Dem Hopeful Biden, Enough Is Enough

June 1, 2007

As reported in today’s The Hill, Democrat hopeful, Joseph E. Biden, has declared the Troop Reinforcement (aka Surge) “a failure.”

Said Biden, “The surge has not worked and will not work because its basic premise — to give time for a strong central government to take hold — is fatally flawed.”

This, in spite of report after report from Officers directly involved in the reinforcement that some successes are being seen. On top of that, it was only this week that the last of the reinforcements arrived in Iraq. In non-military parlance, he declares it a failure before it is even fully instituted.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, U.S. commander for daily operations in Iraq, announced that the surge would need to continue until spring of 2008 to succeed, igniting the outburst from Biden. Odierno, in comparing past efforts at rushing matters in Iraq, as was done in 2005 and 2006 with very poor results.

“We’ve been here before,” General Odierno said in the interview, referring to the decisions that are coming up on how quickly to hand over authority to Iraqi units. “We’ve rushed the transition and soon lost many areas that we had before. This time it’s about having enough combat power to stay.”

In other words, he desires this time, to let the Military work the battlefield and transitions, not politicians sitting thousands of miles away back in Washington D.C.

Biden says, “Enough is enough. After misleading the American people that the troop surge would be temporary, limited in number and limited in duration, the administration is finally acknowledging the truth — the ‘surge’ is really an escalation with no end in sight.”

Yet, in Biden’s own Plan For Iraq, he calls for “It would call on the U.S. military to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by 2008, with a residual force to take on terrorists and train Iraqis.” Isn’t that more or less what Lt. General Odierno is asking for, Troops until 2008?

Biden’s stance, obviously playing to the far left kooks running the Democrat party now, does come across rather insincere as just a matter of days ago, he was advocating Sending US Troops to Darfur! Calling conditions in that country “a genocide,” he said, "I would impose a no-fly zone immediately and I would commit (U.S.) forces to stop the Janjaweed now.”

And, just what does he think will happen in Iraq if our Armed Forces withdrew too soon?

Prior to initiating the Iraq phase of the Global War on Terror, Biden said, "This is a guy [Saddam] who is an extreme danger to the world, and this is a guy who is in every way possible seeking weapons of mass destruction." August 2002. Clearly, he agreed with the removal of Saddam Hussein by force.

Shortly after the removal of Saddam, in a speech generally opposing President Bush’s leadership in the War, he said, ““We need a better understanding of what it would take to secure Iraq and rebuild it economically and politically. It would be a tragedy if we removed a tyrant in Iraq, only to leave chaos in his wake.”

In the same speech, Senator Biden claimed, “They [Iraqi’s] want us to stay as long as it takes to get them back on their feet. Much of the country beyond Baghdad is relatively calm – hospitals and schools are open; the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council is encouraging; and so are the local councils, one of which we visited.”

He also said, “Imagine if we lost Iraq. In a worst case scenario, there’d be chaos and the threat of Iranian and fundamentalist domination of the country. The Middle East peace process would likely be derailed. Iraq would become a failed state and a source of instability. We’ll have jeopardized our credibility in the world. And we’ll be far less secure than when we went in.”

In expressing options, Biden said, “We can pull out, and lose Iraq. That’s a bad option.” So, the alternative? Biden says his plan isn’t “partitioning,” but it sounds an awful lot like it to me. Then again, of his own plan, in a op-ed written to the Delaware Online on April 13, 2007, he said, “I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq will work.”

Senator, no one’s plan can work when faced with constant criticism with no viable input for alternatives, with constant undermining and politicalization by the opposing party and exposure of every tool used in secret to undermine our enemies.

How much better might the Iraq phase of the Global War on Terror be had you and your fellow Democrats stuck to your original stance on Iraq and the one you held during the Clinton administration?

Lew