Page 1 of 2 Biden's stumble over Iraq
By Stephen Zunes
Democratic presidential nominee Senator 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 of the leading congressional
supporters of US 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 George W 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 US 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 US 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 - severely weakened by
United Nations 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 (WMD) 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 overestimate 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 the US Congress would endorse a US 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
Senator 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." (Ritter was referring to
the incidents in 1964 between American destroyers and North Vietnamese torpedo
boats in the Gulf of Tonkin that prompted the first large-scale involvement of
US armed forces in Vietnam.)
It soon became apparent that Biden had no intention of asking hard questions.
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 US invasion of Iraq would likely set back the
struggle against al-Qaeda, alienate the US 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'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 US invasion of Iraq and making false
statements regarding Saddam's supposed possession of WMD years before Bush even
came to office.
In 1998, Biden was calling for a US 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 US Marine Corps 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 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
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