The quote in the title receives little media and political attention. It should, for it provides a strategic insight into the Biden administration’s worst policy disasters, foreign and domestic.
I call it the Biden administration’s Afghanistan Narrative Warfare Ploy, an attempt to deceive the American people and the world, with Biden-friendly media a complicit ally in the deception.
Now the Biden administration is attempting to hide its responsibility for its policy disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border and the subsequent illegal migrant crisis. Even Democrats now acknowledge the border crisis is a major political and economic problem that will damage them in the 2024 national elections.
Back to The Quote: On Aug. 31, 2021, Reuters published a partial transcript of a July 23, 2021, phone call between President Joe Biden and the Afghan government’s then-president Ashraf Ghani.
Before reading the quote, remember President Biden held and still holds command authority over all branches of the U.S. government. He bears leadership responsibility, especially in defense and foreign affairs.
Joe Biden, as reported by Reuters: “... I need not tell you (Ghani) the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
Translation for Ghani: Ignore the debacle on the ground and tell a rosy lie that politically benefits me, Joe Biden.
The statement is undisputed. Also undisputed: On July 23, 2021, the Afghanistan debacle was in full swing, and the Biden administration was denying it then, pivoting to blame any and all problems on former President Donald Trump.
Which takes us to Mexico City, Dec. 27, 2023, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka AMLO).
The State Department’s Dec. 22 press release hyping the Blinken-Mayorkas meetup with AMLO says—in self-important and arrogantly vague language—the principals will discuss the “unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways Mexico and the U.S. will address border security challenges ...” Blinken will also “reaffirm the U.S.’s commitment to the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection.”
That’s another giveaway The Ploy is being employed. The LA Declaration dates from June 2022 and ostensibly addresses controlling hemispheric migration issues. It abounds with noble words like “collaboration,” “solidarity,” “shared responsibility,” “partnership with civil society and international organizations,” et cetera. The lofty words are code justifying and masking the Biden administration’s open border policy. Revelatory declaration phrase: “the imperative of promoting safe, orderly, and regular migration ...” Rhetorical trick: Lumping all migrants in with “asylum seekers” and “refugees.”
Sane laws recognize the difference between the genuinely desperate and lawbreakers entering illegally.
The Heritage Foundation’s Simon Hawkinson wrote in 2022 “... the declaration does nothing to address the core problem: zero (law) enforcement at our border, which sends a clear signal to smugglers and would-be migrants across the Americas and the Caribbean that our door is wide open.”
That’s why the “irregular migration” Blinken bewails is unprecedented: President Biden’s wide-open door.
Wide-open it is, open for illegal migrants as well as human traffickers (often smuggling children) and drug smugglers. An estimated 8 million have illegally entered since January 2021, the month Joe Biden became president and stopped enforcing border-crossing laws.
In 2022, American border towns in Arizona and Texas were overrun and suffering, but leftish media largely ignored their plight. Now liberal Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” are screaming. The sanctimonious sanctuaries can’t afford to care for the illegal migrants. Their social welfare programs will go bankrupt.
More are coming. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 242,418 migrant encounters in November, 240,986 in October and 269,735 in September—a record. Encounters are just encounters—not apprehensions. As for returning border violators to their country of origin? Why, that was Trump policy, and racistracistracist (all one ludicrous word).
On the cusp of 2024, Blinken and Mayorkas are not in Mexico City to close the door. They are there to posture before the cameras, to urge Mexico to clamp down on “border security” and, to quote Joe Biden, “to project a different picture” so he can look like he’s doing something before next year’s presidential election.
Their job is to project the appearance of a solution to a problem President Biden created and would still prefer to ignore.
