In New York City, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has been meeting with a group of Jewish and foreign leaders at the United Nations, where President Joe Biden delivered his last major foreign policy speech on Tuesday. Sullivan is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and is the Republican representative this week to the United Nations.
Sullivan wrote in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that this speech was Biden’s opportunity to correct his course of weakness against global despots who are sowing chaos around the world.
“It’s hard to deny that the world is more dangerous today than when he became president. There are many reasons for this, but the single most important course correction Mr. Biden could make is on his Middle East policy,” Sullivan said in the newspaper this weekend. His column is behind the Wall Street Journal paywall at this link.
“In his speech he should call on the U.N. to condemn and impose sanctions on the Iranian terrorist regime for acting as the architect of chaos throughout the Middle East and Ukraine,” Sullivan wrote.
Biden should also denounce the antisemitism that has pervaded the United Nations for decades and call out the organization for insufficiently condemning Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis, Sullivan wrote. The president should demand that the U.N. declare Iran-backed Hamas a terrorist organization and said Biden needs to denounce the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, some of whose employees participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Sullivan said.
Biden did not meet those expectations as he spoke to the hall filled with presidents, premieres, dictators, and despots from around the world. Notably, the leaders of China, North Korea, and Russia did not attend the meeting. Iran’s president did.
Instead, Biden used his time at the podium to deliver his swan song and defend his record. You can watch his speech on the White House Facebook page at this link.
Biden started by defending the Biden-Harris Administration’s disastrous execution of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, saying, “It was a hard decision, but the right decision. Four American presidents had faced that, but I was determined not to leave it to the fifth. I entered office determined to rebuild my country’s Alliance and partnerships to a level not previously seen.”
Thirteen U.S. military men and women died in that chaotic withdrawal. The August, 2021 attack on American forces was the deadliest for the country in over 10 years and took place days before the Biden-Harris Administration had planned a full withdrawal from the country, which Biden had allowed to be overtaken by the Taliban. The entire operation was an embarrassment to the country and made Biden appear to be weak and inept in his first year as president.
Biden, now nearly 82, then promised the U.N. that America will continue to support Ukraine as it fights against Russian aggression. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt destroy Ukraine and NATO failed.
“He set out to destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is still free. He set out to weaken NATO, but NATO is bigger, stronger, more united than ever before.” Biden said.
The outgoing president said Israel has the right to defend itself.
“Any country, any country, would have the right responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again,” Biden said, a reference to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on southern Israel.
Biden noted that innocent civilians in Gaza are also “going through hell.”
“Thousands and thousands killed, including aid workers. Too many families dislocated, crowded in a tent, facing a dire situation. They didn’t ask for this war,” he said, adding that he is “determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region.” He called on Israel and Hamas to accept a ceasefire, as introduced by his Administration last May.
Biden returned to the theme of climate change repeatedly during his speech.
Biden’s speech was followed on Tuesday by a speech from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Iran is an international exporter of terrorism and recently was implicated in a cyber attack on former President Donald Trump’s campaign computers, and has supported assassination attempts against Trump.
After the Biden speech ended Sullivan discussed his reaction of Fox News. He said Biden mentioned Iran just twice and climate change six times and showed the exact weakness that has fueled chaos across the globe.
“If that’s not indicative of the misguided policy priorities of the Biden-Harris administration, I don’t know what is,” Sullivan said.
Listen to Sullivan’s reaction in this 7-minute clip of the Faulkner Focus on Fox News:
