Team Biden’s Insatiable Appetite for Embarrassment

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, September 05, 2024

 

Nearly eleven months into the war Hamas inaugurated on October 7, it seems to finally be dawning on the Biden administration that it’s also a war Hamas wants to prosecute. I would stress “seems” because this administration and its security establishment seem possessed of an insatiable appetite for self-deluded rationalizations and the disappointment that accompanies their failure.

 

The latest effort from the Biden administration to project feigned exasperation with the combatants in the Gaza War comes to us via Axios’s National Security Council whisperer, Barak Ravid, in a piece titled: “Hostage killings and new demands cast doubt in White House that Hamas wants a deal.”

 

Hard though it may be, we are asked to imagine that it is the blood-soaked Iranian terrorist proxy group that is the obstacle to peace here because it will not submit to an orderly surrender of all its leverage over Israel. If that’s a heavy lift for you, imagine the strain it has put on the Biden administration. “We still think the deal is the only way to save the lives of the hostages and stop the war,” one unnamed U.S. official told Ravid. “But the executions not only increased our sense of urgency but also called into question Hamas’ willingness to do a deal of any kind.”

 

More than two weeks ago, Politico published a similar delve into the psychology of the White House officials (very) gradually coming to terms with the fact that Hamas, not Israel, is the problem here. At the time, White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk was ready to be dispatched back to the region to “iron out the details of a deal” with a renewed sense of urgency. “If they cannot get Hamas on board, they may be out of options,” that report related.

 

They could not get Hamas on board, but that did not stop the president from retreating into what must be the comforting fiction that Benjamin Netanyahu is all that stands between Joe Biden and the Nobel Prize. “No,” Biden said simply when asked if, in the wake of the execution-style murder of six Hamas hostages, including an American citizen, Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a peace deal. And yet, not only had the Israeli government agreed to the conditions Biden floated for a temporary cease-fire back in June, it had agreed to the terms Biden outlined in January, March, April, and May in similar fashion. Know who didn’t? Hamas!

 

If there is a political strategy in the Biden administration’s performative exasperation, it’s hard to see its value. The White House has cast itself as an impotent, easily dismissed bit player in a drama over which it still maintains it has some control. Even now, the administration seems incapable of admitting to itself what most Americans already know: The terrorists who murder Americans without fear of U.S. reprisal are meting out near-daily embarrassments to the country and its president.