Mamdani just latest mayor wannabe who thinks they can police the world

Should a mayor have a foreign policy?

It’s a curious thing to have.

After all, a mayor might have some control over the police force.

But they don’t have F-15s or B-2 bombers at their command.

So why do certain candidates talk as though they do?

This week the Democratic front-runner for mayor of this city, Zohran Mamdani, was in the news again for his foreign-policy positions.

These include his claim that if he is elected in November he will look to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he even sets foot in this city.

Mamdani has also suggested that he would also look to arrest the prime minister of India — Narendra Modi — if he comes to New York.

Of course if a mayor of New York did have any such powers, then it would be another reason to move the headquarters of the United Nations out of this city.

Apart from causing an annual traffic jam the length and breadth of Manhattan, the UN General Assembly always sees an interesting group of people arrive in town.

UN is here, remember?

For instance last year the “president” of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was in this city. From the stage on First Avenue, he managed to say with a straight face that “Iran has never initiated a war” and “has never occupied the territory of an nation.”

The people of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza, among others, might have watched for Pezeshkian’s nose to grow as he made these claims.

And the citizens of Israel — who were attacked by Iran’s forces on Oct. 7, 2023, might also marvel at the claim that Iran has never started a war.

But the unelected and dictatorial “president” of Iran was allowed to make these remarks anyway.

Another frequent visitor to this city is the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As well as the aggression that Erdogan consistently wages against the stateless Kurdish people, it might be noted that President Erdogan is also an occupying colonialist.

Specifically Erdogan and his government continue to illegally occupy the northern half of Cyprus.

Which is an European Union member state.

For some reason, I do not hear student-style politicians calling for the immediate arrest of Erdogan.

Any more than I hear the same people calling for the arrest of members of the loathsome regime that oppresses the Iranian people.

I wonder why people like Mamdani do not urge the arrest of the Turkish or Iranian leadership?

Mamdani pretends that he would have no choice but to arrest the elected leader of the world’s only Jewish state.

In a recent interview Mamdani said: “As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a city that — our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also.”

Show your math

I mentioned here last week how fantastically economically illiterate Mamdani is. He recently proved that he can’t even read a budget sheet and doesn’t seem to know the difference between public and private money.

Well here he is also demonstrating how legally illiterate he is as well.

Perhaps he should have spent the years in which he was trying to be a rapper mugging up on the law instead.

Indeed the degree that Mamdani did get from Bowdoin College — in African Studies — seems to have done nothing for his education other than make him think that it allows him to identify as an African American.

But I digress.

If Mamdani had spent even a few minutes mugging up on international law, he might have realized that this country wisely never signed up to the Rome Statute and is not a signatory of the International Criminal Court.

Americans from both sides of the aisle used to recognize that the ICC would become simply another corrupt and politicized international body.

So it has proven, with Amal Clooney and a corrupt British Muslim judge using their energies in the past year not to prosecute the leaders of Iran and their terrorist proxies, but the elected prime minister and defense minister of Israel.

That’s because the ICC is a joke, run by bigoted activist prosecutors who imagine that they are something they are not.

The whole court’s legitimacy is falling apart. And the decision of Democrats and Republicans in the past that no American soldier or statesman should ever be subjected to trial by a foreign court has been utterly vindicated.

As a result, this country is under absolutely no obligation to act on the whims or campaigns of the ICC.

And whether or not Mamdani ever becomes mayor, the state of New York is not going to suddenly become a signatory of the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC.

It’s all misdirection

So what is Mamdani actually doing with such actions? Two things.

Firstly he is signaling his own deeply prejudiced worldview.

By taking potshots at a Hindu prime minister and a Jewish prime minister, and singling them out for special treatment he is showing who he really is. Presumably he is hoping that his supporters either agree with him or do not notice this.

Secondly he is doing what failing mayors always do.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also likes to make pronouncements on the world stage.

Most famously he has repeatedly scolded the American public for daring to vote in Donald Trump as president.

Well guess what? It doesn’t matter.

The mayor of London doesn’t have a vote in the US elections, and all Khan is doing — like Mamdani — is grandstanding on the world stage because he has failed completely with what he is meant to do. Knife crimes, phone theft, bicycle theft and robberies are an epidemic in London.

But Khan doesn’t care to deal with those things.

It is the same with Mamdani. How will he make New Yorkers safer?

How will he clean up the subway or the streets?

We have yet to hear. Because Mamdani doesn’t know.

Watch for this rule of thumb.

Mayors grandstand on abroad when their home is falling apart.