If the Biden administration manages to reach an agreement with Iran in Vienna that, like its predecessor, confers legitimacy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s nuclear program, it will be the third watershed display of American weakness in fewer than two years.
Caving to the Islamic Republic would join the U.S. military’s handover of Bagram Air Base to the Taliban and the Minneapolis Police Department’s surrender of its 3rd Precinct building to rioters as the most consequential projections of American weakness in the P.C. (Post-COVID) era.
If what happens in Minneapolis seems unrelated to American foreign policy, consider that the lessons of law enforcement on the local and state level are applicable to the national level — hence the metaphor of the U.S. as “the world’s police.” How a city, state, or nation responds to extreme provocation and aggression influences the behavior of future potential threats. Weakness, especially retreat, invites more aggression, while forceful opposition deters aggressors.
On the national level, Ferguson is the model for successful opposition to aggressors, Baltimore is the model for weakness, and Minneapolis is the model for retreat. On the world stage, the Biden administration seems intent on following the Minneapolis model.
After Michael Brown was killed by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in August 2014, there were peaceful but then violent protests. On November 24, 2014, a grand jury announced that it would not indict Wilson. Shortly thereafter, Brown’s stepfather exhorted a crowd of protesters in front of the Ferguson Police Department building to “burn this bitch down.” Against weeks of rock, brick, and Molotov cocktail attacks, the Ferguson Police held their ground and eventually restored order. It was not pretty, but it was effective.
In 2015, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake ordered police to stand down after riots erupted following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody. She explained her rationale as a “balancing act,” designed “to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech” while also giving “those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”
When protests following George Floyd’s death turned violent, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey followed the Baltimore model, ordering police to back off and signaling that there would be no consequences for theft or property destruction. Frey watched as vandals destroyed the Lake Street Target, looted dozens of liquor stores, and smashed glass storefronts of hundreds of businesses.
Even after rioters gathered at the 3rd Precinct building, throwing rocks and bottles and setting fire to police cars, they were met with minimal, non-lethal force. By the time Governor Tim Walz called the Minnesota National Guard, it was too late.
On May 28, in a futile effort to purchase peace by giving up territory, Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo decided to abandon the 3rd Precinct. Hastily retreating officers left behind weapons and lost their building, but peace did not follow. As Sgt. Sherral Schmidt said, “It did nothing to quell anything.” Indeed, it signaled surrender.
Minneapolis became the first of many American cities to give up on policing in 2020. Anyone who lives there knows that the city and its suburbs have not recovered. Police are on mop-up duty, demoralized, and in retreat, while residents wonder if sanity will ever return.
Had President Joe Biden paid attention to the policing failures of 2020, he might have recognized that turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban would buy not peace. He claimed to be merely following Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, but the foolish decision to abandon Bagram before evacuating Americans was his call.
Though the U.S. Army assured reporters that Bagram was transferred to the Afghan military in a weeks-long “closely coordinated” effort, one Afghan soldier who worked on the base told The Wall Street Journal that “It just went dark” on July 2. After the power was cut, the looting began.
Like Minneapolis’s 3rd Precinct, Bagram Air Base was more than just a symbol. Along with hundreds of vehicles and tons of equipment, the compound also housed a hospital and a jail with thousands of Taliban and ISIS prisoners. The sudden departure emboldened the Taliban and set the tone for the chaotic scene at Kabul airport in which 13 Americans and many more Afghans were killed. The man who carried out the bombing, Abdul Rahman Al-Logari, was one of those released ISIS prisoners.
As Barack Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden witnessed how U.S. withdrawal from Iraq enabled the emergence of ISIS from the remains of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s defeated Al-Qaeda franchise. He also helped push the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal), legalizing Iran’s illegal nuclear program in exchange for Khamenei’s empty promise to delay uranium enrichment and bomb construction for 10-15 years. And then Biden saw how the JCPOA emboldened those it was supposed to appease as Iran took U.S. sailors hostage and cheated on the deal from the start.
Many key members of Biden’s diplomatic corps were also members of Obama’s administration and are complicit in its diplomatic failures, yet they are repeating their mistakes. By removing Trump’s sanctions against the mullahs and their missile makers, they signaled weakness from the beginning. In return, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now attacks Americans without fear of reprisal and regularly threatens Israelis with war. Iranian scientists enrich uranium and test ballistic missile under the guise of a space program while Biden’s diplomats practically beg for yet more talks in Vienna.
Like the surrender of Minneapolis’s 3rd Precinct and capitulation to the Taliban, a second nuclear deal with Iran will ensure even more aggression. It will also make war, perhaps even nuclear war, inevitable.
Victory does not always go to those who project power or wield superior strength, but defeat invariably goes to those who project weakness and flee from a righteous fight. Those who give up land for peace usually end up with neither.
A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsburg-Milstein fellow at the Middle East Forum and a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
revereridesagain says
Projecting weakness inviting aggression is something people almost always have to learn the hard way. Unfortunately when those people are in government, the rest of us have to learn it that way right along with them.
Fortunately, Israel generally understands all this. But they can’t do that for the rest of the world alone.
gravenimage says
+1
mortimer says
I can’t imagine a greater weakness than to negotiate with those who chant ‘Death to America’ at every possible venue!
Why would anyone be foolish enough to trust one word that they would say … or why would they keep any part of any agreement unless they put up considerable collateral?
Even with collateral, the Iranians would still break any contract. These are the people who held hostages even in their London embassy who were liberated by SAS commandos.
Sanctions will restrain Iran if the whole international community pulls together.
gravenimage says
From Minneapolis to Vienna, projecting weakness invites aggression
…………..
It always has–and most especially from Islam, which teaches aggression and violence and that any accomodation indicates weakness.
Walter Sieruk says
If Joe Biden and his crew really feel that some kind of genuine worthwhile agreement of value may possibly be achieved with that Islamic regime of Iran in Vienna the Biden along with his administration are unrealistic , gullible naive fools.
On the other hand maybe its the Biden and his inner circle of top staff are actually treasonous ,despicable treacherous turncoats to America and the American people.
For those disingenuous deceptive and outright lying tyrants in the “mullah regime” of Iran will only ,as best, keep their agreement ofthe promised word only as long as it happens to suite them and no longer.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden is awful with national US polices and likewise his international polices as well.
As seen his appeasing the Islamic tyranny of Iran and his withdrawing from Afghanistan in the wrongs ways, thus actually giving Afghanistan to the Taliban enemy .
If that wasn’t terrible enough with Afghanistan, Biden then also abandoned many Americans in that land as well as the friendly Afghan’s who worked with us to the vicious and murderous Taliban.
To add to this evil and treacherously Biden is responsible for letting into America, not our proven Afghan friends but many unvetted and possibly dangerous Afghans, but jihadists and criminals
There really isn’t enough adjectives in the English lanuage to describe how treacherous and
wicked Joe Biden actually is.
James Lincoln says
Walter Sieruk says,
“There really isn’t enough adjectives in the English lanuage to describe how treacherous and
wicked Joe Biden actually is.”
I can think of at least a dozen adjectives right off the top of my head but I don’t like to use that kind of language…
Walter Sieruk says
As for specfic problems in the United States because of leftists ideology of being politically correct, this above article does make mention of the terrible man by the name of George Floyd .
With so much of America being infected with the PC philosophy with is totally separate from reality, this PC falseness make Floyd out out to be some kind of “saint” when he was actually a drug user and a drug trafficker and a thief. Floyd was such a criminal that at least , once he entered a home of a young pregnant woman under a false premise to held a loaded gun to her belly and threateningly told her “You better cooperate.” all the while his hooligan friends looted her home.
It was later discovered that the night he died it wasn’t really from am “action of violence ” by a White police officer but because he was full of drugs that he had taken. the intense things that went on that night only furthered the death of that wicked man..
Nevertheless , in spite of those facts the police officer was found guilty in a PC “court of law.’ and in contrast that heinous criminal George Floyd is now falsely made out to appear a “a good man.”
This is a reflection of what is written in the Bible. Which reads “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..” Isaiah 5:20. [N.K.J.V.]
OLD GUY says
“DEATH TO AMERICA”.
You would think that the America leaders, media and public would take these threats seriously. Instead we open our borders to allow a few million muslim/islamic invaders to enter our country unchecked. We allow them to teach our children on college campuses and purchase their way into our media and political system promoting their propaganda.
Gee as one of my liberal friends always says “It’ will be ok” I doubt it. I wonder how many of our daughters and wives will have to be raped or killed by rape gangs before we figure out the dangers of Islamic teachings.
gravenimage says
Yes–the US State Department itself dismisses this call for genocide:
“State Dept.: Iran’s ‘death to America’ chant just ‘rhetoric'”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/state-dept-irans-death-to-america-chant-just-rhetoric
Suicidal insanity.