Biden attacks McCain on foreign policy
Posted: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 5:39 PM by Mark Murray
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Democrats
From NBC's Ken Strickland
Some Democrats might see it this way: While Obama and Clinton argue over who's the better security guard, McCain is robbing the bank. Today, Joe Biden -- a bank customer -- decided he'd intervene and stop McCain from stealing the money and the White House.
"When it comes to Iraq, there is no daylight between John McCain and George Bush. They are joined at the hip," Biden said today in a speech at Georgetown University. He told the students "when it comes to Iraq, there will be no change with a McCain Administration and so there is a real and profound choice for Americans in November."
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and having no alliance to either the Clinton or Obama campaigns, Biden may be the best suited to go after McCain. After the speech, a senior Biden aide lamented that McCain was "getting a free pass" in the national security debate and Biden wanted to do something about it.
In the typical Senate fashion of praising your colleague just before you cut their legs out from under them, Biden was gentlemanly. He started by calling McCain "a man I greatly admire, a man I consider a personal and close friend." He went further, adding that McCain's foreign policy speech last month was "a stark repudiation of the Bush Administration's approach to the world."
But in almost the same breath, Biden dropped the hammer: "John McCain remains wedded to the Bush Administration's myopic view of a world defined by terrorism... It's time for a fundamental change, but that's going to require more than a great soldier. It's going to require a wise leader."
Biden also cut McCain some slack on his remarks about being in Iraq for 100 years. "While it's not my business as a strong supporter the Democratic candidate to defend John McCain," he conceded that McCain was making an analogy to America's long-term military presence in peaceful post-war Germany, Korea, and Bosnia.
But he then followed by saying there is no peace in Iraq. "Worse, saying you're happy to stay in Iraq for 100 years fuels exactly the kind of dangerous conspiracy theories -- the urban legend of the Middle East -- about America's intentions throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds."
The Democratic surrogate attacked the Bush-McCain strategy on a point-by-point basis. Biden also went after them for what they "refuse to acknowledge: the increasingly intolerable costs of staying in Iraq at the levels we are now."
Biden concluded his speech with his familiar metaphor of the surge moving the situation in Iraq from "drowning to treading water," being "no closer to the President's stated goal for the surge, which was for an Iraq that can defend itself, govern itself and sustain itself in peace."
Biden is widely considered to be a possible candidate for vice president or Secretary of State in a Democratic administration. While he's been coy publicly about any future plans, today's attack on McCain would will certainly be viewed as a job application.
"We cannot keep treading water without exhausting ourselves and more importantly doing great damage to our other vital interests around the world and at home," he said. "And that's exactly what President Bush and a President McCain would be asking us to do."
