Sullivan composed a long essay on the Middle East in mid to late September called The Sources Of American Power. It appeared in Foreign Affairs in their print edition, and it came out before the 10/7 attacks on Israel by the Iranian poxy, Hamas, in Gaza. The essay was a spiking of the football, of sorts, where Sullivan took credit, along with the President and the rest of the feckless national security team currently in power at the White House, for how stable the Middle East allegedly had become on their watch.

From the print article, Sullivan makes the overarching claim, again just days before the pogrom in Southern Israel hunting down and killing Jews wherever Hamas could find them.

The region is quieter than it has been for decades. The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident… [Biden’s] approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region…

This false bravado was backed up by a TV appearance for the Atlantic, wherein Sullivan made the same claim.

Now that we’re a little over three weeks on and we’ve seen Hezollah dusting off their rockets, the Houthis launching long-range missiles provided to them by Iran that we’ve had to intercept, and about 50 different attacks on U.S. troops at bases all over the Middle East by Iranian-directed proxies, quieter isn’t exactly the word someone credible would be using to describe the region.

Sullivan then deleted four other passages from the print version of his essay for the online version of article which was published last Friday. Foreign Affairs, to their great shame, allowed NSA Sullivan the do-over of sorts, and ran with the edited version in an effort to disappear the first draft. Here’s what is no longer in the original essay.

“The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.”

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[When Biden became president], “US troops were under regular attack in Iraq and Syria…Such attacks, at least for now, have largely stopped.”

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[Biden’s] “disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that US interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis.”

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“We have acted militarily to protect US personnel, and we have enhanced deterrence, combined with diplomacy, to discourage further [Iranian] aggression.”

No admissions from either Sullivan or Foreign Affairs that the essay was altered, no admission that the policy assessment was wrong, no admission that by trying to scrub the first version without any transparency, U.S. credibility, not to mention Foreign Affairs’ credibility, goes out the window.

Instead, Jake Sullivan pulled three-fifths of a Ginsberg, appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, ABC’s This Week with Martha Raddatz, and CNN’s State Of The Union with Jake Tapper. I watched all three interviews in their entirety. Not one of the hosts asked Sullivan about the edits to his essay, how he got things so wrong, or if the necessity of changing the essay meant they are rethinking their Middle East strategy. Not a word. It makes one wonder if the agreement to appear was contingent upon the hosts promising not to bring it up. Sullivan did not appear on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream, or on Meet The Press with Kristen Welker. Perhaps they wouldn’t consent to memory holing the first draft.

The crisis in Israel, with the IDF beginning to move people and equipment into Gaza in earnest to root out Hamas terrorists as a backdrop, was the focus of the three interviews Sullivan did give. Remember the stated policy, regardless of whether the president is a Republican or Democrat, is that there’s no daylight between Israel and the United States. That policy was very much in doubt when Barack Obama was president. In Joe Biden’s case, however, his actions certainly question that “no daylight” policy, but at least his rhetoric, for whatever that is worth, keeps to the tradition of backing up our greatest ally.

Margaret Brennan asked him directly if there’s daylight between the U.S. and Israel with this incursion. The correct answer is, “No. Israel is well within their rights to destroy the terror threat on their border and make sure nothing like this can happen again.” That’s not what he said. He said we’re having conversations like friends do. When he says “conversations”, adversaries to both Israel and the United States around the world hear “disagreements”.

This is Jake Sullivan tells me that there’s daylight while trying to say there’s no daylight between the U.S. and Israel. “Israel says” this is their strategy. If there was truly “no daylight”, Sullivan would remind the audience of the atrocities of 10/7, and that no nation can tolerate that kind of terrorism conducted on it, and it has to be removed, root and branch. When Sullivan says Israel says, that’s him saying it’s their strategy, not ours.

Not just threats, Jake. Actual attacks. At least 30 of them to date since the 10/7 massacre. Our response thus far? We took out a terrorist fuel depot. The deterrence of “Don’t” doesn’t seem to be deterring anyone from anything at this point.

With Martha Raddatz on This Week, Sullivan talked about the Americans held hostage by Hamas.

Highest priority, huh? Is that like the top men in charge of the Ark of the Covenant Indiana Jones found? I wonder if the families of the hundreds of Americans stranded in Afghanistan by Joe Biden care to react to the Biden administration’s prioritization skills.

You know how one loses the information war? When the side engaging in the atrocities are not called out by the top ally of the country attacked. Sullivan could very easily have made a moral statement about all the anti-Semitic protests on campuses around the country, aided and abetted by Democratic members of Congress and legacy media. He chose not to do that. He instead said this is a problem that’s been going on for a long time, but regardless of who’s right or wrong, Israel has to make sure they don’t go Dresden on Gaza. Not once has a member of the administration publicly told Hamas they overplayed their hand, they’re evil, cease and desist, and surrender or else. Co-Press Secretary John Kirby has come the closest to speaking clarity to who’s the bad guy in all this, but that was one fleeting comment in one press conference. You want to win the information war? Be clear about who the modern-day Nazis are, denounce all those that are siding with the modern-day Nazis, and say that message over and over again. Instead, Sullivan continues with what is too often the case with Democratic administrations. The heavy hand of rhetorical pressure is always on Israel to not respond in too severe a manner.

To Jake Tapper on CNN, Sullivan made this statement.

Sure, Israel was attacked, but the onus is on them to not kill any innocents. You’ll notice that every one of the people killed or taken captive by the Hamas Nazis were innocents. Not a word from Sullivan about that.

We’re negotiating with Hamas. Sullivan just described them as using human shields, which violates any rules of warfare in the world. And we’re negotiating with them. We’re discussing a financial settlement for American hostages. How much are Americans worth? Iran took five hostages. We gave them $6 billion dollars to free them. Before the check even cleared, Iran’s proxies took at least a dozen more Americans hostage on 10/7. We’re not even convinced how many, but if it’s a dozen as is estimated, does that mean the price tag is now $14 billion? Or will the number be higher because of Bidenflation? Can you imagine if in 2002, it was reported that the Bush administration was in negotiations with the Taliban, or if Donald Trump’s team were coming up with the number for a money transfer to ISIS in 2017?

Finally, Tapper asked several times if Sullivan believed Israel was going about this, their response to the attacks, the right way. Again, applying the “No daylight” doctrine, the answer would be unequivocally, yes. That’s not what we got.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told Hugh Hewitt a little over a week ago that at least with the Jimmy Carter administration, which itself was a failed presidency by every conceivable measure, that administration was humble enough to admit when it got things wrong, and changed the policy.

Look, Hugh, you and I never thought we’d look back on the Carter years as the good old days, but that’s where we are right now. I mean, Jimmy Carter watched Angola and Mozambique and Nicaragua fall to the Communists. And he, the Russian-backed proxies, and he still naively believed that Russia could be dealt with, the Soviet Union could be dealt with, and could be a friend. Once they invaded Afghanistan, Carter had a change of heart. He had the humility and the integrity to come out and say I was wrong about the Soviet Union. He boycotted the Winter Olympics, and Harold Brown, his Secretary of Defense, started what became the Reagan Defense buildup. But it started in the last year of the Carter administration. This administration isn’t showing the same humility. They’re not showing the same ability to learn lessons from their behavior, which started in Afghanistan as you pointed out in the last segment, and has continued since. They really need to come out and say look, we’ve tried to appease Iran. We tried to make Iran a responsible stakeholder in the Middle East. We gave Iran billions of dollars, and they took that money and used it to support terrorist proxies around the region from the Houthis, to Kata’ib Hizballah in Iraq, to the Assad regime in Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Gaza, and many more. And we were wrong, and this now time to confront Iran. I hope for America’s sake, they do that, and they take a page out of Carter’s book and then take Iran as our adversary in the region and start supporting our allies.

I share Ambassador O’Brien’s desire that someone within the senior foreign policy team would turn the page on bad policy and offer up something different. Thus far, especially after listening to Jake Sullivan, no one is turning the page. They’re scrubbing and rewriting the text on the existing page so as to not look politically ridiculous.