Joe Biden has suggested that the Obama administration is going to have to get more involved with an tougher on the Iraqi government. His statements have angered Iraqi leaders who say he is ‘out of date’ and unaware of the progress made in Iraq. Read about it below.
Joe Biden
Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to desert the Iraqi people by pulling American troops out of Iraq now that the Iraqi government has taken giant steps towards building a democracy and enforcing laws that are controlling the violence in the country. Now that the Obama administration is in power, they are reiterating their disdain for any progress that has been made in the Battle of Iraq.
Vice President Joe Biden chastised the Iraqi government for what he apparently views as their slow pace in implementing reform.
Apparently, Biden didn’t hear the news that Iraq held a successful and peaceful election a couple of weeks ago with less violence and more cooperation between opposing parties than we have here in the United States. I’m sure that’s it. He just didn’t watch the news that day. He probably also missed the news that both American military and Iraqi civilian deaths have been almost non-existent over the past year. The entire American media has missed that news. At least I haven’t heard it being reported.
Of course, all that progress doesn’t enhance the argument that President Bush’s policies and the Battle of Iraq are ‘failed policies’. Its hard to hold on to opposition to a war that we are winning.
This isn’t the first time Biden has angered the Iraqi government. When he was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee he proposed the ‘Biden Plan’. That was the plan to divide Iraq into three self-governing regions based on the three major ethnic groups in Iraq. There would be Sunni Arab, Shi’ite and Kurdish regions. The proposal was ridiculous and generally viewed as another on of Biden’s silly ideas.
Now Biden is continuing to insist that Iraq is a mess in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is lashing back. He basically has said that Biden is out of touch by saying he is ‘out of date’.
“I believe talk about applying pressure on the Iraqi government or taking hard measures against it no longer works,” he said at a news conference in Baghdad with visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“Such speech is out of date, because the government of Iraq knows its responsibilities and acts accordingly in a strong way.”
Of course, the reality is that Biden’s statements really have nothing to do with what the Iraqi people are capable of doing for themselves. It has to do with the left’s hatred of President George Bush and by extension their hatred of anything they associate with him and his policies. Success there isn’t part of the plan and won’t be acknowledged.
Refusing to acknowledge successes in Iraq is a refusal to appreciate the hard work and great sacrifice the young men and women of our military. Its a slap in the face of every American Soldier who has fought in that hard land. It also diminishes the courage of the Iraqi people who have gone to two elections, the first under great threat and who have finally stood up to the foreign terrorists that victimized them in their fight against Americans.
Biden needs to get up to date with the situation in Iraq and hopefully the Obama administration will act on the realities there as opposed to their need to view the Iraq war as a failure.
February 11th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Well, the one good thing about Obama as president is that as long as his health holds we don’t have to hear two of the most terrifying words in the English language, “President Biden”.