Would someone buy a clue for Senator Joe Biden?
Speaking on behalf of Obama, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., who is rumored to be a strong candidate for vice-president or a potential Secretary of State in any Obama administration, followed Lieberman with an extensive rebuke of McCain, including a scathing assessment of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, which, he argued, is largely replicated by the presumptive Republican nominee.
“In recent years, Iran and not freedom has been on the march in the Middle East,” Biden said, adding that “radical recruitment is on the rise, not demise.”
Biden said the nation is less safe due to “the President and John McCain’s obsession on the war on terror” and criticized President Bush and Sen. McCain for “lumping together” the disparate factions in the region, evidence, he says, of their “profound confusion.”
“George Bush and John McCain have fixated on a small number of radical groups that hate America, turning them into ten-foot tall giants, existential monsters that dictate every foreign policy decision,” said Biden, who has taken on a more high-profile role in Obama’s campaign this week.
“If they can’t identify the enemy or describe the war we’re fighting, it’s very difficult to define whether we’ve won or lost,” Biden said.
Biden, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, also criticized McCain for putting too much emphasis on Iraq.
“If John wants to know where the bad guys live, come back with me to Afghanistan,” Biden said. “We know where they reside. And it’s not in Iraq.”
Biden also echoed Obama’s arguments for leaving Iraq and redeploying American forces to Afghanistan, which he said “will enhance, not diminish, our prospects for leaving behind a stable situation in Iraq.”
Sheesh – it’s no wonder Biden is slowly but surely becoming Obama’s right arm on Middle East foreign policy matters. He seems to know about as much about it as Obama himself, which isn’t saying much at all.
The Weekly Standard’s Dean Barnett slams Biden and other similarly-thinking Democrats:
I have a suggestion for the senator: Perhaps he could bring his newly benign assessment to our soldiers who are serving in Iraq and the veterans who have served there. It would surely come as a huge relief to our soldiers currently in Iraq that their work has suddenly become “bad guy free.” Perhaps Biden should also share his crass bad-guy-appraisal with all of the Iraqis who have stood by us and who, like our soldiers, have given and still are giving so much for that nation’s freedom.
We all understand that the Democrats have pivoted from Iraq-is-a-quagmire to Iraq-is-over, the better to pretend that Afghanistan has become their foreign policy obsession. Politics necessitates certain idiocies at times, and we are cognizant of this. But it would be nice if Senator Biden could perform his surrogate duties while maintaining an appropriate respect for our soldiers in Iraq and our Iraqi allies who continue to pursue a very dangerous line of work.
‘Nuff said.