Video: Biden, Iran and emboldening the enemy

Appearing on This Week with George Stephanolopous Sunday, Senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden said that Iran is waging war on the United States:

Biden’s answer would be unremarkable, reasonable even, if he hadn’t blamed Bush for Iran’s actions and said things on his own that have helped pave the way for Iran’s war against over the past few years.

On Hardball on April 2, 2004, Biden had this to say about the situation in Iraq:

MATTHEWS: If this administration gets reelected, with its worldview, that we‘ve talked about for the last hour, going into Iraq, what country is next?

CLARKE: That‘s the scary part. I mean, they made a huge mistake. About as big a mistake as you can make. Because here they have this war on terrorism and they dropped it and started a war on Iraq which made the war on Iraq harder.

MATTHEWS: Well, which was it? Was it Iran? Was it Syria?

CLARKE: If the same people are around, it could be Iran, it could be Syria. And I fear that they haven‘t learned from their mistake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: What do you think of that, Senator?

BIDEN: Well, I think that may be what they‘d like to do. But ironically, if they have—if we do not succeed in Iraq, they will have so weakened our resolve militarily, that I think most nations will look at us and say, they‘re not going to do anything to us.

Because I can‘t imagine this administration in a second term without Iraq turning out correctly. I can‘t imagine them getting—daring to think they could invade any other country in the world that has bad guys in it, because they wouldn‘t have a consensus. They don‘t have the troops. They don‘t have the capacity.

Look, things are blowing back up in Kosovo, for Lord‘s sake. We‘ve got to learn to finish one job at a time. The only—you know, if you look for a silver lining, the only thing that come out of this failed policy, in my view, is the inability of them to, I think, recreate that failed policy in the near term.

I added the bold to emphasize what Biden’s saying–that the administration wouldn’t dare do anything about Iran, both because the Democrats wouldn’t back it and because we lack the military strength. The former is evidently true; the latter is a falsehood and Biden ought to know it. We have more than enough air and sea power to deal massive blows to Iran’s nuclear program and to degrade the Revolutionary Guards without ever putting a single American boot inside Iran. But to Biden the “silver lining” of our difficulties in Iraq is that it makes dealing with rogue states like Iran that much harder. Who is that a “silver lining” for, really? Not us.

Iran understood Biden’s meanings loud and clear, and has been ramping up our difficulties in Iraq ever since: Iranian-made EFPs have killed some 170 US troops in Iraq. Iran has also been putting more and more pressure on the Israelis by arming Hezbollah and Hamas and ordering rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. And it has continued with its nuclear weapons program all the while.

How does Biden think we ought to respond to all of this? By addressing Iran’s “emotional needs.”

Senator Joseph Biden said that even if Iran was a full democracy like India, it would want nuclear capability, like India. What the world needed to address was Iran’s emotional needs, he said, with a nonaggression pact.

A non-aggression pact? Mahmoud Ahmedinejad doesn’t seem interested in a non-aggression pact.

Iran’s president said on Sunday (June 3, 2007) the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a “countdown button” to bring an end to Israel.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map”, has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat.

“With God’s help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

“By God’s will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future,” he said. He did not elaborate.

His emotional needs line up well with genocidal tyrants of the past. Should we move to address them, Senator Biden, or should we move to stop them? Or should we just keep on playing the European game of talking while the world burns down around us?

Obviously I am not blaming all of our troubles in the world on Sen. Biden. But the fact is, when he is one of the more reasonable Democrats on foreign policy, and he’s in the habit of tipping our hand to the enemy, he has made himself a major problem by continually and consistently emboldening our enemies. If they think a) we won’t act against them and b) we can’t, they are more likely to decide that now is the time for them to act against us and against our allies. And here we are.

It’s not hard to see how this is likely to play out. Rather than stand with the administration against Iran, Biden and his ilk have chosen to keep applying political pressure against the administration at home. It has the effect of a classic pincer move, one pincer political and formed by the Democrats for the purpose of weakening the administration to the point that’s ineffectual; the other pincer formed by the Iranians arming terrorists from Afghanistan to Gaza and nearly everywhere in between. I don’t think it’s a coordinated pincer, but it might as well be: The mullahs probably can’t believe the luck they’re having in getting useful noises and pressure from the Democrats against Bush. So we will see more violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, northern Israel and southern Israel, and Biden will use that violence to argue that “See, this administration can’t do anything right.” Biden will never do two things that might help make the situation marginally better. He’ll never show unity against an enemy of the US as long as a Republican administration is in the White House, and he’ll never just shut his yap long enough for the administration to do what may need to be done.

Biden’s own words are telegraphing to the enemy in Iran that Bush, not Ahmedinejad, will be held responsible for all of the blood shed. This is how things are working now, it’s how they’ve worked for years and it’s how they’ll work for the foreseeable future.

Now, against this backdrop–violence up everywhere, jihadis on the march everywhere, Democrats like Biden playing their role in making that violence useful to our enemies–note what’s going on elsewhere.

The Russians are moving closer to Iran and farther from us.

The Gulf states are evidently gravitating toward Iran and away from us.

The IAEA is running interference for Iran.

Leftists in South America have solidified an alliance with Iran, the global jihad and North Korea called the “World Resistance Front.” And leftists here in the US, like Cindy Sheehan and Danny Glover and many others, have joined themselves with Hugo Chavez, who is part of and a leader of the same leftist-jihadi alliance.

Sure, Sen. Biden, let’s keep talking to the Europeans and keep bringing Iran to the UN. And let’s keep pretending that everything is Bush’s fault. That’ll keep the country safe.

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