Fire the Insurrectionary Interns

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, December 06, 2023

 

The Biden administration’s refusal to outright oppose Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas has produced a backlash from deep within the civil service, and the “mutiny” is growing. First, it took the form of a Dissent Channel cable signed by roughly 1,000 unnamed civil servants within America’s diplomatic establishment demanding Biden impose a “cease-fire” on Israel. Later, another 500 staff and appointees from the tens of thousands of employees in agencies such as USAID joined the revolt. Despite the modest size of this rebellion relative to the number of civil servants in the executive branch, the administration was inordinately sensitive to this protest. “Some attendees cried” during what the New York Times called a “contentious meeting” between senior administration officials and a handful of dissenters. What objectors to Hamas’s destruction lacked in numbers, they more than made up in emotive hyperbole.

 

The internal rebellion is, apparently, only growing, and the Biden administration is set to face its toughest test yet: an insurrection of the interns.

 

According to NBC News, about 40 White House interns have joined the effort to apply what must be the most imminently resistible “internal pressure” on the president. “We, the undersigned Fall 2023 White House and Executive Office of the President interns, will no longer remain silent on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,” read the nevertheless anonymous declaration.

 

The document assails Israel’s “genocidal” response to the 10/7 massacre, demands the release of all “Palestinian political prisoners” in Israeli custody, and calls for an end to “the illegal occupation and Israeli apartheid.” The dissenting interns hail from departments ranging from the Office of Trade Representative to Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation to Presidential Correspondence, i.e., the mail room. That is to say that these recent graduates’ remits have nothing to do with the conduct of U.S. geopolitics. That’s due in no small part to the wisdom of our forebearers, none of whom entrusted the duties of the commander in chief of the armed forces to a precocious bunch of wide-eyed moppets. But the interns will not be constrained by little things like a job description. These youngsters seem to believe their selective White House internship is too small a platform for their egos.

 

NBC News’s Jonathan Allen’s effort to relate the scale of their betrayal is searing. These representatives of the next generation agreed to serve the president in the seat of American executive authority not because of the status it confers but, rather, out of a noble — indeed, self-sacrificing — commitment to the “values” they and Biden once shared. “Yet the clear implication of their words is that they don’t see him holding the country to that standard right now,” Allen remarked. The crushing shame of it. Joe Biden may never recover.

 

Addled by a troubled conscience, these interns wanted to make examples of themselves. The president should oblige them. Democrats are beset by a wildly unrepresentative but nonetheless loud and aggressive minority within their coalition who maintain that Israel should simply absorb the slaughter of its innocents and expect more of the same in the future. Many of these rabble-rousers inhabit the fringes of the Democratic coalition — they are out of reach. And the party’s more responsible leaders have shown neither the willingness nor the gumption necessary to sideline those who are undermining the administration’s position from their positions of influence or authority. Democrats have struggled to do what needs to be done: set a standard by throwing some of its most insubordinate elements under the bus. Until now.

 

What a gift these interns have granted the Biden White House! It’s hard to conceive of a lower-stakes conflict than the fight these trainee-level employees have picked with Joe Biden. Their defenestration would confirm their delusions of grandeur, sure, but it would also finally establish something that resembles consequences for the bottom-tier functionaries within Democratic politics who think it’s their job to set U.S. foreign policy.

 

The Biden White House has struggled to mollify the small number of weepy pencil pushers with whom they are surrounded because they cannot be appeased. They have profoundly misjudged their relative importance and do not understand their roles. Still, the administration has convinced itself they are representative of a broader constituency they cannot afford to alienate. That consideration doesn’t apply to this group of 40 youngins. They have served themselves up on a platter.

 

Fire the interns. If the courage of their convictions is so shallow that the 40 choose to remain anonymous, the administration should clear house. There is no shortage of eager and accomplished candidates willing to (key word) serve in the White House. By contrast, this crew isn’t satisfied with service. They want to be made martyrs. Who is Joe Biden to stand in their way?