(Akiit.com) In February 2002, asked at a news briefing about the lack of evidence linking the Iraqi government to supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld provided an interesting analysis. He explained, “We know there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. …”
Simplified, Rumsfeld’s point was: “We know what we know and know what we don’t know, but also don’t know what we don’t know.” Applying such logic to presidential candidates today, there should be no “known knowns” unknown to them, especially to one with eight years’ experience as vice president. However, for Joe Biden, several “unknown” known knowns exist.
Commenting recently on CNN’s “New Day” news program, Biden proffered a 2020 Donald Trump win means NATO will cease to exist based on the president’s “dissing” our allies.
“We need allies,” Biden said. “He is absolutely dissing them. He’s embracing thugs. He is embracing Kim Jong-Un, who’s a thug. He’s embracing Putin, who is a flat dictator. … He is stiff-arming our friends. He’s threatening NATO, to pull out of NATO. …”
Biden reported a former German chancellor complained, “We have to go it alone. We can’t count on the United States.” Then, raising the 2016 presidential election Russian meddling issue, Biden queried, “You think that would happen on my watch or Barack’s watch? … I promise it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”
(Known known spoiler alert: The Russian meddling Democrats cite as undermining Trump’s presidential legitimacy, if true, would have to have occurred on Biden’s watch.)
Biden’s statement above suggests there are other known knowns he conveniently forgets.
While claiming Trump abandons allies, Biden ignores one we deserted on his watch in Egypt in 2011. As civil unrest erupted, President Barack Obama abandoned a key Middle East ally, President Hosni Mubarak, embattled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama recognized the Brotherhood – which technically then and still today, based on the 2010 declaration of its Supreme Guide Muhammad Badi, remains at war with us. No clearer example exists of abandoning an ally. (Another known known: Our war footing with Iran today stems directly from President Jimmy Carter abandoning a staunch ally, the Shah, in favor of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.)
While criticizing Trump for embracing “thugs,” Biden ignores his support for a thug of his choosing – China’s President for Life, Xi Jinping. Any foreign policy expert knows a simple known known: a country’s “president for life” essentially is a dictator. At least Putin has to run for re-election; Xi does not.
Biden is on record unequivocally saying China poses no threat to the U.S. He dismisses it rationalizing, “They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the … west. They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks … they’re not competition for us.”
Suggesting of China’s leadership “they’re not bad folks,” Biden exhibits blissful ignorance. As domestic dissent has risen under Xi’s rule, China’s domestic security spending has been increasing. Additionally, as Biden joins the Democratic presidential candidates’ chorus complaining about mistreatment of illegal immigrants to the U.S., he fails to mention China holds an estimated one million ethnic Uyghur Muslims in “re-education” centers established to counter extremist thought – centers that are actually forced labor camps. Perhaps Biden takes comfort in believing their camp guards are “not bad folks” either.
In disregarding concerns about China, Biden seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel. A short but impressive Chinese training video might awaken him as to its military prowess. Also of concern is “Sleepy Joe’s” recent approval of China’s purchase of an American university’s satellite campus in New Jersey.
Biden’s cry of ally abandonment recalls another known known: his position after the 1975 fall of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War. Especially intriguing in view of the Democratic Party’s push for open borders now is that the leading voice back then, claiming no U.S. obligation existed to assist thousands of South Vietnamese refugees who helped us during the conflict and feared for their lives, was Senator Biden. How can he suggest today we owe assistance to illegal immigrants who have done nothing to help us when he believed we owed nothing to South Vietnamese refugees who risked their lives to help us?
Another known known about embracing thugs was obvious when Biden announced his candidacy. He embraced the ruthless Antifa thugs, calling them “courageous” Americans. Days later, the FBI reported these courageous Americans plotted to buy guns from a “Mexico-based cartel associate…(to) stage an armed rebellion at the border.” Perhaps encouraged by Biden’s endorsement, Antifa now intimidates and attacks innocent victims during protests, cowardly masking their identities in case a “criminal act of opportunity” arises.
There is a more personal known known Biden treats as unknown. His son, Hunter, kicked out of the US Navy Reserves for cocaine usage, has been tied to numerous shady business dealings both during and after his father’s tenure in office. These include dealings with China and the Ukraine that have brought him a great deal of wealth–some of which, Hunter’s ex-wife claims, was spent on hookers and drugs. He also is now the subject of a paternity suit filed by a woman from Arkansas. But Biden refuses to answer questions concerning Hunter’s transgressions.
Clearly, in America today, we face threats of both a foreign and domestic nature. The candidate elected in 2020 will be confronting threats of a known known, known unknown and unknown unknown nature. We simply cannot gamble away our future by electing someone incapable of understanding the most basic of these. Hopefully, an obvious known known for voters will be Biden’s inability to so grasp them.
Columnist; Lt. Col. James Zumwalt