Robert Gates, 80, is the distinguished former secretary of defense under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Before that, he spent 26 years in the CIA, which he headed, and was a member of the National Security Council.
Do not include him among the 51 disgraced intelligence officials who signed the deceitful letter calling the suppressed Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation during the 2020 election.
Throughout Gates’ career, he got to know Joe Biden well, both when Biden was a U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and when he was Obama’s vice president.
He summarized his opinion of Biden’s expertise on foreign policy in his book, “Duty, Memoirs of a Secretary of War,” published in 2014.
He said he liked Joe Biden personally, but “I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Asked if he still believed that on the eve of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won, Gates, who oversaw the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush and Obama, said, “I think I stand by that statement.”
And in 2021, he said he was sickened by Biden’s botched and humiliating 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan that cost the lives of 13 U.S. service members, a mistake that did not need to happen.
It was a sign of weakness that damaged America’s reputation worldwide and emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine and Iran to back Hamas to invade Israel.
One only wonders what Gates must think now following the Iranian-sponsored murderous invasion of Israel by its Hamas terrorist proxies in Gaza, which it has financed after Biden indirectly paid the mullahs in Iran $6 billion in ransom money to free five Americans held hostages.
The U.S. and Qatar have agreed not to act on any request from Iran to access that money for the time being, the Associated Press is reporting. But it is not a full refreezing.
Biden’s appeasement of Iran, like former President Barack Obama before him, knows no end. Biden also released five Iranians held in U.S prisons.
Gates warned us that Biden was incompetent.
When Biden rescinded the strict economic sanctions placed on Iran by President Trump, he only made Iran richer. And it has done nothing to stall Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon that Iran has vowed to first use on Israel and then on the United States.
Iran under Trump was reeling. Iran under Biden is rocking.
The Iranian support of the Hamas terrorists does not even take into consideration the $80 billion in military equipment that Biden left behind when he cut and ran in Afghanistan.
One can only speculate how many of those 42,000 pickup trucks and SUVs, the thousands of Humvees, or the 64,000 machine guns — to name only a few items — Biden abandoned in Afghanistan that have ended up in the hands of Hamas terrorists.
One can also only speculate how much of that $6 billion headed to Iran has allowed them to use other money on hand to supply the rockets and missiles it rained down on Israel to start the war.
Yes, Biden does support military aid to our strong ally Israel, which has long been U.S. policy. But he also provided indirect military support to Iran, our enemy, by lifting the sanctions and gifting them billions that had been held in escrow.
And each time Biden bows to Iran, the mullahs there thank him by chanting, “Death to America” after they finish chanting “Death to Israel.”
All of this is a pathetic attempt to get Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table to restore the 2015 nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that Obama approved but that Trump thrashed.
As if Iran is going to abide by anything it signs.
Think what you will about Trump, and there is a lot to think about. But there were no wars when he was President. China and Russia were held in check, and he had Iran on its knees.
Trump warned Iran of major retaliation if it killed a single American. Iran’s proxy Hamas has killed so far killed 27 and Biden has not responded.
Joe Biden’s massive blunder in Afghanistan led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.
And now Biden is supplying both Ukraine and Israel with massive amounts of American military aid to protect their borders while the wide-open U.S. border with Mexico remains unguarded.
The only entity that seems to be functioning under Biden is the U.S. military arms industry.
We should have listened to Bill Gates.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
