Joe Biden: Decades of Being Wrong
Floor Speech
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Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, former Vice President Joe Biden has been in the news a lot lately, along with a predictable narrative from the Washington know-it-all chorus and their mainstream media partners that he has a distinguished record and reputation as an expert on foreign policy.
How very ``Washington'' it is to assume that with his long Washington resume, especially his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that Joe Biden is a foreign policy genius.
Nice guy that he is, let's look at the facts.
Because America's national security depends on America's wise choice of our next President, I want to quote the great Charles Krauthammer, who more accurately described Mr. Biden's record back in 2012.
The Vice President over the last 30 years holds the American record for being wrong on the most issues in Foreign Affairs ever. And the list starts with the nuclear freeze in the early eighties against Thatcher and Reagan, which is one of the follies of the era. He supported it.
He was against aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, which in the end brought democracy and ended the Sandinista rule at the time.
He was against Reagan's expansion of the defense budget, which bankrupted the Soviet Union and led to the end of the Soviet Empire.
He was against Reagan on strategic defenses, which is the big advantage that we have now in missile defense.
And look at where he was on Iraq. He opposed the first Iraq war, the Gulf war that liberated Kuwait, that everyone agrees was a good thing.
He supported the second Iraq war, which he, not I, say was a terrible mistake. And then when the surge happened, he opposed the surge in Iraq which rescued a losing war and ended in our leaving with our heads held high and some promise of the future.
He seems to be the Herbert Hoover of American foreign policy. And for him to be the spokesman for the Obama Administration on these affairs, I think is quite ironic.
It is not just conservative commentators who can see through the illusion of Vice President Biden's foreign policy judgment.
Robert Gates, former CIA director and Defense Secretary for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, had this to say about Biden in his book, ``Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War'':
``I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.''
I rarely, if ever, agree with Barack Obama, and I am glad to see our country is now back on the road to a strong foreign policy. But I will give President Obama credit for wisely disregarding Vice President Biden's counsel on, arguably, the greatest achievement of Obama's presidency: his authorization in 2011 of the raid by America's SEAL Teams that killed Osama Bin Laden.
As Vice President Biden, himself, recalled to a group of Democrats in 2016, President Obama asked for a final recommendation from his national security team, and he asked, Joe, what do you think?
His answer was, Mr. President, my suggestion is, don't go.
Many agree that President Obama picked Biden as his Vice President in 2008 to quell concerns about his youth and lack of experience in Foreign Affairs, but in retrospect, it has now become clear that the most useful role he played was for Mr. Obama to take whatever he recommended and advised and conclude that it was probably the wrong approach.
Mr. Biden now believes that he is the right man to lead our Nation as President. America will choose a President in 2020, and I hope that Republicans and Democrats will conclude, as our 44th President and countless others have, that the opposite might just be true.
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