In September 2007, Biden was one of just a handful of senators who voted against a Senate resolution calling on the State Department to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Guards is responsible for the insurgency in Iraq and for commanding, financing, arming, and training Hizbullah, Hamas and other international terrorist groups. It is also responsible for securing and developing Iran's nuclear weapons project and its ballistic missile arsenal.
For his part, Obama managed to be absent from the Senate during the vote last year, though he stated his objection to the resolution referring to it as "excessively provocative."
As to attacking Iran's nuclear installations, though Biden has claimed he would not take the military option "off the table," he has spoken of impeaching President Bush if he attacks Iran's nuclear installations. Late last year the New Hampshire Seacoast Online reported, "Biden said that the best deterrent to prevent pre-emptive military action n Iran is to make it clear, even if it is at the end of [Bush's] final term, action will be taken against Bush to ensure 'his legacy will be marred for all time.'
In the weeks after the September 11 attacks, Biden was already thinking about appeasing Iran. In a New Republic profile in October 2001, Biden was quoted raising the following suggestion to his Senate staffers: "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.
Yet for all of Biden's naivete regarding Syrian intentions, Iranian ambitions and the scope and significance of both countries' hatred of the U.S., Obama's selection of Biden as his running mate does moderate his ticket. While Biden's prescriptions for contending with the forces of global jihad by appeasing them are little different from Obama's, Biden at least tends to view Islamic jihadists as a negative force in international affairs. It is not at all clear that Obama shares his views.
Similarly, by all accounts, Biden -- though wrong on policy preferences -- is extremely proud of America and devoted to securing the country. Here too, it is not at all clear that Obama shares his views.
In an op-ed in his local Chicago neighborhood newspaper The Hyde Park Herald published on Sept. 19, 2001, Obama blamed the 9/11 attacks on al Qaeda's "lack of empathy for its victims."
He argued that the terrorists' hatred was not unique and it "most often grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."
Obama then drew moral equivalence between the U.S. and al Qaeda by warning that in any future fight with its enemies the U.S. military must "take into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad."
He ascribed the bigotry and hatred that he couldn't find in al Qaeda's murderers to his fellow countrymen warning that Americans must not discriminate against Americans "of Middle Eastern descent."
Obama's apparent disdain for the U.S. was similarly on display in a quip he made about Russia's invasion of Georgia which implied it was morally and legally indistinguishable from the American invasion of Iraq. As he put it, "We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."
Obama launched his political career in 1995 when he announced his candidacy for the Illinois State Senate. This most significant turning point in his until then undistinguished career took place at the home of unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn. Ayres and Dohrn were leaders of the Weather Underground when it conducted bombings of numerous government and private facilities in the 1960s and 1970s.
While Obama once dismissed Ayres as "just a guy from my neighborhood,' it has since been revealed that the two men worked closely with one another from 1995 to 2001 as directors of a leftist group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge or the CAC, which sought to undermine the independence of public school principals and teachers in Chicago by compelling them to adopt radical teaching methods.
Obama is currently receiving the support of some 57 percent of American Jews. Although this is less than any Democratic presidential nominee in recent memory, it is still disturbing that a large majority of American Jews support him. The Obama campaign no doubt hopes the Biden selection will shore up Jewish support.
It can only be hoped that despite their party loyalty and what they're telling pollsters, American Jews (indeed, American voters generally) will judge Biden and Obama by their records and positions.
Biden has consistently denied the threat emanating from Iran and Syria not only for Israel but for the U.S. as well. And Obama's statements and actions expose him as a man ill disposed not only toward Israel but America itself.