Joe Must Go!

by Walter E. Block (August 2024)

The following essay was written and accepted for publication before President Joe Biden had renounced his candidacy to seek that office once again. So, this essay loses a bit of its power. But, he is still the President of the US and, therefore, my argument is relevant. In any case, I never thought that Biden would be stripped of his presidency. My argument is that, if Netanyahu’s claim to remain as Prime Minister of Israel is not justified, then this applied even more powerfully to Mr. Biden.

According to New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, “Netanyahu Must Go.”

Why? This world-class journalist tells it like it is, or, at least, the way he thinks it is:

Israel must destroy Hamas as a military and political force in the territory while minimizing harm to civilians. It must do what it can to rescue its hostages without jeopardizing the overriding goal of destroying Hamas. It must, by diplomacy or force, push Hezbollah back from Lebanon’s southern border, so that 60,000 Israelis can return safely to their homes in the north. It must take the battle directly, as it did last week in Damascus, to Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s patrons, whether in Syria, Qatar or Iran. And for all of that to happen effectively, Benjamin Netanyahu must go.

I would like to offer a counter proposal: Joe must go! Why? This is because:

Israel must destroy Hamas as a military and political force in the territory while minimizing harm to civilians. It must do what it can to rescue its hostages without jeopardizing the overriding goal of destroying Hamas. It must, by diplomacy or force, push Hezbollah back from Lebanon’s southern border, so that 60,000 Israelis can return safely to their homes in the north. It must take the battle directly, as it did last week in Damascus, to Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s patrons, whether in Syria, Qatar or Iran. (I would only add the Houthis, so as to include all members of Iran’s triple H club; otherwise, I acknowledge, this is a pretty good shopping list on Stephen’s part). And for all of that to happen effectively, Joe Biden must go.

Joe is slowing down the destruction of Hamas with his continual whining and nagging about the collateral damage necessarily visited upon Gazans from this effort. And why, in turn, does this occur to the extent it does? This is due to the fact that these war criminals embed themselves in the civilian population. Hamas uses them, Gazan women and children, as shields.

Either this senile old coot (I should tread lightly here; Joe is younger than I am) wants the IDF to prevail in this war or he does not. Based on what he says out of one side of his mouth, he does. He often waxes eloquent about the unbreakable strength of the ties between the two countries. But, predicated upon his statements emanating from the other side of this aperture of his, that is the last thing he wants. Calling IDF actions “over the top” does not help at all to vanquish Hamas. It has the very opposite effect. Continually threatening a cut-off of aid to Israel, for example if it flattens Rafah the last redoubt of Hamas, has a similar effect.

What the U.S. President really wants is to be re-elected, and to do so he wants to keep both Jewish support and that of the Arabs centered in Dearborn, Michigan; he continually prevaricates from one side of his mouth to the other, having no real opinions of his own

One way of “minimizing harm to civilians” is not to conquer Hamas at all. Another is to fight these gangsters, scum and war criminals by engaging in more face to face combat. The problem here is that this needlessly and improperly sacrifices the lives of Israeli soldiers. The IDF has a comparative advantage in more technologically sophisticated modalities. Biden has not demonstrated that he gives a fig about such casualties, but Netanyahu certainly does.

Stephen’s recommends the use of “force (to) push Hezbollah back from Lebanon’s southern border.” But that cannot be done by “minimizing harm to civilians.” Where does this scholar think that terrorist organization places its rocket launchers? As far away from civilians as possible? He evidently thinks so, but has another think coming.

This New York Times theoretician also counsels Israel to “take the battle directly … to … Iran.” I applaud this contention of his. That country has for many years deserved a very serious response from the only fully democratic nation in the Middle East. But Joe almost went apoplectic when Israel moved in this direction by dispatching a few Iranian generals and other officers in an Iranian consulate located in Syria. These good folk were responsible for helping Hamas plan for their depredations of October 7, 2023. After Iran loosed hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on April 19 of this year, in an unprecedented direct attack, the Leader of the Free World (God help us) was shedding crocodile tears lest Israel respond (which, happily, they did, despite Joe’s remonstrations to the contrary).

No, Joe is a nudge, a pest, a cry-baby, a whiner and he MUST GO if ever peace is to be attained in the Middle East.

Stephens makes much of a so-called poor interview given by Nir Barkat, an Israeli Minister on MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough show. Our critic characterizes this as a “humiliation.” Stipulate that this was true (it was not) arguendo. Has Biden himself never given a disgraceful, inept, rumbling, fumbling interview? Not too often, it must be readily admitted, since his handlers hardly ever allow him to stray too far from the teleprompter. Happily, he can still read from it. We must however compliment Stephens for coming with a unique reason for firing a Prime Minister: one of his staff gave a poor interview. Give that man a medal.

But this hardly exhausts this author’s case against Netanyahu. It appears that Bibi is a weakling, akin to Neville Chamberlin who, some historians tell us, meekly and unsuccessfully gave away the store to Hitler. But wait. Isn’t the case against the Prime Minister of Israel that he is a loose cannon, all too ready to duke it out with the enemies of his country? How can he be both too cowardly and also too trigger-happy? Miracles can occur, it would seem, when you are intent on bring down the leader of an allied country, throwing whatever is handy against him, hoping that something, anything, will stick. Netanyahu derangement syndrome anyone?

The New York Times really ought to get some better editors.

There is, however, one problem with the foregoing critique of Biden (not Stephens). And, it is a BIG problem. If Joe goes, we get Giggle Girl in his place. On the one hand, nothing could be worse than Joe, so, perhaps, this would be a step up. On the other hand, God alone know what depths of “progressive” wokeness into which she would plunge us.

On the other, other hand, with President Biden’s recent stab in the back against Israel, the case for him “going” is rendered even more powerful, Giggle Girl or no Giggle Girl. Yes, Reagan and Eisenhower had also reined in Israel with all sorts of threats. The latter booted “the Little Satan” out of the Sinai Peninsula, after this territory was won fair and square. But there is all the world of difference between these previous acts of perfidy of the United States and this present one. Previously, Israel was bullied by the US after hostilities had ceased (as in the case of the Sinai), or during wars when Israel was clearly in the ascendency. Not so, nowadays, not with four battalions of Hamas terrorists still safely ensconced in Rafah, not while the still how who knows how many kidnap victims. If Israel cannot succeed in Southern Gaza, which seems to be Biden’s wish, then ISIS and other terrorist groups will adopt the Hamas technique of embedding itself in a civilian population, using them as shields, and then gaining support from dupes who cannot see through this evil practice.

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Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than 600 refereed articles in professional journals, three dozen books, and thousands of op eds (including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and numerous others). He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows. He is the Schlarbaum Laureate, Mises Institute, 2011; and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008) and the Mises Institute’s Rothbard Medal of Freedom, 2005; and the Dux Academicus award, Loyola University, 2007. Prof. Block counts among his friends Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. He was converted to libertarianism by Ayn Rand. Block is old enough to have played chess with Friedrich Hayek and once met Ludwig von Mises, and shook his hand. Block has never washed that hand since. So, if you shake his hand (it’s pretty dirty, but what the heck) you channel Mises.

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