Biden's Foreign Policy Strengths

For a long, wide-ranging, and frank interview with Biden on foreign policy, go here. His ego is on full display, but so is his experience and analysis. Here is an account of his trip to Romania by an impressed U.S. Ambassador.

But a large part of foreign policy is being able to see in advance the consequences of our actions. That's what the judgment question is all about. As for his judgment in seeing in advance the big issues of recent years, Iraq and terrorism, here is what I found:

IRAQ

He voted to authorize force so that Bush would have the backing he needed at the U.N, but he understood that the threat of Iraq was exaggerated, that we would need U.N. support, and that the post-war recovery period would be difficult and up to a decade in duration. At the moment before invasion, he cautioned that Bush was going to war recklessly and without leveling with the American people about the costs. His greatest mistake seems to have been trusting Bush with war powers.

08/04/02 - USA Today

"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," said Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The only question is, is it alone, is it with others and how long and how costly will it be?"

09/12/02 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., issued the appeal a day before Bush's speech on Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush is expected to ask the Security Council to compel Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. It is not clear whether he will say the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq if the Iraqi president refuses to comply.

Biden, in remarks to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said he will be "extremely disappointed" if Bush lays out a unilateralist approach in his U.N. speech that conveys the message, "`The world be damned, here we go.' That is not in our interest," Biden said.

He said Iraq has biological and chemical weapons and is trying to add nuclear capabilities. But he said he sees Saddam as someone who would give up his weapons in order to retain power and is not bent on destroying the world.

10/10/02 - Senate floor speech quoted in USA Today on 02/08/07

"There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals," Biden said on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002.

Biden warned in that speech that "one-third of that population (in Iraq) hates the other two-thirds of the population. They say Iraq will quickly be able to organize itself politically, economically, and militarily, into a peaceful, unified nation, free of weapons of mass destruction. The American people need to know that most experts believe Iraq will require considerable assistance politically, militarily, and economically. Indeed, they say we should speak not of 'the day after,' but of 'the decade after.' "

Fall 2002 - recounted by David Corn in December 2006

Before the vote, Biden tried to craft a bipartisan alternative to the White House resolution that would have partly restricted Bush's authority. That effort failed. Discussing the final bill on the Senate floor, Biden described Iraq's WMDs as a threat to the United States—but he noted that this threat was not immediate and that Iraq was not in league with al-Qaida. He said:

We have time to deal with that problem in a way that isolates Saddam and does not isolate the United States of America, that makes the use of force the final option, not the first one, that produces the desired results, not unintended consequences.

And he claimed Bush believed this, too: “That is the course President Bush has chosen.” Biden hailed Bush's recent decision to ask the U.N. for a resolution that would demand that Saddam accept new inspections. “Thank God for Colin Powell!” Biden exclaimed. As for what might happen after an invasion, Biden said,

There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals. There is only one thing I disagree with in the President's speech on [October 7]. He said what could be worse than Saddam Hussein? I can tell you, a lot... This is a much more complicated country than Afghanistan.

Biden noted that there would be plenty of challenges in post-invasion Iraq, that meeting them would be tough and costly, and that chaos in Iraq could lead to regional warfare involving Iran and Syria. Bottom line: Biden had a handle on the nature of the threat posed by Iraq and the potential consequences of an invasion; he failed to suss out that Bush was committed to war.

11/11/02 - Meeting with The Trotter Group as reported in USA Today

In separate meetings last week with members of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's national security adviser, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the lame-duck chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, differed over virtually every aspect of this looming conflict.

"The guys who have to fight this war don't think it's a good idea," said Biden, the Senate's leading Democrat on foreign affairs. To buttress his point, Biden recounted a recent conversation he had with an unnamed chairman of one of the military services, who told him that a U.S. war with Iraq would be "the dumbest thing in the world."

Rice, however, rejected the suggestion that any key military leader doesn't back Bush's Iraq policy.

Republicans took "something that nobody, including the president, believes is an imminent danger and moved it up in the election cycle," Biden said of the war resolution Bush got Congress to adopt shortly before this month's midterm elections. (Biden said that after his own more restrictive resolution lost support, he reluctantly backed the one that passed to give Secretary of State Colin Powell the leverage he needed to get the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would slow the Bush administration's rush to war.) There is "zero evidence that Saddam has cooperated with al-Qaeda," Biden told the black columnists.

Rice differed sharply with Biden on this point. She compared Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Saddam's government, she said, "has supported terrorism and harbored terrorists," and as a consequence the Bush administration must be "concerned about the potential union of terrorism, extremism and weapons of mass destruction" because "bad guys travel in packs."

12/10/02 - Larry King Live

And really, Larry, what we found whether we were talking to anyone from our military, and we met a lot of generals in addition to Franks in the region, all the way to, you know, Palestinian reformers and everyone in the region was, It's not going to be the day after, it's going to be the decade after.

And they want to know, are we in for the long haul? Are we going to make sure that country isn't going to disintegrate? It's going to be a very tough job. And establishing a democracy, as the administration is talking about, is going to be a monumental task.

What they really want to know is, If you're going to go get him, are you going to finish the job? And they don't mean just take him down. They mean -- they mean stabilizing the situation after he is taken down.

...

I think the president's got it just right. He's playing this out the way he should play it out because, quite frankly, Larry, the one thing we don't want to do is we don't want to be an occupying power after we take down Saddam. We got to have other folks in on the deal.

We have to have this a civilian run operation somewhat like Kosovo after the fact with U.S. and coalition forces backing it up. Otherwise we're going to be there as the sitting ducks.

And so it's very, very important that we all stay together and the closer we're together, the more the president's in on the deal with the rest of the United Nations, the more likely it is that Saddam is going to yield. It's not likely, but it is more likely.

12/20/02 - Washington Post Op-Ed (with Hagel) titled "Iraq: The Decade After"

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.

02/07/03 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that before any military force is used, the United States should seek U.N. support.

"While we can win the war on our own, we are much better off with the support of the United Nations," Biden said, adding that post-war efforts will require help from "as many countries as possible." Biden and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that Bush needs to explain to the American people what war with Iraq will require in terms of monetary and personnel commitment.

"I don't think many Americans understand the scope and the magnitude" of what a war will mean, Biden said.

9/11

On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks of September 11th, Biden warned that the Bush Administration was focusing too much on missile defense and not enough on terrorism. At the National Press Club, he said:

“Sure, we’ll do all we can to defend ourselves against any threat — nobody denies that — but even the joint chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We’ll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vile in a backpack. And I ask you, if you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us, with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it, and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying “it came from us, here’s where we are”? Or, are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things.

“Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now, we don’t have the investment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union — the former Soviet Union and Russia — because they don’t know what to do with it. They showed us a report where they showed us photographs of things that look like outhouses, clapboard — clapboard buildings with no windows and padlocks on the door, that have been many chemical weapons in that building, could destroy the bulk of the East Coast, and we’re not spending the money to help them corral and destroy that in the name of this search. The cost estimate was $30 billion over 10 years in this bipartisan commission and it was listed as the most urgent threat to the United States of America.”

Who Benefits from a Consensus for Withdrawal?

Michael Crowley says McCain because it allows him to shift the debate from his unpopular advocacy of a long-term stay to who will be better at wrapping up.

Polling shows that McCain is basically even with Obama on Iraq. On other foreign policy issues, McCain leads by a wide margin. On practically every other issue, such as economic policy, Obama leads. Therefore, Iraq is a drag on McCain's only strength. If McCain can get Iraq out of the way, he has a cleaner shot at Obama on foreign policy.

Terrorists as Criminals

Yglesias cites a new Pentagon-funded study in defense of Kerry.

“I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

Let's all pray that this is true.

Neither Liberty nor Safety

The Fourth of July was a time for pure patriotism.

However, on this, the sixth day of July, allow me a little criticism. At a time when we are eager to abandon the values of the Declaration of Independence and shred the Constitution in fear of a band of criminals, we should remember that those documents were written and signed by men who were almost certain to fail in their revolution against the most powerful empire in the world and be executed as a result.

Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" was not just a slogan. It was a gravely serious decision. But Franklin's quote is strikingly applicable to our current debates. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

From warrantless wiretapping to suspension of habeas corpus, people have been alarmingly willing to sacrifice liberty for safety. In addition, endorsing actions such as torture sacrifice other important values to the cause of fighting terrorism.

In a very good column shortly after the attacks of September 11th, Dan Kennedy and Harvey Silverglate warned against sacrificing civil liberties in the fight against terrorism. I worry how much farther we will go in the event of another, perhaps more devastating attack.

The goal of terrorism is right there in the name - terror. It is possible that Bush has given Osama bin Laden exactly what he wanted with the invasion of Iraq. We know that bin Laden once wanted oil to reach its current price of $144 per barrel. Our reaction to terrorism must be prudent, but more importantly, our reaction to terrorism must be consistent with our values.

While we should aggressively pursue terrorists both militarily and in the criminal justice system, the most effective way to combat terrorism is to refuse to live in fear. Terrorists will always have the capacity to take our lives, but they need our help to take our liberties and our values.

As Long As They're Not Muslim Terrorists...

they're A-OK with McCain. Matthew Yglesias:

Carl H. Lindner Jr. is a businessman who recently co-hosted a big dollar fundraiser for John McCain. He also oversaw the payment of about $1.7 million to a terrorist organization. But that's okay because (a) the terrorists were Latin American rather than Arab, (b) the terrorists were right-wing Latin Americans rather than leftists, and (c) McCain is a straight-talker and the candidate of honor so it's not actually possible for any number of sleazy associations to taint him.

RE: This should be fun (Bush's legacy)

A friend recently compared Bush to Lincoln. I laughed out loud. The Truman comparison is only slightly less ridiculous.

Andrew Roberts analogizes that both Truman and Bush will have left office with extremely low approval ratings and a foreign policy that has been judged a failure. He goes on to predict that, like Truman, Bush will be regarded as a great president. The analogy should be of no comfort to Bush's supporters. Truman was unpopular, and his foreign policy deemed a failure, because of the Korean War. Truman's handling of the Korean War is still considered a foreign policy failure. Truman is considered a great president because he was, in retrospect, successful in other areas. Surely Andrew Roberts, a historian, knows this. I can only assume he is being dishonest.

On to the merits. The article gives this pretty good summary of Bush's supposed positive legacy.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

Hussein was an awful dictator whose removal from power is a good thing. No reasonable person ever denied that. It remains to be seen whether Iraq will become a liberal democracy. I would say the odds are still against that final outcome.

Even if that is the outcome, it came at great financial cost to the United States, with great sacrifice on the part of many soldiers and their families, and with great loss of life in Iraq. Will a liberal Iraq be worth it? Additionally, the disregard for diplomacy leading up to the war badly strained our international relationships.

The conduct of the war is nothing to be proud of. If we have a stable and peaceful Iraq, it will be in spite of - not because of - Bush's leadership. He went in with too few troops. He then stuck by Rumsfeld well after it was clear that Rumsfeld was not up to the task. The surge, the impact of which I believe has been overblown by the right in an effort to take more credit for recent progress than Bush or McCain deserve, was not even Bush's idea. Finally, he authorized torture and other abuses of power for which I will forever be ashamed of my country.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a no-brainer. I give Bush no credit for that. Further, instead of seeing that project through, he diverted attention to Iraq. The author credits Bush with "the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere," so why is Osama bin Laden still putting out tapes? Did Bush disrupt al Qaeda? Maybe. Smash? Not so much. I would expect any president to have at least overthrown the Taliban and disrupted al Qaeda. You don't get credit for doing the minimum.

In the article, Andrew Roberts says we should give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack after 9/11. According to Roberts, if there is a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center during the first year of a president's first term and none during the rest of his two terms, he has responded to the threat as well as possible. So I'm sure you can understand my surprise when he described Clinton's response to al Qaeda as ineffective. After all, there was an attack on the WTC in 1993 and no other successful attacks from Islamic terrorists on U.S. soil until after Bush took office. Roberts describes Clinton as refusing to act against al Qaeda. However, some conservatives accused Clinton of an attempt to "wag the dog" when he ordered strikes against al Qaeda in 1998. During the transition in early 2001, the Bush Administration reportedly had little interest in the Clinton Administration's strong recommendations for dealing with al Qaeda.

I'm fairly certain that, if there had been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Andrew Roberts and the rest of the Bush apologists would have plenty of (good) reasons for absolving Bush of responsibility. They were preparing for such a possibility years ago by talking about how we have to succeed 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to succeed once. Even with our best efforts, attacks can still happen. What effective measures has Bush taken that any other president wouldn't have taken? I can't think of any. While I criticize his lack of attention to terrorism before 9/11, I don't blame Bush for 9/11 because I have no concrete reason to believe he could have prevented it even if he were paying attention. However, I'll give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack since 9/11 if he accepts full responsibility for 9/11. No, "But Clinton!" Full responsibility.

Bush's actual record is terrible. Port security remains neglected. The war in Iraq has been a drain on resources and a recruiting tool for terrorists. I'll conclude with former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's comments to the Senate last week explaining how Bush's detention and torture policies killed Americans.

This should be fun

I'm going to write several posts about the Bush Administration's decision to go to war with Iraq at some point. I don't plan to be persuasive enough to change any body's minds but I would like to write about why I felt at the time, and still feel, that we were justified in going to war and that it was a good thing to do. I need to read a couple books before I start on this project though

However, before I start doing that (it may be a couple of months, or even after the election before i do this) I'll present this article about Bush's legacy.

I fully expect this to cause a flood of links and posts. Let's see if this gets Ryan and Curt going.

Are We any Safer Than 8 Years Ago?

I know it's lazy to link to another blog but why do the work if someone else already has.

Also, Obama's plan to deal with terrorists.

Score One for the Rule of Law

NY Times

Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in United States courts, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Thursday in a historic decision on the balance between personal liberties and national security.

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court.

Roberts was with the minority, making this another decision vindicating his opponents.