After they lose, retire, or get pushed out, politicians tend, it is said, to become preoccupied with their legacies.
This cliché may be true since – driven by hubris and narcissism – former presidents and prime ministers try to shape their legacies by penning self-serving biographies describing their triumphs [many] and failures [few] while exercising the singular powers and prerogatives of high office.
I’m not sure, to be frank, whether US President Joe Biden has the time to publish an air-brushed account of his unremarkable four-year tenure as commander-in-chief.
But I believe that Biden, like anyone living out their twilight years, is apt to devote a moment or two to quiet reflection and, perhaps, introspection.
I think the seminal questions Biden is bound to be contemplating as he approaches his departure from the White House are familiar to many his age: What good have I done? How have I helped people who need help? How have I eased, as best I can, the suffering of others?
In the raw residue of the Democrats’ drubbing by a resurgent Donald Trump, Biden’s epitaph is largely being written by angry pundits and once-loyal allies turned finger-pointing detractors who fault him for that stinging defeat.
Biden, they insist, should have signalled much earlier his intention not to seek re-election and, as a result, allowed for an open primary where several candidates could have vied for the Democratic Party nomination for president.
A stronger standard-bearer may have emerged, or, at the least, Kamala Harris would have been better able to establish her identity and presidential bona fides.
Instead, Biden’s stubbornness and blindness sealed Harris’s and, by extension, America’s unhappy fate.
They could be right. They could be wrong. I don’t know.
This, I do know. Biden has a fast-closing window to wrest the “narrative” over his sullied “legacy” from the legion of miffed commentators and turncoat friends lobbing recriminations and blame at him today.
Seizing this one last opportunity to make good on a blatant wrong will require will and determination – the kind of will and determination that Biden has, to date, not demonstrated.
However slim and distant, there is always the hope, I suppose, that Biden will finally embrace the impulse to do the necessary and urgent thing and possibly end the genocide that is engulfing Gaza and the occupied West Bank with such grinding, relentless ferocity.
Every minute of every hour of every day, the already awful, apocalyptic conditions faced by besieged Palestinians in what remains of Gaza and the West Bank worsen. The halting scenes of devastation and despair are almost beyond comprehension.
Every minute of every hour of every day, more innocents – mostly children and women – are being killed, their bodies wrapped in white shrouds by surviving families whose grief is tempered by the knowledge that they will, in all likelihood, be the next to die.
Every minute of every hour of every day, more innocents – mostly children and women – remain entombed under rubble or succumb to starvation, disease and the dispiriting exhaustion brought on by one forced march after another.
Every minute of every hour of every day, Gaza and much of the West Bank has been erased, reduced to dust and memory.
And every minute of every hour of every day, innocent Israelis remain captive by Hamas and the imperial designs and parochial whims of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has – according to his sacked defence minister, Yoav Gallant – rejected peace deals that would have ended the wholesale agony months ago.
All along, Netanyahu has played Biden and company for chumps. He knew that America’s unqualified support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” – regardless of who occupies the Oval Office – meant that Biden and compliant company were obliged to approve of the destruction of Gaza and the West Bank.
The public spats over the scope and scale of the carnage have been rhetorical. Netanyahu understood that Biden et al were also obliged to provide the arms and money to engineer a genocide that has killed more than 43,000 [and counting] in a little more than a year.
Every minute of every hour of every day, Netanyahu has crossed each and every so-called legal, humanitarian, and strategic “red line” in pursuit of a “killing rage” that still burns hot despite Gallant’s admission that Israel has achieved, apparently, its military objectives.
“There’s nothing left in Gaza to do. The major achievements have been achieved,” an Israeli TV station quoted him as saying. “I fear we are staying there just because there is a desire to be there.”
There is one man who can disabuse Israel and, more particularly, Benjamin Netanyahu, of the “desire” to continue the “killing rage” – US President Joe Biden.
A deadline of sorts towards that merciful end has been set. It is November 12.
Biden, if he is to be believed, has told Israel that unless it takes tangible steps to relieve the humanitarian calamity in Gaza and the West Bank, it risks having the pipeline of American arms turned off.
Last week, State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, signalled the Biden Administration’s alleged displeasure with Israel’s phantom efforts to improve the catastrophic conditions rampant throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
NBC News reported Miller saying that “US demands on aid so far were ‘not good enough,’ and that its recommendations had ‘not been met.’”
Well, in 24 hours or so, the world will see whether Biden will keep his word or confirm that his belated warnings are just the vacuous posturing of a spent, lame-duck president whose leverage with Netanyahu evaporated on November 6.
Although I am pessimistic, Biden could surprise and use his pulpit and authority to put a recalcitrant Netanyahu in his place and demand that Israel’s “killing rage” end, and end now, in order to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.
If Biden fails to do what he promises, in part, to do, then his sorry legacy will indeed be fixed in history.
Joe Biden will be judged and remembered as a president who saw suffering and did nothing to heal it and enabled a genocide, rather than stop it.
Andrew Mitrovica
Al Jazeera columnist
