Posted by
m0t0r1zed on Sunday, September 14, 2008 5:54:47 AM
The one thing people tout about Biden is his foreign policy cred, but there's something about him that bugs me. There are some people that know a lot of facts and can repeat ideas that other people have formulated. Then there are people that can actually think critically and analyze facts on their own.
Biden has always struck me as the first type and not the second. This is Biden's plan for partitioning Iraq in 2006 in a NY Times op-ed piece.
Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq
Personally, I thought partitioning might have been a good idea - if that was our strategy from the start of the war. I was worried before the war about sectarian violence and my fears ended up becoming a reality. However, since Bush pushed a plan for a stronger central gov't, the idea of falling back to partitioning didn't make sense to me. To do so would have been perceived as an act of desperation - and their perception would have been correct.
Also, it'd be difficult to impose a partition if the Iraqis didn't want it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Kurds would have just said, "Screw this" and declared independence. Bye bye, central gov't. Hello, chaos.
Iraq may still eventually fragment in the future, but trying to partition Iraq would have greatly accelerated the process. His op-ed felt more like theorycrafting, than sound policy.
To me, Biden seems to mouth words and policies, but they lack proper sensibility.
Furthermore, Biden's strident stance on shifting troops to Afghanistan while the war in Iraq was going poorly would have undercut the efforts in Iraq. It's sort of like someone saying, "Hey, I think your toast is burning" while the kitchen is on fire.
Dunno. I'm not a foreign policy expert or anything, but that's my impression about Biden. He never seems to be ahead of the curve, and he only seems to say things after other people have already said it. Biden also didn't seem to be clued into Petraeus' strategy, or the fact that the Sunni movement against al-Qaeda had become significant enough to turn the tide in the war.
Now, I'm not saying that it's an easy task to predict world events, but given his position as chairman of Foreign Relations and his access to information and analysts ... I tend to expect more insight.
Meh. I dunno. I could be wrong, of course.