Biden the incredible

Etymologically, the word incredible means "unbelievable." That's a good description for Joe Biden, a confabulator who says whatever pops into his addled, Alzheimer'ed brain.

So much of Biden's rhetoric feels performative: He recycles the standard lines not to state policy or rally public opinion but simply to move on to the next question. Where he is most sincere, it seems to me, is his reluctance to deploy our forces abroad. Think of his Afghanistan withdrawal, and his self-deterrence vis-à-vis Russia in Ukraine. "I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there," he said in the final line of his Washington Post op-ed. "It's my aim to keep it that way."

That's the real Biden—the Biden who believes that he's been right on every foreign policy issue of the last half century, when he almost always has been wrong—the Biden whose credibility is shot. Should Israel and America's Middle East partners take him seriously? Look at his actions rather than his words. And if he fails to act, others should.