As we've previously noted here at PJ Media, Joe Biden's 2024 is off to a scandalous start. In the first two weeks alone, we learned that the Biden administration lied about having established an ethics agreement regarding the sale of Hunter Biden's so-called art and that Biden didn't know that his Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was in intensive care for days.
Biden did himself no favors with his terrible response to the Iran-backed Houthi attacks on cargo ships, initially refusing to designate them a terrorist group.
“Are you willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group, sir?” a journalist asked Biden last week.
“I think they are,” Biden responded, but he later told another reporter, “It’s irrelevant whether we designate them."
It's certainly not irrelevant, and Biden attempted to have things both ways by later kind of designating them a sort of terrorist group after launching military strikes without the approval of Congress after months of inaction.
I guess something is better than nothing, but the mixed messages from the White House are extremely problematic.
Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday:
Over the past months, Yemen-based Houthi militants have engaged in unprecedented attacks against United States military forces and international maritime vessels operating in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. These attacks fit the textbook definition of terrorism. They have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized global trade, and threatened freedom of navigation. The United States and the international community have been united in our response and in condemning these attacks in the strongest terms.
Someone alert Joe Biden.
In any case, it seems obvious that the White House was glad for the opportunity to have an international conflict to not only give the impression that Biden is in charge but to have a distraction from all the scandals plaguing him at home. And a distraction is all it appears to be.
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“These strikes, along with other actions we have taken, will degrade the Houthis’ capabilities to continue their reckless attacks on international and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden,” U.S. Central Command said Thursday.
But not according to Joe Biden. That same day, Biden admitted that his efforts to deter the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea weren't working.
"Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?" a reporter asked him before he departed on Marine One.
"Well, when you say 'working,' are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes."
Aren't you glad that this strategy isn't working but is going to continue anyway? That sounds exactly like something Joe Biden would do — especially now. His domestic agenda is a political loser for him, and now the guy who opposed the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden is hoping he can shore up his Commander-in-Chief persona by just launching a bunch of missiles and pretending to declare the Houthis terrorists when he didn't really because he can't upset his buddies in Iran.
Is there any reason to believe that Biden's military action against the Houthis isn't just for show — a distraction from his domestic scandals and the terrible economy? That's what it looks like to me. What's hilarious is just how bad of a distraction it really is. But if you're in the White House and you're looking at the polls and seeing Trump's return to the White House appearing increasingly likely, what else do you have?
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