Kamala Harris has done her job as the border czar so well here in the United States that she is going to Paris tomorrow to advise Europeans on securing borders and handling illegal migrants. Just kidding. She’s going to Paris for four days of meetings with European leaders and to mark Armistice Day.
What isn’t clear is why she is going and not Joe Biden. Maybe he’s just not up for it after his recent trip to Glasgow and Rome. The old man needs a little time at his beach home to recover, perhaps. Kamala is meeting with French President Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders. They are all gathering in Paris to commemorate Armistice Day, the end of World War I. She will also participate in the Paris Conference on Libya.
The Paris Conference on Libya is a diplomatic effort. The participants will encourage peaceful elections in Libya to mitigate the flood of illegal migrants who are escaping Libya, a war-torn country. European countries face migrants fleeing Libya, traveling to their countries.
Harris will voice “a deep concern for human rights and the situation of migrants and refugees, and reinforce the imperative of protecting vulnerable people, including those fleeing conflict,” a senior administration official said last week.
Perhaps Biden isn’t going to the conference because it was during the Obama-Biden administration that Libya was destabilized due to their own actions. The Obama administration, including Biden and Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State at the time, demanded that Muammar Gaddafi give up his nuclear weapons. His government was overthrown during the Arab Spring in 2011 and he was killed by militants in 2011. We remember during the Obama administration, an ambassador and other Americans were killed during an attack on the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, in 2012. Team Obama, especially Hillary, left the ambassador and other Americans there on their own for over 13 hours. Biden would be justified to be ashamed of that time and how the Obama administration handled Libya.
Sending Kamala is sending the B team, though. She inspires less confidence than Biden does on the world stage. She allowed Northern Triangle third-world dictators to humiliate her when she traveled to those countries begging for help in controlling the exit of their people. Her second trip was to Asia where she was late to meetings and came home empty-handed, the actual reason for her trip still unclear. Now she is going to Europe. She is said to be meeting with Macron to continue to try to smooth things over with our oldest ally after the Biden administration stabbed France in the back with the nuclear submarine technology between the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. While in Europe recently, Biden admitted to Macron that the deal was handled in a “clumsy” manner.
At the “Paris Conference On Libya,” she is also set to call for stronger borders in Libya to keep out terrorists, an issue some in Washington are calling on the administration to institute on the Mexican border.
“Specifically, on Libya, we want to show our support for the Libyan people as they move towards national elections and as they focus on the importance of the withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries and fighters from Libya. We want to build a stable and prosperous Libya free from foreign interference and capable of combating terrorism within its borders,” said a White House briefer.
And in meetings and a separate Paris Peace Forum, she is to push for a global focus on “gender equality,” “sports diplomacy,” and “rising inequality,” said two White House officials in a background call.
Stronger borders, eh? We sure could use some of that talk from the Biden-Harris administration about our own southern border. It takes some cojones to travel to Europe and present herself as some kind of expert capable of giving advice on border control issues. She is going to push her brand of woke governance on European leaders. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception she receives.
“The vice president’s visit is sort of the last straw of this procession of high-level American officials who are coming … to remind everybody that they value the French-American relationship,” Celia Belin, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, told NPR.
Harris and husband Douglas Emhoff are also scheduled to mark Veterans Day during the trip by paying a visit to the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial outside Paris, where more than 1,500 U.S. service members who died in World Wars I and II are buried.
Let’s hope she doesn’t go on an apology tour as Biden did while in Europe. Surely she can stay awake during the conference and not be photographed asleep during speeches as Sleepy Joe was.
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