elektra
Platinum Member
Democrat President Biden, has had his hands dirty in Iraq and Afghanistan long before he became president or even vice president for that matter.
Hawk Down
Why Joe Biden flipped on Afghanistan. With the 2008 presidential campaign in full swing two summers ago, Joe Biden, then making his own bid for the White House, ridiculed Barack Obama on a momentous issue: Afghanistan. The occasion was an August 2007 speech by Obama outlining his plans to fight...
newrepublic.com
Even before Obama announced his run for president, Biden was warning that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the "central front" in the war against Al Qaeda, requiring a major U.S. commitment. "Whatever it takes, we should do it," Biden said in February 2002. "History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course."
Joe Biden emerged as one of the Democratic Party's chief foreign policy spokesmen, a strong proponent of the idea that U.S. military power could be used unapologetically for altruistic purposes. He was a strong advocate for military intervention in the Balkans, for instance, and, despite some doubts, he supported the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq and even defended the wisdom of the invasion for several years.
Soon after Karzai took office in December 2001, Biden traveled to Kabul and, over lunch on two successive days, clicked with the new leader. "They took to each other very well," says a former Biden aide. Impressed, Biden argued that Karzai deserved America's full support, even as Bush officials questioned whether the Afghan was capable of establishing a strong central government.