Missing Those Good Old Alternatives to Trump? Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

Given the leftwing hysterical responses to all of Trump’s thirty-day-old initiatives, let us remember what just a few months ago were the alternatives.

1) War. The Biden non-strategy for the Ukraine war was to provide enough aid for Ukraine to continue, but not enough to win and incite nuclear Russia.

There was scant talk about the humanitarian questions of 1.2-1.5 million Ukrainian and Russian dead, wounded, missing, and captured. The implicit but unstated Biden intention was to fight the war endlessly to the last Ukrainian, if need be, or until the Putin regime was fatally bled out. No one knew exactly how much money we gave to Ukraine, given President Zelensky claimed what he had received and what was purportedly given to him were off by many millions.

It was until recently taboo to note Zelensky had canceled elections, habeas corpus, opposition parties, and independent media. In Zelensky’s defense, our media said Churchill did not hold elections until the last few months of the Pacific War. But they omit that he did hold elections during a world war—and lost! Moreover, Churchill did not cancel habeas corpus or ban opposition parties as is now true in Ukraine.

Europe’s previous strategy was to talk tough, do little, and hope the U.S. would handle the negotiations—until it did that and thus could be damned for doing so. Biden treated Europe as if it had met its treaty obligations under NATO’s rearming requirements, was an equal partner in supplying Ukraine in its wars on Europe’s borders, and was indifferent to its $230 billion trade surpluses and asymmetrical tariffs.

Under the previous administration negotiating with the monster Putin was deemed far worse than allying once with a 20-million-murdering Stalin or formerly courting the greatest mass murderer in history, Mao Zedong.

As for the war against Israel, the Biden policy was to keep trying to overthrow the Netanyahu government, threaten it with arms cutoffs when back on the offensive, restore aid to Hamas, and court Iran with hopes of a new Iran deal, while letting it get rich on oil sales to subsidize Hezbollah and the Houthis. They got a theater-wide war for their efforts.

2) Border. The Biden policy was to keep it wide open, lie that it was closed, and damn anyone as a xenophobe and racist who opposed 12 million unaudited illegal aliens swarming the country.

Do we remember Biden’s impounding of congressionally approved funds? Yes, Biden did that by refusing to continue building the wall despite a congressional mandate and funding resolution to build it.

Worse, he let the already delivered steel rust or sold it off. The Left complains now about the “billions” of dollars needed to deport criminals and other illegals—never the vast hundreds of billions of dollars over the last four years to house, provide health care, and feed twelve million who entered illegally, for the most part without high-school diplomas, English, skill sets or criminal background checks.

No one knows when or if the Biden administration would have ever stopped the influx—at 15, 20, or 30 million more illegal aliens. Or when there were neither any left in the jails of Venezuela and Colombia nor impoverished in southern Mexico?