Sen. Marsha Blackburn has penned a letter to President Joe Biden calling for National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to be sacked.
In the letter, she explains that Sullivan “has routinely misled the entire government about the status of security threats around the world.”
To bolster this argument, she proceeds to offer example after example, including the latest one from around eight days ago:
Appearing at an event, Sullivan said “the Middle East is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
“The amount of time I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today, compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11, is significantly reduced,” he added.
Yet, as Blackburn notes in her letter, “to date, over 1,200 Israelis have been killed, over 150 hostages have been taken from the safety of their homes, and at least 27 Americans lives have been lost, with at least 14 Americans still missing.”
“This is Jake Sullivan’s perception of a quiet Middle East. This is unacceptable,” the senator’s letter reads.
Indeed, just days after Sullivan made the dubious remarks, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and butchered over 1,000 Israeli men, women, and children.
But Sullivan hasn’t just been wrong in recent days. He’s been wrong since his days in the Obama administration.
“His policies of appeasement toward Iran have only emboldened the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Sullivan had direct influence in establishing the remarkably flawed 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal,” according to Blackburn.
And as President Biden’s national security advisor, Sullivan has “reinstitute[d] many of the mistakes from the failed JCPOA” by easing sanctions and refusing to enforce others.
The problem, the GOP senator notes, is that there’s no negotiating “with the savages of the Iranian regime.”
“The Iranian regime has no qualms with funding extremist terrorists, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, all of which seek to destroy Israel. We have seen Iran-backed Hamas murder innocent civilians, we have evidence that Hamas has beheaded babies and burned Israelis alive, and we are all aware that they are taking hostages for rape, mutilation, and murder,” she writes.
“Their actions directly mock every freedom-loving American. To stop their spread of influence throughout the region, we must immediately reverse course and reinforce our commitment on the sanctions levied against Iran. Anyone who thinks the appeasement of Tehran is an effective national security strategy must be removed for the sake of all Americans,” she adds.
Blackburn concludes her letter by stressing once more that Sullivan isn’t the right guy for the job.
“Sullivan’s deleterious mistakes with respect to Iran and Iran-backed Hamas only build on his earlier involvement in the administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. There, we stood by and watched the Taliban take over the country in less than two weeks,” she notes.
“We cannot have someone with his notable history of poor decision-making, and lack of critical insights, as the most senior advisor to the President on our nation’s security matters. Continuing to do so is misguided. You said it yourself, Mr. President – the United States must stand with Israel. Leaving Jake Sullivan in his current position hinders both Israel’s, as well as the United States’, national security posture,” she concludes.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this Sunday, Sullivan sought to quell the criticism by moving goalposts.
Listen:
“I made those comments in the context of developments in the wider Middle East region over the last few years, after two decades that involved a civil war in Yemen and a massive humanitarian catastrophe, a civil war in Syria and a massive refugee crisis, an invasion and insurgency in Iraq, a NATO military operation in Libya, Iranian backed attacks on both Saudi and the UAE, as well as many other steps, including the rise of a terrorist caliphate that actually occupied a huge amount of territory,” he said.
“The sentence before what you just played, I said, in fact, that this was for now, and that it could all change. And the two threats that I identified that were the most acute on my mind at the time were tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, as I mentioned, and the threat from Iran. So yes, it is true that those two threats remained a real challenge to the long-term stability of the Middle East region. And we’ve just seen this absolutely tragic attack, but at no point did the Biden Administration take its eye off the ball of the threats to Israel,” he added.
“In fact, President Biden saw Prime Minister Netanyahu just weeks before this attack to discuss the security challenges facing the state of Israel. And we’ve continued to support them to as significant or greater an extent than any previous administration,” he concluded.
Critics were not convinced:
Shows how disjointed & out of touch with reality that the @POTUS & his administration is.
— BPB87 (@BPB87_FB_BBQ) October 15, 2023
Either American intelligence was asleep at the wheel, or you stood idly waiting for this moment. What is it since you never took your eye off the ball.
— magaman45 (@ShawnStocum) October 15, 2023
FBI, CIA, DOJ took their eye off the ball to investigate Jan 6 and Trump. You would be naive if you don’t think we have Terrorists crossing our Southern Border. The Biden Administration continues to say “the border is secure”…they miss the HAMAS attack. No intelligence here.
— Cheryl Benskin (@Frio_river) October 15, 2023
Another hapless Biden admin official
Afghan withdrawal – bust
massacre in Israel – bust
China containment – bust
Ukraine Russia war – bust— Jaime Aguilas (@jaimeaguilas) October 15, 2023
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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