Talk about role reversal: Before their vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin
was supposed to be the airhead and Joe Biden the expert. After she stole the
show, it was hard to remember he was even there.
But there were some things Joe Biden said that stuck. Some unbelievable
things. There was a point where they came in such a rush I couldn't scribble
them down fast enough. So I looked at the transcript later to see if I could
possibly have heard right. Unfortunately, I had.
Check out Senator Biden's compact history of why this president has been so
completely wrong about the Middle East:
"He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said,
and Barack Obama said, ŒBig mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize
them.' What happened? Hamas won. When we kicked - along with France, we
kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon - I said and Barack said, ŒMove NATO forces
in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know - if you don't,
Hezbollah will control it. Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate
part of the government in the country immediately north of Israel. The fact
of the matter is, the policy of this administration has been an abject
failure."
Huh? What Middle East can Senator Biden have been talking about? The one on
Mars? Hamas never won an election on the West Bank; that's the base of the
rival Palestinian faction under Abu Abbas, who is still tenuously in control
there, thanks to Israeli backing.
France and the United States never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Can
Barack Obama and Joe Biden have ever proposed, out loud, seriously, sending
NATO troops into Lebanon? Like NATO would ever go there. It's been hard
enough keeping NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Didn't we lose enough Marines (220) in that horrendous bomb blast that
destroyed their barracks in Beirut back in 1983? Why go back in there?
And what's this about Hezbollah's having now become a legitimate part of the
government in Lebanon? It's long been part of the government there,
legitimate and illegitimate, and its forces continue to control a large
swath of that splintered country.
Can you imagine the fun the mainstream media would have had with Sarah Palin
if she had managed to cram so many non-facts into so short a space?
Senator Biden made a number of other strange assertions - he's never at a
loss for them - but at least he spaced the others out.
It's not just that some of the things he says aren't right; they're not even
wrong. They're just bizarre. But he says them with such assurance, with such
easy certainty, with the absolute shamelessness of those who have no idea
how off-base they are. There's one in every coffee shop.
Sarah Palin may not know all there is to know about foreign affairs, but at
least she knows what she doesn't know.
Senator Biden is a common enough type in American life - someone who strikes
the uninformed as well informed. What a poseur. And he gets away with it.
He's routinely described in press reports as "knowledgeable." With knowledge
like that, you don't need ignorance. Continued... |