This week’s achievements merit pause and reflection on the historic nature of a war brought to sudden halt, with every living hostage returned collectively.

Tweet

Now that Israeli troops have withdrawn from Gaza and Hamas has commenced fratricidal slaughter of fellow Palestinians, where have all of the anti-Israeli “Ceasefire Now!” activists gone?  

It’s almost as if they couldn’t care any less about Palestinian lives, and only valued the conflict as a pretext to spew the anti-Semitic venom raging within them.  

The subject of unending domestic and worldwide anti-Semitism, however, is a topic for another day.  

Instead, this week’s events more appropriately highlight the historic achievement of Donald Trump securing the release of every living Israeli hostage after 737 days, and bringing an intractable Middle Eastern conflict to a sudden halt.  

What a change nine months can make.  

Throughout the Biden presidency, I would occasionally ask his supporters to identify a single place across the globe or domestically that had improved under his watch and because of his policy decisions.  I was invariably met with blank stares, followed by rationalizations that the parade of horribles at home and abroad shouldn’t be attributed to Biden Administration mismanagement.  

Just one year into the Biden tenure, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine after Biden’s muddled words about “minor incursions,” commencing the bloodiest European conflict since World War II.  Biden subsequently withheld sufficient weaponry and admonished Ukraine against retaliating deep into Russia, leading to a grim stalemate secured only by Ukrainian resourcefulness and tenacity.  

Emboldened by Biden Administration weakness, Hamas launched its horrific assault against Israel one year later, killing over a thousand people and seizing hundreds of hostages.  Another protracted war ensued, as Biden demanded restraint from Israel rather than effectively pressuring Hamas to return the hostages – some of whom were American – and cease hostilities.  

Elsewhere under Biden’s watch, China acted with increasing aggression and confidence.  It provocatively flew warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone, tested American responses and even violated American airspace as we watched in real time.  That humiliated Biden, who reacted weakly and dismissively as global confidence in U.S. potency eroded.  

Peering further backward, Barack Obama’s incompetence yielded its own array of crises.  Previewing its invasion of Ukraine under Biden, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, brazenly violating Europe’s post-World War II order.  Obama answered with his trademark rhetorical admonitions, but no decisive countermeasures.  In the Middle East, the gruesomely sadistic ISIS metastasized even while Obama irresponsibly dismissed it as nothing more than “junior varsity.”  His neglect allowed ISIS to instead spread across vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, terrorizing and destabilizing the entire region.  

Over a sixteen-year period since 2009, the U.S. thus suffered through two administrations – Obama’s and Biden’s – during which not a single theater involving American interests improved.  In each case, the world did not drift into disorder by accident.  Rather, it drifted because the Obama and Biden Administrations erred, delayed or deferred.  The vacuum created by those two administrations was naturally filled by aggression, with deadly consequences.  

By way of contrast, disregarding the juvenile – and discredited – rhetoric labeling President Trump some sort of lapdog to Putin, Trump actually wiped out hundreds of Russian mercenaries who threatened a U.S. military base in the Middle East.  Russia did not retaliate, nor did it invade a single neighboring country on Trump’s watch.  

In the Middle East, Trump’s aggressive action suffocated ISIS, depleted Iran of resources, destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities and decapitated its militant leadership instead of placating its regime in the manner of Obama and Biden.  

To resolve the war in Gaza, Trump reversed Biden’s strategy by supporting rather than maligning Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.  Trump encouraged Israel to win the war and eradicate Hamas rather than manage it, and cultivated an environment that left Hamas no option but to release the hostages and agree to Israel’s terms.  

And now, we’ve witnessed a hostage release and cessation of hostilities that seemed too good to be true.  

Here’s the kicker.  Less than nine months into his presidency, Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize.  

For what?  Good question.  

Whatever one’s opinion on whether Trump deserves that award, there’s no reasonable case that Obama did.  

In any event, this week’s achievements merit pause and reflection on the historic nature of a war brought to sudden halt, with every living hostage returned collectively.  

All thanks to Donald Trump, who on that basis alone has made the world a better place in a way that neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden ever did.