Call It Too Close to Call

 

In most elections voting (other than some protest voting) requires deciding which bad candidate is less bad. With the Republicans picking Trump, and the Democrats sticking with Biden, that surely is the situation this year. Neither of them should be elected president, but unless something surprising happens, one of them will be. I have thought that, bad as Biden is, Trump is enough worse that it was clear who was the lesser evil, and Biden should be reelected. I believed that while still respecting the opinions of people who think the plans and policies of the Republicans are better than those of the Democrats or see the green left, the bigoted DEI left, and the anti-civilization pro-Hamas left for what they are want a bulwark against them or figure they should pick the scoundrel likely to do them less direct harm and so favor Trump.

Now I am not sure, because of what has happened in the last few weeks. In the war in Gaza Israel is right and should win, and Hamas’s savages are wrong and should lose. Seven months ago Biden seemed to know that. Now he does not and has betrayed an ally in wartime. The betrayal goes beyond the disgraceful public carping and refusal to give Israel needed munitions. He and his administration effectively have switched sides by advocating for the wrong outcome of the war. If Hamas survives as a capable force, the war will have been a strategic victory for it and its masters in Iran. An end of the fighting without Israel finishing Hamas off in Rafah would produce that result. The savages would have won, and civilization would have lost. Yet that is what Biden and his administration favor. Meanwhile Trump, who I feared would abandon Ukraine, did not go on the warpath against the speaker’s plan to give more weapons and munitions to that country, giving some reason for hope he would show some sense there.

Right now if people asked me who in this race would be less bad for the country, I could not give them an answer. The best recommendation I could make would be to watch both of the scoundrels until November and hope something happens to make the right choice clear, as I thought it was a while back. (As I have written before,  my plan  now is not to vote for either of them, but most people won't see that as an option and will settle on one or the other.)

Biden and Israel

 

As a matter of humanity and human sympathy the killing of seven innocent civilians in a mistaken attack by the Israeli armed forces was horrible. As a factor in deciding whether and how much the United States should side with Israel in its war against Hamas’s savages, it is irrelevant. Informed people know that horrible mistakes happen in war. (I have read that some GIs in World War II began calling the Ninth Air Force the American Luftwaffe after some of its mistaken attacks on American positions.) They also know there inevitably will be civilians killed in wars where civilians are present and especially in a war where the “fighters” on one side have made it a policy to hide among civilians. According to reports from experts, the Israeli armed forces have made extraordinary efforts to minimize casualties among civilians. That is all, and probably even more than, a reasonable person can request of them. In this war Israel is right and should win, and Hamas is wrong and should be destroyed.

Biden began well by siding unequivocally with Israel at the start of the war. Lately he and people in his administration began equivocating in an effort to appease voters in the pro-Hamas left. Now there are stories in the news suggesting that they may be moving away from supporting Israel. That would be a repugnant betrayal of not only a trusting ally but of the cause and values of liberal civilization. If they do not care about that, they should consider that it also could be a political mistake. Neither Biden nor Trump is an attractive candidate. Foreign policy has been one important point in Biden’s favor – especially given his generally good job on Ukraine and the fear that Trump might abandon Ukraine. If Biden turns against Israel, it could cause people to see him as being no more trustworthy on foreign policy than Trump and as throwing in again with the left, making a formerly fairly easy choice between him and Trump less so. It would me. Sitting this one out or a protest vote for the Libertarian might look pretty good. Sometimes the lesser evil is just too rough.