‘Biden-Era Foolishness’: National Review Roasts Trump Over ‘Ridiculous’ Promise to Defend Qatar
(Alex Brandon/AP photo)
National Review joined a chorus of conservatives displeased by President Donald Trump’s unilateral promise to defend Qatar if it’s attacked, excoriating the president’s decision in an editorial published on Friday.
Under the headline, “Qatar Does Not Deserve Trump’s Unilateral Security Guarantee” and subheader, “Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy took a remarkable turn this week,” the right-wing magazine observed that “In 2022, Joe Biden labeled Qatar a major non-NATO ally.”
“Americans may have been under the impression that the second Trump administration was intent on reversing Biden-era foolishness, but now Trump is compounding Joe Biden’s folly by unilaterally extending a promise of U.S. blood and treasure to defend an anti-American petrostate in the Persian Gulf,” it continued, twisting the knife.
While attributing America’s pledge to defend NATO allies to its longstanding friendships in Europe, the editorial observed that “Qatar, on the other hand, though it hosts a major U.S. air base and other military facilities, does so as part of a deliberate strategy to cozy up to both the United States and Islamist jihadis of all stripes,” before enumerating its sins:
Indeed, Qatar materially supports Hamas (and the Taliban, which harbored al-Qaeda and made war on America for 20 years), and it is a principal proponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and its loathsome Sunni Islamist ideology. What’s more, it is an ally of the Shiite jihadist regime across the Persian Gulf in Iran. Qatar is the home of Al Jazeera, which propagates the sharia supremacist worldview, and, as part of a deliberate campaign to increase its soft-power influence over America, it has spent billions and billions of dollars in this country.
“As president and commander in chief, Donald Trump has undeniable power to conduct U.S. foreign policy as he sees fit. If he wants to tell the Qataris they have an American security guarantee, no one can stop him,” concluded the piece. “But to imagine that it’s a security guarantee on a par with NATO’s Article 5 is ridiculous. So is the idea that Qatar is a friend of America.”
