Is the US declining under the Biden administration? - opinion

• Author: SHMULEY BOTEACH
• Published date: 04 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The humiliating departure from Afghanistan, followed by a catastrophic attack that mistakenly killed 13 innocent people whom American intelligence could not distinguish from ISIS-K told the world that the vaunted American military is rudderless. Our NATO allies were appalled that we had abandoned Bagram Air Base without so much as informing them.

In last week's testimony before Congress, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin both said they had advised President Joe Biden to keep at least 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. But Biden insists he was told no such thing.

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Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

Then there is the economy.

Nearly every week the Biden administration seems to propose spending another trillion dollars. Yes, that's trillion with a "T." America's GDP has now been overtaken by the national debt, meaning the gross domestic product of an entire year of the American economy could not pay off the national debt, even if every single dollar was directed toward it.

There is no end in sight to the spending, as Biden has concluded that he has to out-Obama even Obama himself by becoming hostage to the Democratic Left, which insists on cradle to grave benefits. Employers are desperate for workers. But with the government paying people more to stay at home than to go to work, who is silly enough to take a job?

THIS IS not mere politics. There is a religious and values dimension to all of this.

First, a great power like the United States has a responsibility to protect the weak and the vulnerable. We had only 2,500 soldiers left in Afghanistan, and we had not had a combat death there in 18 months. Why did we have to remove every last soldier so that the odious Taliban could revert to its brutal suppression of Afghanistan's women?

Which female living in America would say it wasn't worth keeping a small force of just 2,500 soldiers to protect tens of millions of women?

Isn't that one of the reasons God gives nations great wealth and power so that they can expend a small part of it protecting the defenseless? What happened to Leviticus 19, "Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor"?

And this, of course, is beside the fact that those soldiers were also protecting us against al-Qaeda reconstituting itself and attacking the American homeland.

Then there is...