Incipient
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s selection of Joseph
Biden as his running mate constitutes a stunning betrayal of the
anti-war constituency who made possible his hard-fought victory in the
Democratic primaries and caucuses.
The veteran
Delaware senator has been one the leading congressional supporters of
U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict
economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.
Most
significantly, however, Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of
2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the
Bush administration’s decision to invade that oil-rich country.
Shrinking Gap Between Candidates
One of the
most important differences between Obama and the soon-to-be Republican
presidential nominee John McCain is that Obama had the wisdom and
courage to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Obama and his supporters
had been arguing correctly that judgment in foreign policy is far more
important than experience; this was a key and likely decisive argument in the Illinois senator’s campaign against Senator Hillary
Clinton, who had joined McCain in backing the Iraq war resolution. However, in
choosing Biden who, like the forthcoming Republican nominee, has more
experience in international affairs but notoriously poor judgment,
Obama is essentially saying that this critical difference between the
two prospective presidential candidates doesn’t really matter. This
decision thereby negates one of his biggest advantages in the general
election. Of particular concern is the possibility that the pick of an
establishment figure from the hawkish wing of the party indicates the
kind of foreign policy appointments Obama will make as president.
Obama’s choice
of Biden as his running mate will likely have a hugely negative impact
on his once-enthusiastic base of supporters. Obama’s supporters had greatly appreciated the fact that he did not blindly accept the Bush administration’s
transparently false claims about Iraq being an imminent danger to U.S.
national security interests that required an invasion and occupation of
that country. At the same time Biden was joining his Republican
colleagues in pushing through a Senate resolution authorizing the
invasion, Obama was speaking at a major anti-war rally in
Chicago correctly noting that Iraq’s war-making ability had been
substantially weakened and that the international community could
successfully contain Saddam Hussein from any future acts of aggression. In Washington,
by contrast, Biden was insisting that Bush was right and Obama was
wrong, falsely claiming that Iraq under Saddam Hussein – severely
weakened by UN disarmament efforts and comprehensive international
sanctions – somehow constituted both “a long term threat and a short
term threat to our national security” and was an “extreme danger to the
world.” Despite the absence of any “weapons of mass destruction” or
offensive military capabilities, Biden when reminded of those remarks
during an interview last year, replied, “That’s right, and I was correct about that.” Biden Shepherds the War Authorization
It is
difficult to over-estimate the critical role Biden played in making the
tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to the
2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely
interpreted as the first sign that Congress would endorse a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Biden declared on
August 4 that the United States was probably going to war. In his
powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
he orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to skeptical
colleagues and the America public by ensuring that dissenting voices
would not get a fair hearing. As Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, noted at the time,
“For Sen. Biden's Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political
sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent
for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions – and demand
hard facts – concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by
Iraq.” It soon became
apparent that Biden had no intention of doing so. Biden refused to even
allow Ritter himself – who knew more about Iraq’s WMD capabilities than
anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved at least
qualitative disarmament – to testify. Ironically, on Meet the Press last year, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMDs by
insisting that “everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons
inspectors said he had them.” Biden also
refused to honor requests by some of his Democratic colleagues to
include in the hearings some of the leading anti-war scholars familiar
with Iraq and Middle East. These included both those who would have
reiterated Ritter’s conclusions about non-existent Iraqi WMD
capabilities as well as those prepared to testify that a U.S. invasion
of Iraq would likely set back the struggle against al-Qaeda, alienate
the United States from much of the world, and precipitate bloody urban
counter-insurgency warfare amid rising terrorism, Islamist extremism,
and sectarian violence. All of these predictions ended up being exactly what transpired. Nor did Biden
even call some of the dissenting officials in the Pentagon or State
Department who were willing to challenge the alarmist claims of their
ideologically-driven superiors. He was willing, however, to allow
Iraqi defectors of highly dubious credentials to make false testimony
about the vast quantities of WMD materiel supposedly in Saddam
Hussein’s possession. Ritter has correctly accused Biden of having “preordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam
Hussein from power regardless of the facts and . . . using these
hearings to provide political cover for a massive military attack on
Iraq.” Supported an Invasion Before Bush
Rather than being a hapless victim of the Bush administration’s
lies and manipulation, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq
and making false statements regarding Saddam Hussein’s supposed
possession of “weapons of mass destruction” years before President
George W. Bush even came to office.
As far back as
1998, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of that oil rich country.
Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament process led to the
elimination of Iraq’s WMD threat, Biden – in an effort to discredit the
world body and make an excuse for war – insisted that UN inspectors
could never be trusted to do the job. During Senate hearings on Iraq in
September of that year, Biden told Ritter,
“As long as Saddam’s at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you
or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we
have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program
relative to weapons of mass destruction.” Calling for
military action on the scale of the Gulf War seven years earlier, he
continued, “The only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is
we’re going to end up having to start it alone,” telling the Marine
veteran “it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on
foot in the desert taking Saddam down.”
When Ritter
tried to make the case that President Bill Clinton’s proposed
large-scale bombing of Iraq could jeopardize the UN inspections
process, Biden condescendingly replied that decisions on the use of
military force were “beyond your pay grade.” As Ritter predicted, when
Clinton ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq in December of that year and
followed up with a four-day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert
Fox, Saddam was provided with an excuse to refuse to allow the
inspectors to return. Biden then conveniently used Saddam’s failure to
allow them to return as an excuse for going to war four years later.
Biden’s False Claims to Bolster War
In the face of
widespread skepticism over administration claims regarding Iraq’s
military capabilities, Biden declared that President Bush was justified
in being concerned about Iraq’s alleged pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction. Even though Iraq had eliminated its chemical weapons
arsenal by the mid-1990s, Biden insisted categorically in the weeks
leading up to the Iraq war resolution that Saddam Hussein still had
chemical weapons. Even though there is no evidence that Iraq had ever
developed deployable biological weapons and its biological weapons
program had been eliminated some years earlier, Biden insisted that
Saddam had biological weapons, including anthrax and that “he may have
a strain” of small pox. And, even though the International Atomic
Energy Agency had reported as far back as 1998 that there was no
evidence whatsoever that Iraq had any ongoing nuclear program, Biden
insisted Saddam was “seeking nuclear weapons.”
Said Biden,
“One thing is clear: These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam, or
Saddam must be dislodged from power.” He did not believe proof of the
existence of any actual weapons to dislodge was necessary, however,
insisting that “If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become clear,
it could be too late.” He further defended President Bush by falsely
claiming that “He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not
dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At
each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and
deliberation.” In an
Orwellian twist of language designed to justify the war resolution,
which gave President Bush the unprecedented authority to invade a
country on the far side of the world at the time and circumstances of
his own choosing, Biden claimed that “I do not believe this is a rush
to war. I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that
failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance
the prospects that war will occur.”
It is also
important to note that Biden supported an invasion in the full
knowledge that it would not be quick and easy and that the United
States would have to occupy Iraq for an extended period, declaring, “We
must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq
for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.”
Biden’s Current Position
In response to
the tragic consequences of the U.S. invasion and the resulting
weakening of popular support for the war, Biden has more recently
joined the chorus of Democratic members of Congress criticizing the
administration’s handling of the conflict and calling for the
withdrawal of most combat forces. He opposed President Bush’s
escalation (“surge”) of troop strength early last year and has called
for greater involvement by the United Nations and other countries in
resolving the ongoing conflicts within Iraq.
However, Biden
has been the principal congressional backer of a de facto partition of
the country between Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab segments, a
proposal opposed by a solid majority of Iraqis and strongly denounced
by the leading Sunni, Shia, and secular blocs in the Iraqi parliament.
Even the U.S. State Department has criticized Biden’s plan as too
extreme. A cynical and dangerous attempt at divide-and-rule, Biden’s ambitious effort to redraw the borders of
the Middle East would likely make a violent and tragic situation all
the worse. Yet it is
Biden’s key role in making possible the congressional authorization of
the 2003 U.S. invasion that elicits the greatest concern among Obama’s
supporters. While more recently expressing regrets over his vote, he
has not formally apologized and has stressed the Bush administration’s mishandling of the post-invasion occupation rather than the illegitimacy of the invasion itself.
Biden’s
support for the resolution was not simply poor judgment, but a
calculated rejection of principles codified in the UN Charter and other
international legal documents prohibiting aggressive wars. According to
Article VI of the Constitution, such a rejection also constitutes a
violation of U.S. law as well. Biden even voted against an amendment
sponsored by fellow Democratic senator Carl Levin that would have
authorized U.S. military action against Iraq if the UN Security Council
approved the use of force and instead voted for the Republican-backed
resolution authorizing the United States to go to war unilaterally. In
effect, Biden has embraced the neo-conservative view that the United
States, as the world’s sole remaining superpower, somehow has the right
to invade other countries at will, even if they currently pose no
strategic threat.
Given the
dangerous precedent set by the Iraq war resolution, naming one of its
principal supporters as potentially the next vice president of the
United States has raised serious questions regarding Senator Obama’s
commitment to international law. This comes at a time when the global
community is so desperately hoping for a more responsible U.S. foreign
policy following eight years of Bush.
Early in his
presidential campaign, Obama pledged to not only end the war in Iraq,
but to challenge the mindset that got the United States into Iraq in
the first place. Choosing Biden as his running mate, however, raises
doubts regarding Obama’s actual commitment to “change we can believe
in.”
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