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Busy, busy, busy...
Bush's Troop Initiative Doomed, Biden SaysInvade Darfur:Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said yesterday that the Bush administration's "surge" strategy in Iraq is doomed to fail and criticized Gen. David H. Petraeus for offering what he called an overly optimistic assessment of the situation on the ground.
Biden, in an attempt to separate himself from the crowded Democratic presidential field, also asserted that none of his principal rivals for the nomination has offered a viable plan for success in Iraq.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate, called yesterday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.From reading Biden's own words on his declaration of American defeat in Iraq, his main problem with "the surge" is that it hasn't accomplished it's goals yet - violence is only down where the surge troops have deployed. Apparently the other half of the troops shouldn't even bother deploying."I would use American force now," the Delaware Democrat said at a hearing before his committee. "I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it."
In advocating the use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could "radically change the situation on the ground now."
Biden's key point - that the media is telling all the "good news" possible from Iraq - is an absurdity. But it could seem plausible to the casual observer for the simple reason that they aren't. While he himself may or may not know the "rest of the story", his best hope is that Americans remain woefully uninformed.
He claims that the media accurately reports that Sadr has gone "to ground -- for now", (while Sadr is indeed in hiding, his call for his troops to attack American soldiers and our ongoing battles with them must be ignored to fully embrace this point), dismisses the Coalition work with the Anbar Salvation Council as "purported", and uses the recent suicide bombing in Tall Afar as al Qaeda intended it to be used. There's a "rest of the story" there too, but it didn't make the papers.
The harsh reality is that once we abandon Iraq we're going to have to put all the newly available troops in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda certainly will, and their recruiting is going to soar. Ultimately we'll lose that one, too, because they won't quit knowing full well that we will.
Then we can go to Darfur.
Behind much of the absurd talk of the impact of Iraq on military "readiness" there's a Democratic talking point: "Because we are in Iraq, we aren't capable of waging a war somewhere else." That's valid to an extent (but absurd to a greater one), but a more complete translation is that "because we are in Iraq we aren't capable of executing a war that Democrats could hypothetically support, because Democrats are tough on national defense, by golly, and there are plenty of wars in places other than Iraq we'd prosecute to prove it".
That's disturbing, I'm concerned they would do so a bit too eagerly given the opportunity. Biden seems to be going that route - but he could just be paying lip sevice to it to earn the "hawk" (or "tough guy realist") appellation the media bestows on guys like Murtha. (The actual "go to guy" for Dems when it's time to cut-and-run. See Somalia, for example.)
