Scorched earth is one of the most brutal strategies in war. It can be an offensive or a defensive strategy and usually leaves a wasteland of destruction and starvation in its wake. It seems that Joe Biden, on his way out of the Oval Office, is using this strategy against America.
One of the most famous examples of an offensive use of scorched earth is Sherman’s “March to the Sea“ from Atlanta to Savannah from November to December 1864. Sherman not only burned Atlanta to the ground, but he also left a trail of destruction for a wide swath all the way to the ocean, everything from military targets to infrastructure to crops.
The obvious goal, of course, was to damage the military by impeding logistics and commerce. The larger goal was to break the morale of the South, to ensure that they lost all hope that they could ever win while showing them that their lives would be destroyed if they continued to fight. He succeeded in spades, and his campaign proved critical to the Confederacy’s surrender five months later.
The most famous defensive use of the policy was probably that of Emperor Alexander I when facing an advancing Napoleon during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. As the French advanced further, the Russian troops embarked on a campaign of taking whatever supplies they could carry, then setting fire to or destroying virtually anything that the enemy could use.
In Moscow, many buildings were spared because they were largely empty husks by the time Napoleon arrived. Having far outdistanced his supply trains and unable to live off the land, Napoleon began his slow retreat from a campaign that would leave 350,000 dead French on the fields of Russia.
Another use of scorched earth is retribution. The Romans in Carthage after the Third Punic War in 146 BC provide what may be the most famous example. Wanting to inflict revenge against the city that had loosed Hannibal on them half a century before and ensure their greatest rival never threatened them again, the legions leveled the city down to bricks, burned farms, forced citizens to relocate 10 miles inland, and barred them from rebuilding. Carthage would remain a desert for a century until Caesar recognized its strategic value and began rebuilding it.
Joe Biden, who, unlike Sherman, Napoleon, Hannibal, or Caesar, will be forgotten the moment he exits the stage, is nonetheless looking at the scorched earth policy with a keen eye.
Biden, the politician who’s never had a job that didn’t come from the government, has contempt for the Republic. For him, America, and in particular the government, is just a vehicle for accumulating power and money.
If there is a legacy to Joe Biden pre-Barack Obama, it is his destruction of the confirmation process for the Supreme Court. For most of our history up until that point in 1987, Supreme Court nominations were largely collegial processes that focused mainly on the candidate’s knowledge of the law and their qualifications for sitting on the bench. Joe Biden and fellow liberal urchin Teddy Kennedy savaged Bork for his conservative views and, as the New York Times suggested, the Bork nomination “in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics.”
From that point forward, politics was no longer an arena where ideas were debated as a sidebar to American life. From that point forward, Democrats shifted hard left, and in less than two decades, the cancer of the left would infect virtually every element of American life.
Joe Biden did that.
Not satisfied with ruining our economy, adding trillions to the national debt, and allowing 10 million illegal aliens to invade the country, on his way out the door, Joe Biden may be getting ready to eviscerate what’s left of our justice system and the rule of law.
Presidents have used their pardon power for years, with the most famous being that of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford. Last week, Joe Biden, despite saying he would not do so, pardoned his son for every federal crime he may have committed over the last 11 years, both those for which he had been convicted and those he had not. That ensures that the Trump administration cannot charge the younger Biden once it takes over the White House.
Biden’s pardon was unprecedented. Most pardons are for specific crimes, and while Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a similar blanket immunity, it was specifically tied to the dates he was President. The younger Biden’s, however, is far from specific and applies to no official duties. It just happens to coincide with the moment Junior joined the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, despite having zero experience in or knowledge of the energy business.
Controversial pardons are nothing new. Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican terrorists in August 1999 and, later, his brother. Still, Biden is said to be mulling doing something extraordinary: He may preemptively pardon the people who used the justice system to persecute Donald Trump and his supporters, including the treacherous Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff.
There’s also Anthony Fauci, the COVID liar, and General Milley, the traitor who thinks it’s his job to inform enemies of his Commander in Chief’s plans. There are undoubtedly many others he’s considering, including Mayorkas and Garland. And to top it all off, Biden is being encouraged to, and is no doubt considering, offer a blanket pardon to all illegal aliens in the United States.
Combined with the $2 million the DOJ paid Page and Strzok for releasing their text messages about conspiring to keep Trump from winning in 2016, what we’re seeing Biden contemplate here is a scorched earth destruction of the rule of law. Basically, one party is telling its stormtroopers they can use the police power of government to persecute their opponents with no limitations because if they succeed, their opponents never make it into office to hold them accountable. If they fail, their crimes can be pardoned before the enemy ever takes over. Heads we win, tails you lose…
If Biden burns down the Republic on his way out the door, Democrats had better take cover. The Constitution is, as John Adams said, “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Democrats have shown themselves to be anything but. If they see fit to torch it, they should not be surprised if the GOP doesn’t decide to stop playing the patsy, limiting themselves to the Constitution’s Marquess of Queensberry Rules. There’s a reason FAFO videos are so popular. Americans covet justice; Democrats flout it at their peril.
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