Biden hopes while world despairs

At this moment in the world, badly-needed peace deals, commitments to military restraint, and compromises seem nowhere at hand.

As bombing, combat and civilian casualties continue in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah traded fire again on Tuesday, including an Israeli airstrike on Beirut. Thousands of people have fled from southern Lebanon with the two sides on the brink of all-out war. The Israeli government declined to rule out a ground invasion to its north.

Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that thousands of lives would be lost if Kyiv is denied permission to use western weapons deep inside Russia. And earlier this week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he is "gravely alarmed" by reports of a full-scale assault on North Darfur’s city of el-Fasher in Sudan.

That was the fraught backdrop against which President Joe Biden did his best to push optimism in his fourth and final address to the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York. He recalled that when he entered the Senate more than a half-century ago, attacks on Israel and the Vietnam War eventually gave way to such things as an Israeli-Egypt peace pact and a U.S. alliance with Vietnam.

"I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair," Biden said. "But I do not. I won’t. As leaders, we don’t have the luxury. I recognize the challenges in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond ... I truly believe we’re at another inflection point in world history. The choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come."

Biden's optimism is difficult to square with realities on the ground. U.S. actions have not ever ended the strife in the Mideast, and the costs — to the hostages and their families, civilians in Gaza, and Israel itself — are high. Still, he is right that negotiations must continue. 

Now, he said, it is time for Israel and Hamas to finalize a cease-fire deal negotiated with Qatar and Egypt and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. Biden wisely warned that a full-scale war is to nobody’s advantage, and correctly denounced violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. But in defending the Afghanistan withdrawal while appropriately mourning 13 Americans lost to a terrorist attack during that pullout, and in calling for preserving "the soul of democracy" and disputing those with "the desire to retreat from the world and go it alone," the still-president was clearly talking to U.S. voters choosing between his vice president, Kamala Harris, and ex-President Donald Trump, and asking Americans to stay the course he set.

Presidents have sweeping powers over foreign policy. The looming question for voters is whether they trust Harris or Trump to end the bloodshed in places where we have a national interest. Biden is right when he says any escalation in the Mideast will ultimately cost everyone. The unanswered question is how to avoid it at this point.