Uncle Joe Says ‘Why Can’t We Be More Like The Israelis?’ - Or Was That Madame Kamala?

A few weeks ago, President Biden authorized military strikes on Iranian-supported terrorist bases in Syria.  The press noted the action and assumed that while it might have little military significance per se, it would send a strong message to the Ayatollahs that America is still a player in the region.

Some observers were surprised at the action, given the President’s compassionate, considerate principles.  Negotiation, temperate discourse, and reasonable compromise were part and parcel of his mantra.  Most other critics who had been on the Washington beat for years or who were keen observers of Presidential governance, took Biden’s actions as the same old sabre-rattling done for a domestic audience repeated by president after president - fire a a few rockets into hostile territory to show the electorate that he means business. Targets are chosen carefully to avoid civilian casualties, to be so limited in scope that retaliation is unlikely, but to be loud enough for the world to hear.

President Biden had become increasingly aware of attacks by his critics that he was giving away the store.  He was, they said, making accommodating overtures to Putin, Xi, Kim, and the Iranian clerics out of a vain idealism and geopolitical ignorance.  He was giving up aggressive oil and gas exploration in favor of ‘the environment’ and in so doing ceding the European market to Russia. He was dividing and weakening the country by his a radical, highly contentious race-gender-ethnicity agenda while his adversaries were strengthening theirs through a consolidation of power, militant nationalism, and neo-imperial hegemony.  He was spending his way into deep foreign indebtedness, playing further into the hands of Chinese financiers.

It was time to set the record straight, and so F-15s and F-16s from the Central Command region were sent over Syria to hammer the enemy.  A press release after the strikes stated that the extent of civilian and military casualties was as yet undetermined; but White House planners knew there would be none.  The assets were to be munitions warehouses which when hit would send fire and debris into the night sky, seen for miles – a pyrotechnic display caught on fighter plane cameras to be shown on the world’s media but nothing more.

Yet, there was too much home-grown disturbance for any minor skirmish in the Middle East to make headlines.  To the frustration of border state governors, the Biden Administration was implementing a ‘Come On In’ policy which not surprisingly encouraged a flood of illegal immigrants.  Its environmental policy was responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs on pipelines, refineries, and transport and simply played into hands of foreign interests.  Its social policies of gender inclusivity and Critical Race Theory was enraging parents throughout the country who were finally speaking out against what they considered a deformed sexual agenda and an anti-white, anti-European hostility in the schools.  Punitive taxes would hobble the recovering economy and open floodgate spending would further beholden us to the Chinese. 

These and other issues were more than enough to drown out the rolling thunder of the Syrian strikes.  Not only that, the political opposition was beginning to feel its oats the more the Administration acted on Utopian impulse and radical progressive reformism and saw easy victory in the 2022 midterm elections.  Obviously bombing a few warehouses in the Syrian desert was not enough.

Despite her newly-minted progressive credentials, the Vice President, known in California to be a hardliner and a brutalizing Senator - her vicious performance in recent Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings was ironically likened to whipping slaves at the post – felt that she had the cover to take control on this issue.  Her president – who signed the military order to attack Syria not exactly sure what he was signing – could not be relied on to act more forcefully.  These days he was not too sure of what was what let alone the complex geopolitical situation in the Middle East.

She was a secret admirer of the Israelis who ‘don’t take no shit from nobody’.  They don’t blow up a few empty sheds and scatter old tank parts all over the desert, they destroy things.  They kill Hamas operatives, destroy their homes, reduce buildings to rubble, blow up power plants and reservoirs.  ‘The South shall never rise again’, said Sherman as he laid waste to everything in sight on his march to the sea and then up through South Carolina; and so says Israel about Hamas.  Why can’t we be that way? Kamala asked herself.

If only we could rain terror and destruction on our enemies, reduce their homes and businesses to rubble, and send fire from the sky.  Although she never spoke a word of this to anyone, Genghis Khan was her hero, a warrior leader who stormed out of the Mongolian steppes, whose soldiers raped, disemboweled, and beheaded anyone in their path.  Equally as secretly she hoped the former Redskins football team would change its name to The White Wolves after White Wolf, the Comanche chief who led a terrorizing, murdering tribe of braves against the white settlers who had invaded their territory.  White Wolf, like Genghis Khan, left thousands of bloody, beheaded eviscerated corpses in their wake.

She often stopped herself in mid-reverie.  Am I really such a person? Am I capable of such marauding misery?  Am I a macho man inside a beautiful black woman?

She went through the Defense Department military archives to see exactly how Ronald Reagan did it.  He invaded Grenada and Panama with impunity; and while he unfortunately got bad advice from his handlers and made a mess of Nicaragua, the people remember him for his victories.  

The Middle East is more complicated.  Do anything there and someone is ready to retaliate against US or Israeli interests.  On the other hand, the new Israeli government, even farther to the right than Netanyahu’s Likud, might be willing to entertain thoughts of dealing with Iran once and for all.  It might be time for an all-out preemptive military strike on Iran.  Do ‘a Sherman’ – forget strategic assets, destroy the very viability of the country, and teach the ayatollahs and the people of Iran a lesson they will never forget. 

Yet, letting Israel do the deed would deprive the Harris-Biden Administration the recognition and the glory; and after all, while it would certainly be a good thing to rid the world of a threatening Iran, the goal of the attacks would be to strengthen the world’s perception of the President’s backbone.  While progressives would whine and be nonplussed for a while, their angst would pass, and they would realize how Kamala had restored America’s greatness without threatening transgenderism or Black Lives Matter.

“Why are these maps in my office?”, asked the President when he saw maps of Iran with red pins in them on the walls. “Don’t we have computers for that?” but the Vice-President liked tactile, visual displays to which she could point, touch, and finger.  “For your ready reference, Mr. President”, she said.

The President took another sip of his tea – he loved drinking tea out of his ‘Sunrise’ mug, a gift from a little black girl from the Wilmington slums who had told him that he had given her hope -  and tried to pay attention to his Vice-President who was already circling the briefing table and laser-beaming potential Iranian targets on the map.  The President wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at – he would have preferred a video game format like the ones his grandchildren played, a lot more visual and easy to follow; but Kamala had her own ways of doing things. 

 “Now, Mr. President”, she said, pointing to a large yellow shelter symbol in the middle of the map, “this is the nuclear facility at Giah Mose which would be our first strike; but please remember that it would be followed by immediate destruction of all Iranian retaliatory capability including airfields, communications facilities, infrastructure, and command and control centers.  The Iranians will only be able to watch their nuclear plant go up in flames; or rather they would be able to see it if we hadn’t taken down their TV and cell phone capability”.

Biden was thinking of his boyhood in Wilmington, baseball on the green, riding old fat-tire Schwinns through the neighborhood, coming home to Carcy’s cold milk and cookies, and a warm hug from his mother.  Ah, those were the days, he thought.  Where were they now? The air in this room is stifling, sweat and perfume, when is this meeting going to end?

“Mr. President”, asked Kamala.  “Do you have anything to add?”

Add what, he thought?  He was reminded of the movie The English Patient with lots of scenes of the desert, such a romantic story with Almasy coming back to the Cave of Swimmers to rescue his love.  Dunes, ribbed sand, expanses of emptiness. “Mr. President?” again asked the Vice President.

“No”, he said, “carry on”, and he let her do her thing, strutting back and forth before the situation map, addressing her advisors, tapping the map, and listening to a strategic response.

“When will this be over?”, the President thought to himself; and soon enough Kamala declared the meeting over, the generals were dismissed, Kamala retired to her offices, and the President was finally happily alone with his thoughts.

The possible destruction of Iran’s nuclear capability and military and supportive civilian infrastructure never happened – an assault of that magnitude was overkill.  If she wanted to shore up the President’s macho image, she could do so with less – a more insignificant country a la Ronald Reagan.  Back to the drawing board.

And so it went.  Despite Kamala’s Rasputin shenanigans, President Biden survived the year; and was on the way to taking a beating in the 2022 mid-term elections, but for now he was even more dreamy and disengaged than before.  He was like President Eisenhower who played golf all the time and let the country run itself.  Ike was one of the most popular presidents in recent history, so sitting back and letting this great country run itself was not a bad way to govern; and of course he had Kamala to take care of things that needed attention. What a good choice, I made, he thought to himself.  A very good choice.