Toby Harnden: Biden on the wrong side of history
[Toby Harnden is the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC.]
Want to know how to deal with a momentous issue of war or grand strategy? You could do a lot worse than check out what Vice-President Joe Biden thinks – and plump for the opposite.
Mr Biden was chosen as Barack Obama's running mate last August because he was old, white and supposedly knew a lot about foreign policy. I say "supposedly" because really Mr Biden's overseas expertise amounted to having spent a long time as chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee, knowing the names of lots of world leaders, and being able to josh around amiably with them during congressional junkets across the globe.
What Mr Obama overlooked was that Mr Biden, who served as a senator for tiny Delaware for 36 years, had never run anything in his life, or taken decisions rather than talking about things, at legendary length. Even in the United States Senate, that august body which each week produces enough hot air to transport 1,000 six-year-olds across America, Mr Biden – who sports hair plugs and a set of porcelain-enhanced gnashers that would blind a polar bear – is renowned for his wordiness.
His speech is littered with the word "literally" and he glories in meandering anecdotes about his family and Irish ancestry. When Obama aides tried to muzzle him during the campaign, Mr Biden agreed but would then muse on the stump: "I try to cut this stuff down, not dumb it down, just get down to the quick of the matter, the essence of the matter."
Making fun of Joe Biden is a bipartisan affair. A quip about Biden being a windbag is guaranteed to bring a Democrat and Republican together in Washington.
Mr Obama himself even dabbled in it in February when he responded to a question about yet another Biden gaffe by saying, "I don't know what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly", prompting stifled sniggers from White House staffers at the back of the room.
A miffed Mr Biden used his weekly lunch with the President to ask him not to "diss" him in public. Mr Obama agreed, scheduling a photo op of the pair eating hamburgers together to demonstrate they were still buddies. The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgement.
On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. In 1990, he voted against American forces expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and advocated splitting it into three states along ethnic lines. He opposed the Iraq troop surge of 2007 that pacified the country and rescued the US from the jaws of defeat.
Now, Mr Biden is pushing a policy of what he terms "counter-terrorism plus" – a scheme which involves a much smaller military presence in Afghanistan, with al-Qaeda elements being targeted at long range by military drones and smart missiles...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Want to know how to deal with a momentous issue of war or grand strategy? You could do a lot worse than check out what Vice-President Joe Biden thinks – and plump for the opposite.
Mr Biden was chosen as Barack Obama's running mate last August because he was old, white and supposedly knew a lot about foreign policy. I say "supposedly" because really Mr Biden's overseas expertise amounted to having spent a long time as chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee, knowing the names of lots of world leaders, and being able to josh around amiably with them during congressional junkets across the globe.
What Mr Obama overlooked was that Mr Biden, who served as a senator for tiny Delaware for 36 years, had never run anything in his life, or taken decisions rather than talking about things, at legendary length. Even in the United States Senate, that august body which each week produces enough hot air to transport 1,000 six-year-olds across America, Mr Biden – who sports hair plugs and a set of porcelain-enhanced gnashers that would blind a polar bear – is renowned for his wordiness.
His speech is littered with the word "literally" and he glories in meandering anecdotes about his family and Irish ancestry. When Obama aides tried to muzzle him during the campaign, Mr Biden agreed but would then muse on the stump: "I try to cut this stuff down, not dumb it down, just get down to the quick of the matter, the essence of the matter."
Making fun of Joe Biden is a bipartisan affair. A quip about Biden being a windbag is guaranteed to bring a Democrat and Republican together in Washington.
Mr Obama himself even dabbled in it in February when he responded to a question about yet another Biden gaffe by saying, "I don't know what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly", prompting stifled sniggers from White House staffers at the back of the room.
A miffed Mr Biden used his weekly lunch with the President to ask him not to "diss" him in public. Mr Obama agreed, scheduling a photo op of the pair eating hamburgers together to demonstrate they were still buddies. The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgement.
On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. In 1990, he voted against American forces expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and advocated splitting it into three states along ethnic lines. He opposed the Iraq troop surge of 2007 that pacified the country and rescued the US from the jaws of defeat.
Now, Mr Biden is pushing a policy of what he terms "counter-terrorism plus" – a scheme which involves a much smaller military presence in Afghanistan, with al-Qaeda elements being targeted at long range by military drones and smart missiles...