Quote:Eddie Miller was as proud a U.S. Marine as they come. At just 23 years old, he drove a tank onto the black-sand beach on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, day one of a bloody 36-day battle in which nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines were killed. Another 20,000 were wounded. Marines captured 216 Japanese soldiers; the rest were killed in action. The island was finally secured on March 26, 1945. Eddie Miller was my dad.

In the years since my dad’s death, I’ve had myriad thoughts about what he and other members of the Greatest Generation no longer living would think about the state of America and its standing in the world, today. In some respects, I’m glad my dad and his fellow Marines, along with all branches of the service, who fought for — and so many died for — did not live to see what America has become, from moral decline to the left’s attack on America as we know it; the list is long.

As reported by Forbes on Friday, 79 years after U.S. Marines also won the Battle of Guadalcanal, the most inept president in at least modern history is rapidly losing Guadalcanal and the entire Solomon Islands — to Xi Jinping and Communist China.

The U.S. and China are in a showdown over a legendary World War II battleground. The Solomon Islands were the site of the Guadalcanal campaign, a bloody and heroic U.S. victory, led by the U.S. Marine Corps, which gave the Allies clear supremacy in the Pacific.

State Department officials are visiting the Solomon Islands this week in an attempt to best another Pacific foe: China. China announced yesterday that it signed an agreement with the Solomon Islands that would allow it to send law enforcement and security services there upon request.

The U.S. and its allies fear that this will allow China to establish a naval base or foothold. Understanding how this pact came to be offers lessons for U.S. policy in the Pacific.

We know too well how Biden does in “showdowns” with Xi Jinping and the ChiComs, not to mention our commander-in-chief (Biden is a travesty to the title) and his hollow sanction threats against Vladimir Putin’s threats to invade Ukraine — until it was too late.

While the Solomon Islands, in September 2019, made what is known as “The Switch,” ending a 36-year diplomatic relationship with Taiwan and establishing ties with China, as noted by Forbes, China now aggressively seeks to convince the few remaining countries that have relationships with Taiwan to back down. (Hong Kong was unavailable for comment.) Taiwan bars those countries from lucrative business deals and tourism with China.

So where’s the Biden administration? (Other than Clueless Joe lying about traveling with Xi Jinping in the foothills of the Himalayas, of course.)

Shortly after The Switch in 2019, Chinese companies began pouring money and “influence” — always cleared with the Communists in Beijing — into the group of islands roughly the size of Maryland, with a population of fewer than 700 thousand people. Why bother? As Forbes correctly observed:

China was surely eyeing the Solomons’ untapped mineral resources, as well as its deepwater ports that would allow it to block adversary military activity.

After violence engulfed the capital in 2021, China offered [Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare] a deal that would allow him to summon Chinese security forces to prop him up at any time.

Moreover, as noted by Forbes, a draft of the secret agreement leaked on March 24 allegedly reveals language than can easily be exploited by China to intervene in The Solomons’ democratic process and to achieve its own strategic goals, no doubt including docking warships and establishing a military base.

(Hong Kong was still unavailable for comment.)

The bottom line:

The developing story of the Solomon Islands serves as a warning to the United States, “led” by an addled president who catastrophically left Afghanistan, including abandoning untold numbers of Americans behind the lines of the most brutal terrorist organization on the planet, and, as I referenced earlier, issued umpteen failed threats of sanctions to Vladimir Putin.

The Solomons have become the canary in the coal mine — the Pacific Island states — and U.S. relations in the Pacific as a whole. Toss in increased Chinese belligerence in the South China Sea, and the thought of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. holding any of America’s cards is chilling as hell.

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We can't be everywhere. We can't keep countries from cooperating with their neighbors.