We will never know who, among the gunslingers of the Old West, was fastest. An important indicator, however, was not necessarily speed but accuracy. Perhaps another less obvious indicator is who survived their youth to die peacefully of old age.
For a serving president, being quick on the draw in decision-making is not necessarily an attribute. As with the gunslinger, speed is secondary to accuracy. While Joe Biden has survived his youthful political life to claim the Oval Office as the oldest president in our history to do so and although his decision-making has been speedy, it has lacked accuracy.
Sadly, voters failed to heed the warning of Robert Gates, secretary of defense under President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden, when he said Biden had been wrong on nearly every foreign policy decision he had ever made. Speedy decision-making on Biden’s part only expedites the embarrassment America suffers on the international stage.
We have already seen how Biden’s decision to quickly end our 20-year war in Afghanistan in time to celebrate that anniversary date was a complete disaster, leaving behind American citizens, Afghan allies and billions of dollars of military equipment plus mountains of cash. We also saw how, following the death of 13 American military personnel in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport, he made a quick decision, less than 24 hours later, to authorize a drone strike against an alleged terrorist perpetrator’s car that took the lives of an Afghan aid worker and seven of his children instead.
Apparently not dissuaded by his earlier snap decisions resulting in failure, Biden immediately took to the airwaves to condemn horseback-riding border agents who allegedly used whips against illegal immigrants from Haiti crossing the border into the U.S.
Biden said, “It was horrible what you saw. To see people treated like they did, horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you those people will pay. … There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment, but it’s beyond an embarrassment, it’s dangerous. It’s wrong. It sends the wrong message around the world. It sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.” Biden’s shoot-from-the-hip response was irresponsible, perhaps made in an effort to take the spotlight off the embarrassing decisions he had made earlier and for which anyone has yet to suffer the consequences of being made to pay. Outlandishly, a president who fails to utter a negative word about China or the Taliban freely condemns our border patrol agents.
Joining Biden in launching verbal attacks without verification were Vice President Kamala Harris, who likened the incident to slavery, and liberal members of Congress, such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
These critics all sought to energize their liberal base by pouring gasoline on the flames of attacks against the agents fanned by media photographs showing the agents on horseback, supposedly holding whips with which to strike Haitian illegal immigrants. None of these political leaders bothered to step back and ask themselves if this could really have happened – especially at a time human rights dignity was center stage in America. Why, at a time social justice warriors were going back hundreds of years to hold others in our history accountable for failing to embrace human equality, would border agents do this?
In reality, the “whips” agents were holding were the long reins any horseman, desiring to increase the animal’s pace, would use. Not a shred of evidence existed to show a whip was used against illegal immigrants. Yet even a furious secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was quick to jump on the border patrol condemnation bandwagon without substantiating media reports. Mayorkas exclaimed, “That is not what our policies and our training require. … We will not tolerate mistreatment.” Even when Mayorkas was challenged by liberal journalist Jake Tapper that the whipping assertion was “patently false,” he refused to change his tune.
The photographer who captured the images of the supposed “human whippers,” Paul Ratje, had reported the agents involved were not whipping migrants nor did he ever observe them doing so. He noted while it could be misconstrued looking at the photographs, that most definitely was not the case.
Rather than everyone, from Biden on down, awaiting an investigation into the accuracy of the whipping allegation, all charged forward to condemn the agents. As Mark Twain observed many years ago, “A lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Thus, the whipping lie will continue to unfairly tarnish the image of a federal agency that is already hard-pressed to do its job due to limited assets and a near historic high in the number of illegal immigrants entering the country.
Even former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, criticized Biden for his statement, saying, “He’s absolutely wrong and he needs to apologize to the American people.” She added, “How can they expect to have any kind of fair outcome to an investigation when the president of the United States has already declared their guilt and that they will be punished?” She explained that the incident is troubling for issuing judgment before the facts are known and that snap judgments that become media dogma are dangerous.
Seizing this negative publicity about our border patrol, the drug cartels are now advising smugglers to trigger agents into using excessive force, which can then be videotaped by the media. Their purpose is to either get such agents terminated or to make them less likely to do their job for fear of termination. Thus, the cartels seek to use Biden’s foolish and quickly tendered indictment against the border patrol, as well as a naive media, to their benefit. Agents have been warned that “they are on their own and to expect things to get much worse.” The cartels recognize that the agents are being left unprotected under the Biden administration, which already seeks to remove horses as a means of patrolling our borders.
Biden – and many others – owe our border patrol agents an apology. With this administration, it is unlikely there will be an awakening by which they come to realize quick-draw decisions lacking accuracy, once implemented, cannot be recalled. They leave innocent victims wounded, dead or unable to escape from Afghanistan. With the drug cartels riling up those illegals crossing over the border, at some point in time an agent doing his job will pay the price for doing so, simply because our president refused to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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