rssWhat’s Joe Biden Thinking?
Monday, July 06, 2009 at 9:48 am
- 5 Comments
A bewildered Marc Lynch tries to make sense of Vice President Joe Biden’s comment yesterday that “Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest” when it comes to attacking Iran. Rounding up a number of Arab media stories that portray Biden’s remarks as a green light for an attack, Marc writes:
Why would Biden have made a statement which so radically undermines Obama’s policy towards Iran? Maybe it reflects bad new advice coming from a new NSC adviser of vague portfolio. Maybe it’s a clumsy attempt to ratchet up some pressure on the Iranian regime without actually doing anything, without regard to the spiral dynamics it could kick into gear. Or maybe it is just a major Biden gaffe, not a dramatic departure in the Obama administration’s policy. That would still be bad, but would be salvagable [sic]. Either way, the administration urgently needs to come forward quickly with a restatement of its policy — and make sure the Israelis and others in the region understand it clearly — or else it risks paying some extraordinarily serious costs.
The White House emailed Marc to walk Biden’s statement back — indicating that the vice president really did say something out of line with administration policy — by writing, “Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the President believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options.” None of which really explains why Biden said what he said. It’s hard to imagine that a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee didn’t understand that his words would be read as a green light for an Israeli strike on Iran.
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5 Comments
Comment posted July 6, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
Why is it so difficult to understand what Vice President Biden is saying and yet so easy to put words into his mouth, not to mention take his words completely out of context, to suggest he said something he undoubted never even thought.
Somebody, please…help me to understand what is so difficult about this!?
Pingback posted July 7, 2009 @ 2:44 am
[...] return one more time to Vice President Biden’s what-did-he-mean-exactly remarks about a potential Israeli strike on Ir…, it’s notable that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that any [...]
Comment posted July 7, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
To use a tired phrase, Biden's great strength – his unique ability to speak the truth with candor and wisdom – is also his weakness…weakness, in the sense that most of the media and blogosphere interpret much of what he says through a thick prism of political cynicism and, as a result, fail to understand the truth he speaks.
I wonder if anyone recalls that it was Senator Biden who was the only 2008 presidential candidate who said, in no uncertain terms – during a primary debate – that “military action in Iran is OFF the table”. He also made it clear, after he had withdrawn from the presidential campaign, that if President Bush initiated any sort of military action against Iran he would, in his capacity as Senator and chairman of the foreign relations committee, initiate impeachment proceedings.
Comment posted July 7, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
Biden effectively gave the green light to an Israeli attack on Iran by stating that the U.S. would not forcibly impede Israel from doing such. In global politics, not giving a red light is has the same effect as giving a green. When it comes to war, either you're green or you're red. Anything else would the equivalent of voting “present,” which seems to be the current orientation of the Obama administration towards the issue of how to proceed with Iran if all talks fail.
Comment posted July 8, 2009 @ 4:10 am
Foreign policy is a complicated subject – in the best of times, never mind the times in which we live. The problem as I see it is that too many of us do not fully appreciate the complexity of these issues and we know nothing compared to what Vice President Biden knows.
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