Does America have any consistency in its foreign policy? Ever since Hamas started a war with Israel on October 7 -- and Hezbollah joined it with missile attacks on October 8 -- the Biden-Harris administration has focused entirely on forcing Israel into a cease-fire. But their love of cease-fires as a strategic approach is very particular, let us say. 

Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris offer what Mollie Hemingway and Adam Baldwin call a 'ritual benediction' by claiming to support Israel's right to defend itself. Then they publicly demand that Benjamin Netanyahu keep making concessions to terrorists to freeze an existential conflict in place -- a freeze that helps the terrorists regroup. In the case of Hamas, Biden and Harris keep demanding concessions even after Israel offers them, only to have Hamas change their demands.

The White House had a snit yesterday when Netanyahu refused to accept a 21-day truce with Hezbollah after responding the last two weeks to nearly a year of missile fire out of Lebanon. Bear in mind that the US guaranteed the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ordered Hezbollah to stay out of the sub-Litani region and away from Israel's borders. Instead, Hezbollah has used it as a launching pad for the past eleven months and has troops staged there for a potential invasion into the Upper Galilee. 

Netanyahu again tried to smooth things over, despite the fact that Israel is nearly united against anything but a brief pause to give Hezbollah a chance to retreat:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that Israel “shares the aims” of the US-led initiative for a temporary ceasefire with Hezbollah, after he was pilloried within his coalition for privately assenting to the plan and subsequently renounced it.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) issued a “clarification” after statements from both the US and France that Israel had indicated it would support the 21-day truce proposed by Washington and Paris on Wednesday.

Israeli and American teams met late Thursday to discuss the US initiative, the PMO said, and “how we can advance the shared goal of returning people safely to their homes.” It added that these discussions would continue in the coming days.

The purported reason for the Biden-Harris demand for cease-fires with Hamas and Hezbollah is to prevent "a wider war." They don't want a regional war with Iran, despite the fact that Iran's proxies are already fighting one with Israel. Iran controls and funds both Hezbollah and Hamas, not to mention the Houthis, who also keep trying to get into the war. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris keep pushing the cease-fire and demanding a "two-state solution" in which Israel would trade land for peace, a formulation that none of these groups accept, nor will they accept anything in the long run that allows the state of Israel to survive.

So it must have seemed strange for Netanyahu to get lectures on avoiding conflict and trading land for peace, while watching Kamala Harris cheer Ukraine onto complete victory against Russia:

Harris: 'I have been proud to stand with Ukraine. I will continue to stand with Ukraine, and I will work to ensure Ukraine prevails in this war'

Ukraine will receive over $1 trillion if Kamala wins. 🤦🏼‍♂️

pic.twitter.com/QHD0EwfjaO

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) September 26, 2024

Ahem. I tend to agree that Ukraine should defend itself against Russian invasion and an attempt to annex the whole county, an ambition expressed explicitly and implicitly by Vladimir Putin for many years. But that just makes my position consistent, because that's exactly what Israel wants to do as well. Iran is attempting to annihilate Israel through proxy terror armies, and has been for decades, and wants to defeat those enemies for good.  

If a cease-fire is good enough for Israel, why isn't it good enough for Ukraine? If trading land for peace would be a reasonable demand for Netanyahu, why isn't it a reasonable demand for Volodomyr Zelensky? The US refuses to give Israel certain weapons, withholds intel, and discourages attacks on Iran an Hezbollah to prevent the risk of a regional war. Why then would Biden and Harris give Zelensky the green light to use weapons to attack Moscow, and risk a regional war in Europe? Or a nuclear war?

Bear in mind that I don't believe a cease-fire is a good option in Ukraine, nor do I think for one second that a land-for-peace swap would keep Putin from eventually swallowing Ukraine whole. But that war has much more risk than Israel's fight against Iran, and cease-fires and land swaps make even less sense in this conflict. And those have been tried in both conflicts for years -- decades in Israel's case -- and they don't work. 

All that American policy in the Middle East has done, especially during the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris years, is to allow Iran's proxies time and resources to arm up and become more deadly. Contrast that with the much smarter strategy in Ukraine that has forced Russia to grind away its military strength in a three-year war that has produced nothing for its trouble except diplomatic and economic isolation. Meanwhile, we're literally paying Iran for its terror projects against a key ally, the only liberal democracy in a region of autocrats and tyrants. 

Scott Johnson wonders why no one's asking this question of Biden or Harris:

You might think that these sentiments, whatever their applicability to Ukraine, would apply even more so to Israel’s existential struggle with Hamas and Hezbollah. Hezbollah commenced its rocketing of Israel the day after Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel and massacre of 1,200 Israelis. Hezbollah has displaced 100,000 Israelis from their homes in northern Israel. Hezbollah has succeeded in depopulating a vast swath of Israel’s territory. ...

Michael Doran and Tony Badran fill out the underlying Obama/Biden “strategy” in the Tablet columns “The realignment” and “The Ottoman American Empire.” For the moment, I only want to contrast the administration’s call for Ukrainian victory with its demands on Israel to preserve Hamas and Hezbollah. Someone really ought to ask Harris to explain.

Do we really need an explanation? The answer seems obvious to me.