempt to talk tough, the perception that he's really just a malleable figurehead for the far-left of his party.

A piece at Hot Air suggests that there are at least three crises responsible for his declining approval which the Biden administration has brought upon itself through it's own incomprehensible incompetence: Immigration, Afghanistan, and inflation. To these might be added a few more: a resurgent pandemic (though it's not a self-inflicted crisis), and the ongoing soap opera that is the Hunter Biden saga.

Anyway, at least two of the foregoing crises appear at this point to be complete disasters. The first of these is the president's immigration policy, or rather the lack thereof.

From the link:

The crisis on our southern border began shortly after President Biden took office. President Trump had managed to stem the flow of migrants by building a border wall, increasing support for Border Patrol, and getting Mexico to use its military to block migrants from traveling north.

Most importantly, Mr. Trump sent a clear message that the days of open borders were over.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris struck a much different tone, which has paved the way for the present crisis.

Before taking office, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris signaled their intent to stop deportations. Once in office, President Biden began rolling back immigration enforcement and proposed a plan to legalize millions of illegal residents without first funding basic border security priorities.

These actions have sent a clear message of openness to migrants, who are now crossing the border at a rate of 6,000 per day.

Illegal border crossings have increased every month under President Biden. In June, Border Patrol recorded 178,000 border arrests – a 571 percent jump from June 2020. In July, officers in the Rio Grande Valley arrested 20,000 border crossers in a single week – the most ever recorded. Border arrests have now already reached their highest since 2000 and are on track to reach 1.8 million this year.

And these arrests are just a partial snapshot of the situation, as many others are crossing our borders undetected.

This chaotic situation could get even worse because of a recent decision by the Mexican government. This past week, Mexico announced it will no longer take back non-Mexican migrant families who have been caught by U.S. border agents.

This is a major shift from last year, when President Trump struck a deal with Mexico to have asylum seekers “remain in Mexico” while their applications were being processed. President Biden has clearly failed to exert the pressure needed to obtain Mexico’s help in solving the border crisis.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently admitted that the situation is unsustainable:

“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Mayorkas said Thursday, according to the audio obtained by Fox News’ Bill Melugin through a Border Patrol source. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can't continue and our system isn’t built for it.”

Entry into the U.S. from Canada is still closed (until Aug. 21st), but hundreds of thousands are waltzing across our border with Mexico and being transported all around the country at taxpayer expense with no apparent concern for Covid infections. Why?

As Bryan Preston notes, either President Biden is surprised by this massive influx of immigrants or he's not. If he is surprised he's incompetent because everyone else saw this coming. If he's not surprised then he's criminally negligent and grossly irresponsible.

If Biden's immigration non-policy can be fairly called a disaster, there are no words to describe the moral recklessness and horrific consequences of his decision to abandon millions of Afghans to the meager mercies of the Taliban.

On July 8th, Mr. Biden delivered himself of this piece of quasi-prescient prose: "The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." Well, tragically, that's exactly what the Taliban are doing as you read this:

Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will again impose a brutal, repressive government, all but eliminating women’s rights and conducting public amputations, stonings and executions.

The latest U.S. military intelligence assessment suggests Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that, if current trends hold, the Taliban could gain full control of the country within a few months [Update: The Taliban entered Kabul yesterday].

The Afghan government may eventually be forced to pull back to defend the capital and just a few other cities in the coming days if the Taliban keep up their momentum. [Update: Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani has fled the country]

The onslaught represents a stunning collapse of Afghan forces and renews questions about where the over $830 billion spent by the U.S. Defense Department on fighting, training those troops, and reconstruction efforts went — especially as Taliban fighters ride on American-made Humvees and pickup trucks with M-16s slung across their shoulders.

Meanwhile, President Biden has gone on vacation in Delaware, and Afghans allied with the U.S. have been relegated to begging acquaintances here to try to find them and their relatives safe passage out of the country before they fall into the Taliban’s hands and are executed.

It's probably too late for many of them to escape, and it's hard to imagine the fear these people must be experiencing not only for themselves but for their loved ones. Yet Mr. Biden told us the other day that he has "no regrets."

Thousands of Afghans who helped us will be, or are being, tortured and slaughtered by the Taliban. Young girls will once again be consigned to the burka, forbidden to go to school and forced to "marry" Taliban fighters.

It didn't have to be this way. There was no good reason for Mr. Biden's precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. had suffered no combat casualties in that country in the last year and a half, and it's been noted that American soldiers were safer in Afghanistan in 2021 than are policemen in many major cities in the U.S.

Nor is the fact that we've been there for two decades by itself a compelling reason to have left. We've been in Japan, Germany and South Korea since WWII and show no signs of leaving any of those countries.

As with immigration, either President Biden is surprised by the collapse of the Afghan military or he's not. If he's surprised he's incompetent because many others saw this coming.

If he's not surprised, if he knew what would happen when he announced our immediate withdrawal, then he's morally culpable of a horrific betrayal, and the blood of all those Afghans we've abandoned will stain his legacy for the rest of history.