Biden’s Moral Failure Was Israel and Not the Pardon of His Son

Melvin Goodman

The mainstream media is largely ignoring President Joe Biden’s moral failure regarding Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza, but piling on unreasonably regarding the pardon given to his son.  Biden’s unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military campaign could not be more inconsistent with Biden’s overall humanitarian ideals over his long political career.  HIs support for Netanyahu is totally inconsistent with the president’s admirable and ethical 50-year political career, and his propensity for ignoring the plight of the Palestinians over his long career should be condemned.

Biden’s moral failure on Israel received a free pass from the mainstream media, but the response to the pardon has been outrageous and hyperbolic.  The timing of the pardon for Hunter Biden should have received more attention because it followed Trump’s naming of morally challenged men and women to key positions in his second term.  For the most part, these individuals have demonstrated total fealty to the vengeance and revenge that Trump will be pursuing.  Former representative Matt Gaetz has already had to step aside from consideration as Attorney General, and the naming of Pam Bondi as a replacement provides no assurance that the Department of Justice will not be weaponized to go after Trump’s “enemies.”

The naming of Kash Patel as F.B.I. director tells you everything you need to know about the wretches that have been selected thus far.  There is no reason for President Biden to allow his son to enter a cycle of jurisprudence that will be influenced by such corrupt and unworthy individuals.  And then there is the matter of a Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon or a Tulsi Gabbard as an intelligence tsar.  Has there ever been such a ship of fools that was supposed to govern the United States of America?

The mainstream media has been derelict in dealing with Trump and his followers for the past eight years.  The Washington Post’s masthead proclaims that “democracy dies in darkness.”  This turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy when the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, stopped the publication of an editorial that supported Vice President’s Kamala Harris.  The media have falsely branded Trump as “anti-war.”  This description is belied by the fact that former secretary of defense James Mattis was so worried that Trump would have a nuclear war with North Korea that he slept in gym clothes in case of an emergency.  Another indicator of Trump’s irrationality was the fact that Milley and Esper “only narrowly dissuaded” Trump from ordering 10,000 active-duty troops into Washington in the summer of 2020, according to Bob Woodward’s “War.”

Biden should extend pardons to many others who have been threatened by Trump and his minions.  Trump not only pledged to prosecute the Biden family, but issued additional specific threats to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, as well as to such Trump critics as former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  Milley certainly feels threatened by the supporters of Trump in view of the fact that he has installed bullet-proof windows in his house as well as blast-resistant curtains at significant personal expense.

Biden should consider pardons for two retired four-star generals who were critical of Trump: Special Operations commander William McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal.  In his first term, according to Woodward’s “War,” Trump threatened to recall both of them to active duty and court-martial them for disloyalty.  The list of enemies goes on and on.

I can’t imagine that any judge or jury would convict such public figures as Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, but they have been threatened as well.  And what about Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the true heroes during the Covid nightmare, whom Trump has called an “idiot.”  As a result of Trump’s ugly accusations aimed at Fauci, the good doctor has received credible death threats and, like other Trump critics, has been forced to hire security guards to protect himself and his family.

There is no precedent for the fact that virtually every key official from Trump’s first term has publicly proclaimed that he should never be returned to the White House and should not have even been placed on the ballot.  This list of luminaries includes former vice president Mike Pence, former secretaries of defense James Mattis and Mark Esper, former national security adviser John Bolton, former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.  Indeed, Trump’s appointees in the first term presented no challenges to confirmation; most of Trump’s current appointees should never be confirmed.

Overall, the mainstream media has been guilty of ignoring the profound political and ethical challenge that Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters represent to the interests of the United States and its citizenry.  For the past eight years, the press has treated Trump as a demagogue and a political aberration, and have tried to make sense out of Trump’s senseless rhetoric.  The New York Times’s view that the Biden pardon will make it “harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department” is particularly obtuse.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham got it right when he stated last month that Trump’s “contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.”  As a president and as a father of a family that has had to deal with more than its share of tragedy, Joe Biden had every right to pardon his son, whose legal problems were made particularly severe because he was the president’s son.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.