No, Senator Biden, This is OUR War

“I know we in Congress agreed to go to war, President Roosevelt, but here in December 1942 the war is costing us too much in expenditures and casualties, and so now we want nothing to do with it. This is now your war President Roosevelt, and you alone will be responsible for its outcome. Although we authorized the war and agreed our intelligence on Hitler justified action, we now think you were wrong and will not support the war.” As outlandish as this fictional exchange may sound, Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), the incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed just such a course in comments made during a teleconference with reporters today. Biden, apparently unaware that Christmas should bring goodwill toward men, spent the day after Christmas blasting the President’s Iraq strategy. While such behavior is normal for Biden, the Senator made a few remarks that deserve further scrutiny.

Biden told reporters he wants to hold hearings on Iraq beginning on January 9, and added that the purpose of the hearings would be to create bipartisan consensus on Iraq. The Senator is so enamored with the recommendations of The Iraq Study Group Report that he wants to review its findings and give them more media attention than they initially received. Of course, the ISG findings were highly critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the war, so it is unclear how rehashing its findings in the media will generate bipartisan consensus on anything. It is far more likely that Senator Biden seeks a more public forum in which to present Americans with his diplomatic bona fides in advance of his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008.

More troubling was this comment from Biden: “Mr. President, this is your war.” In the difficult early years of U.S. involvement in WWII, there were some very bleak moments, many lost battles, and terrible casualties. Hitler continued to advance, and many were losing hope of eventual victory. Despite such misery and with no certainty of success, where were the Senators telling President Roosevelt, “Mr. President, this is your war”? Fortunately, that generation, unlike Mr. Biden’s, understood that once American troops are committed to a war, bipartisanship means doing everything necessary to ensure victory rather than ridicule the President or accuse him of lying to create the war in the first place. There is no such thing as “your war” or “his war” or Bush’s war.” When our troops are fighting, it is OUR war. When they win, we win. When they lose or are prevented from winning by obstructionists like Biden, we all lose. There will always be time for hearings, committees, investigations, and other tools for embarrassing a president after the war is won and the troops have returned home.

However, for Senator Biden and other Democrats seeking the presidency in 2008, victory in Iraq is unacceptable politically. It would give too much credibility to Republicans who stayed the course in supporting the Bush strategy, and make those who opposed the war appear like nothing more than 1960s peaceniks with little stomach for difficult times or battles. A U.S. victory in Iraq, in the minds of today’s Democrats, means political defeat in 2008. Accordingly, even the politically astute Hillary Clinton has joined the ranks of anti-war presidential hopefuls in a risky gamble that victory in Iraq will not be snatched from the jaws of defeat prior to the 2008 election. Pete Rose’s betting on a sport he was personally involved in pales in comparison, and the stakes were never this high.

Candidates like Biden rise up indignantly when their patriotism is questioned, but patriotism is displayed by how well one works to achieve American victory, not how fast one can bring the troops home. Based on that criterion, it is fair to challenge Biden’s patriotism, because he has labored unwearyingly to cast the war in a negative light and clamor for a pullout of all U.S. troops at the earliest possible date. He is not interested in victory because he believes the war should never have been fought. He continues to carp on this administration for waging this war instead of offering useful ideas for how to win it now that we are in it. Either Biden has no such ideas or he simply cannot bear the thought of eventual victory, because winning the war would confirm he and the entire anti-war, anti-bush movement within the Democratic Party were wrong about this President and the Iraqi people.

Thankfully during the many initial defeats America faced in WWII, Senators possessed sufficient patriotism to tell President Roosevelt, “This is OUR war.” The size of the war does not matter. Which party was in office when it started is insignificant. Who will receive the credit for victory or the blame for defeat is irrelevant. The only questions so-called bipartisan lawmakers should be contemplating are: “how will we win OUR war, and what can I do to make that possible?” When a Senator holds hearings to discuss those questions and then acts to achieve victory, then his/her patriotism will be beyond question.

Joseph Biden Iraq Study Group Hillary Clinton Iraq War Senate Foreign Relations Committee