Experience isn’t always a good thing, especially if your “experience” consists mostly of a string of poor decisions and misjudgments. As Amir Taheri notes in today’s New York Post, Sen. Joe Biden’s foreign policy experience is not something he should be bragging about. In fact, Sen. Biden has been wrong on almost every major national security issue that he’s weighed in on during his nearly four decades in the United States Senate. Taheri explains:
* In 1979, he shared Carter’s starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights. Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, he opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialogue.
* Throughout the 1980s. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan’s proactive policy against the Soviet Union. Biden was all for détente – which, in practice, meant Western subsidies that would have enabled the moribund USSR to cling to life and continue doing mischief.
* In 1990, Biden found it difficult to support President George Bush’s decision to use force to kick Saddam Hussein’s army of occupation out of Kuwait.
* A decade-plus later, the senator did vote for the liberation of Iraq from Saddamite tyranny. But as soon as terrorists started challenging the new democratic system in Iraq, he switched sides and became a critic of the whole war effort. He claimed that the Iraq war was lost and suggested that the US partition the newly liberated country into three or more mini-states.
There is no more stinging indictment in defense circles than to be compared to President Jimmy Carter. According to Taheri, “By choosing Biden, Obama, the candidate of hope, has transformed his promise of change, into a back-to-the-future pirouette – back to Jimmy Carter.” It’s a good point. Can we really afford Sens. Obama and Biden in the White House and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on the Hill?
Very interesting points. Especially the point about his partition plan. I’d like to hear someone ask him if he still thinks that’s the best idea.
mcCain offered the surge, Biden offered partition. Quite a contrast.