Rosner points out that Biden had opposed Operation Desert Storm, otherwise known as the first Gulf War, but supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That's not so much a change of heart as a conventional change in era: Biden was among 47 senators who'd opposed the first Gulf War, with just 52 senators voting for war back then (the identically uncertain majority that, 10 months later, voted to confirm Clarence Thomas following hearings miserably controlled by Biden. Numerologists would have a field day with that one).
In 2003, Biden was one of the 77 senators, 23 of them Democrats, authorizing war on Iraq--still a wrong vote (and I'm not Monday-morning quarterbacking here: I outlined exactly why going to war was a catastrophe in waiting in a column written for the Daytona Beach News-Journal the week the war started), made even more wrong by Biden's insistence until two years later that it hadn't been wrong. But Biden finally had his awakening. He's since called for withdrawal, dismissed the "surge" and made Iraqi partition the centerpiece of his strategy there. Two out of three isn't bad, though the partition thing suggests that he still sees the Middle East from the utterly conventional and equally ruinous perspective of the American politician who thinks he can actually decide the region's fate. It's usually been the other way around, as far as the United States is concerned.
Rosner then draws on my piece on Biden's Middle East to suggest that, because I compared Biden to Jimmy Carter, some of us see him as a "dove." I think that misses the point. My comparison to Carter was based on Biden's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Carter was not at all a dove but the most effective, back-boned realist of any president dealing with the issue before or since. Not coincidentally, Carter is also the only president to have brokered a peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation--the Camp David agreement compelling Israel to give back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and dismantle its settlements there, the only land-for-peace formula that can work.
Between Israel and the Palestinians Biden believes there can be a solution only if both sides give up sacred cows: Israel must give up its settlements in the West Bank (though Biden says "most" settlements, which opens the door to cop-outs). Palestinians must give up the right of return for Palestinian refugees booted out of Israel in successive wars. Not a single administration since Carter's has pressed either side on either matter. (The tagging of Carter as a "dove" is a misconception, too, considering that this is the guy who had lust ion his heart for the MX missile, the Pershing II and errant commando raids in the Iranian desert as a dove. He was the only president in the last 30 years who made human rights a focus of his foreign policy. That doesn't make him a dove. It makes him an errantly admirable president.)
As for Biden beyond the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he's the sort of Democrat who, like most other Democrats and Republicans, can rarely resist a war. As Rosner reminds us, Biden dressed down his Democratic opponents during a debate, back when he was still a candidate, with this: "Stop all this happy talk here about [how] the use of force doesn't make sense," he said. "The use of force in Afghanistan is justified and necessary; in Darfur, justified and necessary; in the Balkans, justified and necessary. You guys can have your happy talk, there's real life."
So he's calling for a troop escalation in Afghanistan--exactly the wrong approach in a failing strategy (I'm with Rory Stewart, who knows a thing or two about Afghanistan, and who wrote recently in Time that "just because Afghanistan has problems that need to be solved does not mean that the West can solve them all. My experience suggests that those pushing for an expansion of our military presence there are wrong. We don't need bold new plans and billions more in aid. Instead, we need less investment — but a greater focus on what we know how to do." That means retreating from Taliban-held areas, where waging war is a waste, and focusing on investing in the cities, education, the health infrastructure.
Oddly enough, Biden is willing to do exactly that in Pakistan, which seems to be falling apart by the day: pay less attention to military aid, of which the Bush administration has sent some $10 billion worth in the last eight years, and more attention to economic and humanitarian aid. Biden is sponsoring a bill through the Foreign Relations Committee he chairs to triple that sort of aid to $1.5 billion a year over 10 years. Dovish? Just because he doesn't trust remote-controlled Predator drones that ensure spikes in Taliban recruiting every time they fire a few missiles into Pakistan?
Then there's Iran and Sudan's genocide in Darfur. Biden is willing to send troops to stop the genocide. American troops. But no military action to stop Iran from acquiring the bomb. At least not yet. "Biden's toughness on Darfur has something to do with the fact that Sudan is weak enough for Washington to force it to cooperate," Rosner writes. "His mellow approach to Iran derives from the fact that Iran is, well, strong. Is that wrong?" Not at all. There's a case to be made for the pragmatic expert who judges conditions on the ground without being held hostage to a preordained framework. However, the outcome would be a policy dictated by events and controlled by regional leaders rather than by American desires."
So Biden doesn't entirely think that all Middle East clocks tick on Washington time. Contradictions. Depth, Nuance. "Erratically practical." What do you know. We have ourselves a seasoned policy maker for a vice presidential contender, as opposed to, for the last eight years, and ideologue and would-be autocrat serving in the position.
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