Woke and Weak: Biden Punishes Americans, Emboldens Adversaries | Opinion

While the Biden administration fixates on smearing political opponents as domestic terrorists and effectively silencing, targeting and pursuing them accordingly, bona fide terrorists, foreign adversaries and violent criminals have been greenlit to act with total impunity.

Consider the striking contrast in recent developments.

Earlier this month, the Biden Department of Justice announced it was building a new domestic terror unit, despite the fact it has never clearly demonstrated a commensurate threat. To put the purported peril in perspective, an FBI official noted there were four domestic violent extremist attacks in 2021, resulting in 13 deaths. By comparison, last year there were more than 800 murders in a single city, Chicago.

Officials have said the more urgent danger primarily derives from those espousing "racial or ethnic bias" or "anti-government or anti-authority sentiments." In practice, this has meant "critics of the regime." If you oppose federalizing elections and enshrining 2020's integrity-eroding measures, draconian COVID diktats or taxpayer-funded indoctrination in racial Marxism—critical race theory—you are treated as a threat, liable to be targeted with the brunt of federal force.

Shortly thereafter, the Biden DOJ—either bending to, or otherwise provided cover by, withering pressure from the Left to make the legal fallout of January 6 match the administration's unhinged rhetoric on the subject—charged several Capitol riot participants with sedition. For a sense as to how infrequently prosecutors have successfully made such a case, and the grave level to which a defendant's acts must rise in order to meet that charge, no one has been convicted of seditious conspiracy since 1995, when the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel-Rahman, and nine of his followers were so prosecuted. They were convicted for activities like conspiring in the first World Trade Center bombing, plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks, assassinating militant Zionist Rabbi Meir Kahane and planning the same for former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Meanwhile, new details emerged that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also colluded with the National School Board Association to concoct the infamous letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland used to justify siccing federal authorities on concerned parents outraged over critical race theory and anti-scientific COVID restrictions. The FBI even tags such "threats" with a handy label, "EDUOFFICIALS," to track them internally.

Wokeism demands subjugating the Unwoke.

Meanwhile, what of actual enemies of the republic? Well, unlike justifiably livid parents, apparently they are neither tracked nor pursued. In some cases, their malign efforts are even encouraged.

A British Muslim of Pakistani descent flew to New York, made his way to a Texas synagogue, and held hostage a rabbi and several congregants in an attempt to procure the release of an imprisoned jihadist, Aafia Siddiqui, i.e., "Lady al-Qaeda." The unsuccessful terrorist had a long rap sheet, history of mental instability, previously expressed Islamist views and allegedly maintained terror ties—a background disturbing enough to garner an MI5 investigation. Any one of these points should have prevented him from coming here. Yet he entered America unimpeded.

Perhaps the fact that President Joe Biden rescinded President Donald Trump's executive order calling for enhanced vetting measures targeting terrorists played a role. Perhaps it had something to do with the diversion of scarce law enforcement resources toward targeting Wrongthinkers. Perhaps it was just plain incompetence.

We do not yet know. But initial comments from FBI officials and the president provided insight into the administration's broader mentality.

One official initially said the Islamist was "singularly focused on one issue" not "specifically related to the Jewish community," and that "we are continuing to work to find [the] motive."

Got that? While you are on the side of Jefferson Davis if you support voter ID, or a potential terrorist for opposing total governmental control under pretext of a pandemic, the FBI does not want to jump to conclusions about what might have possessed an Islamist who sought to free a virulent Jew-hating jihadist serving 86 years in prison to hold up a synagogue.

Either authorities did not want to acknowledge that Jew-hatred and jihadism go hand in hand, or the purging of training materials that would have told them as much at the behest of the likes of the unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history, Hamas-tied CAIR—which, like the Texas terrorist, supports freeing Aafia Siddiqui to this day—has had its intended effect.

President Biden's initial response was equally dumbfounding:

I don't think there is sufficient information to know why he targeted that synagogue, why he insisted on the release of someone who's been in prison for over 10 years...[or] why he was using anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments.

Only later, after a major public outcry, did the FBI "clarify": "This is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted."

Our betters had already delivered their message: The Obama-Biden administration's Woke and weak "see-no-Islam" anti-counterterror policy is back. With it, jihad against the homeland, a blessed afterthought during the Trump years, is poised to return as well.

That same Woke and weak posture would seem to extend to other adversaries, as well.

The Biden DOJ dropped a case against an MIT professor, Gang Chen, accused of hiding his China ties while applying for a federal research grant.

The professor's indictment indicated he had held numerous positions "designed to promote [China's] technological and scientific development...often in exchange for financial compensation," including "acting as an 'overseas expert' for the [Chinese] government."

Prosecutors reportedly dropped the case because the grantor "didn't believe Mr. Chen had an obligation to disclose the posts at the time, and didn't believe [it]...would have withheld the grant if...[it] had known about them."

This isn't the only such case the Biden DOJ dropped. Last summer, prosecutors nixed several visa fraud cases against visiting researchers alleged to have hid their affiliations with the Chinese military.

Most prominent, last fall, as Xi Jinping demanded, prosecutors signed a sweetheart deal with Meng Wanzhou, the detained CFO and daughter of Huawei's founder, releasing her to China. In exchange for admitting to a series of lies she had previously denied regarding Huawei's alleged sanctions-busting work in Iran, for which she faced substantial charges, Meng was let off scot-free.

Every case should be judged on its own merits, but the broader trend of these dropped prosecutions must be seen as a sign of weakness—or, at minimum, incompetence—by Beijing.

As for Wokeness, the canned cases come as the Biden DOJ reviews the pivotal counter-espionage China Initiative under which it had pursued them. Left-wing activists and academics—to whom, as reported here, the administration has already acquiesced—have been lobbying the president to terminate that program since before he even entered office.

On Iran, the Biden administration continues its desperate pursuit of an Iran Deal 2.0 that will only further appease the world's leading state sponsor of terror by promising to ease sanctions that will fill its coffers, aiding, abetting and enabling the mullocracy, its sprawling terror network and its genocidal nuclear ambitions.

The administration continues this press despite a direct call from Iran's president for revenge on former President Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for taking out the former architect of Iranian terror, Qassem Soleimani.

There is a China link here, too: It is no coincidence that there has been a substantial uptick in Tehran-Beijing trade over the last year. Biden's weakness has invited sanction-circumventing behavior.

Russia, another burgeoning Iran partner, also appears to see weakness that it intends to exploit with aggressive action against Ukraine. How else would it have interpreted, for example, Team Biden's de facto support for Moscow's long-desired Nord Stream 2 pipeline?

To tie a bow on these events, Senate Democrats just used the "Jim Crow" filibuster on the administration's behalf to block sanctions on the vital Russia-Germany energy tie. And it was the purported treasonous Russian colluder Donald Trump, backed by the Russian stooge-turned-domestic terrorist MAGA masses, who had fought the pipeline's development tooth and nail.

In sum, the Woke Biden regime is making those who dissent from its orthodoxy enemies of the state, while our actual enemies pounce and seize.

Those enemies—non-state jihadists, China, Russia and Iran—are all on the march. Everything from launching missiles and threatening to restart long-range and nuclear weapon tests has been appeased and emboldened by weakness.

Wokeism would dictate appeasement, holding that America's evil justifies our adversaries' aggression; that justice demands redistributing global power to the oppressed.

The danger of Wokeness and weakness extends to America's streets, where violent criminals roam free as a consequence of the anti-police, anti-policing efforts that flowed from the post-George Floyd Woke anti-cultural revolution. Under the banner of justice, the law-abiding must suffer the rampant injustice of threats to life and limb. Murderers at home, like murderers abroad, have no fear of facing consequences for their actions.

Our national security is under threat not from those who disapprove of Joe Biden, but from Biden's Wokeness and weakness.

Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.