I’ve written many blog posts, op-eds, and letters to editors critical of President Obama’s foreign policy, or lack thereof. With only his experience as a community organizer and two idle years in the Senate, I’m sure he thought Joe Biden, with his foreign relations committee experience, would help fill this void. Wrong.
Clearly, the current crisis in Iraq reflects their inexperience.
“I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s gonna be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re gonna see 90,000 troops come marching home by the end of summer. You’re gonna see a stable Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I’ve been impressed by how they’ve been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.” – Vice President Biden, Feb. 11, 2010
Vice President Biden displayed a lack of experience when he agreed with Nouri al-Maliki that Iraq had worked its way through the travails and are expressing its peoples’ wills during the Nov. 30, 2011 U.S. – Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee meeting in Baghdad. (Davis Turner/Getty Images)
I was also reminded how Biden failed to get a status of forces agreement there. On Nov. 30, 2011, speaking before Iraqi and American representatives in Baghdad, Biden talked of its importance. Later he said, “I will bet you my vice presidency, Maliki (Nouri al-Maliki), the Iraqi prime minister will extend the status of forces agreement.” I guess nobody took that bet.
During Obama’s campaign against Mitt Romney, he denied his interest in getting the agreement. Following the 2008 Obama-Biden victory, however, a transition team document on Iraq stated, “Obama-Biden believe it is vital that Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) be reached so our troops have the legal protections and immunities they need.” It went on to cite that it be subject to Congressional review to ensure it would have bipartisan support here at home.
Nearly two years after Biden’s optimistic position on Iraq’s future, President Obama, in an appearance at Fort Bragg, NC, spoke of the sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq we were abandoning.
“It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq –all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering – all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations.” – President Obama, Dec. 14, 2011
As we watch city after city our troops once controlled return to the hands of terrorists, the president dithers on how to respond. He decides to send in a Special Forces unit of 300 to train and advise Iraqis. I thought we had already done that. It was purported to be the reason we could leave the country.
Whatever your opinion of former Vice President Dick Cheney, his stinging comment in the Wall Street Journal last week about Obama being “so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” was on the mark.
Meanwhile, a WSJ/NBC poll released this past week revealed that public approval of Obama’s handling of foreign policy fell to a new low of just 37 percent.
