Juan Williams: Biden must rebut GOP attacks on war

Pay attention to the politics of war — inside the United States.

The wildest GOP attack against Biden now is to blame him for starting the war.

But so far most Americans — including most Republicans — say Putin is to blame.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month reported nearly 70 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Republicans, say Putin is responsible for the death and destruction in Ukraine.

“I don’t think Vladimir Putin would have moved on Ukraine were it not for the weakness displayed ― certainly by the Biden administration, but by the West in general,” Johnson told Fox News.

Haley also pointed to Biden’s effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal. And Haley suggested Biden’s approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany was also a trigger.

The next biggest push, so far, is to try to blame Biden for rising gas prices.

Biden gave a head-on response to the GOP’s libel by calling the rapid increase in gas prices since Russia invaded “Putin’s price hike.”

That is not stopping the GOP assault.

A New York Times factcheck concluded last week “these claims are misleading.” The “primary reason” for the increase in gas prices, the paper noted, was the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic disruption that it caused.

The Biden White House directly pushed back on GOP claims by pointing out that there are thousands of permits for drilling in the U.S. that have yet to be used by oil companies.

Right now, 71 percent of Americans support Biden’s decision to ban Russian oil imports to the U.S. even if it leads to higher gas prices, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

That includes 66 percent of Republicans who agree Americans should make a sacrifice to ensure Russia pays for its unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

But it is early in the Ukraine war.

As fighting drags on, Democrats worry bipartisan support could fade even if Biden responsibly manages America’s foreign policy.

Since Biden took office, the right wing’s steady assault has led to 91 percent of Republicans disapproving of his performance as president, according to Quinnipiac.

A similar but slightly smaller percentage of Republicans, 76 percent, disapprove of how he is handling the war. The strong negativity among Republicans results in a split decision in overall public opinion of Biden’s war leadership, with 42 percent approval and 45 percent disapproval.

What happened in Afghanistan stands as a painful reminder for Democrats.

An overwhelming majority of Americans over more than a decade told polls they wanted an end to the longest war in U.S. history.

Biden got it done. He even managed to evacuate a record number of people. But the GOP trashed the long overdue withdrawal because 13 Americans in uniform tragically died in a terror attack at the airport in Kabul.

In my lifetime, I have seen presidents pay a price for war.

After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, American initially supported a war on terror led by a Republican, President George W. Bush. When that effort went astray in Iraq, voters gave control of Congress to the Democrats at the 2006 midterms.

Now as commander-in-chief, Biden is understandably hesitant to call out Republicans for playing politics with foreign policy as the nation faces the possibility of World War III with a nuclear Russia. 

But some Democrats worry that voters’ memories are short-lived. That is especially true of partisan GOP voters who do not want to be reminded of Trump’s obsequiousness to Putin, which emboldened the Russian dictator.

No president should ever play politics with America’s foreign policy. But Democrats would be foolish to ignore the potential for a political storm at home over this crisis.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.