Biden and the AUMF
There’s a lot of interest, naturally, in Joe Biden’s vote in favor of the 2002 Iraq AUMF. Fortunately, Biden is much more disposed to deliver long talks on foreign policy than is your average Senator, so it’s possible to put his voting record in more context than is usually available. In particular, these three speeches seem relevant:
– Here’s a January 31, 2003 speech to the National Conference of the World Affairs Council of America.
– Here’s a February 3, 2003 speech “On the Possibility Of A War With Iraq”.
– And here’s a speech in Delaware on February 20, 2003 on “Two Crises: Iraq and North Korea”
The speeches read as somewhat incoherent. Biden is keenly aware of the problems with the President’s policy — war is likely to be more costly than Bush says, less necessary for American security than Bush says, and more of a distraction from al-Qaeda than Bush says. Biden also exhibits a clear understanding of the general structure of the international situation and why a threatening and unilateral posture could undermine a lot of important international objectives. He co-sponsored a resolution with Richard Lugar that would have put some breaks on the slide to war, but when the perfidy of Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt scuttled Biden-Lugar he voted for the AUMF and against an anti-war amendment by Carl Levin. But having done that, in his January speech Biden perceptively argued that the administration’s focus on Iraq made no sense:
So to put it in perspective, our failure, if you notice, I was told if you check Lexis-Nexis, since 9/11, or shortly thereafter, the President only mentioned Osama Bin Laden 6 times. He probably mentioned Saddam Hussein 6,000. In relative terms they’re not close. I would note parenthetically that we no longer have soccer moms in San Diego or Wilmington or Washington or Seattle, we have security moms. An abnormally high percentage of women between the ages of 25 and 40 with children, believe that they are likely to be a victim of a terrorist attack, which is not accurate but close to 40% believe that. Which has another destabilizing effect on us as a country.
So to make a comparative point, I think Saddam Hussein is a genuine danger and cannot be left unattended. Do I think it should have been moved front and center to the degree it has now? My answer to that is no, but it has. I think there are other things that are of a much more immediate concern, but that’s not where we are right now. And so what do we do? What do we do?
The answer he gives is: “My suggestion is that we should, and what I have attempted to do, and I will not speak for Dick Lugar, who is a close friend and whom – which will shock you all, we agree on almost everyone of these major issues – is to weigh in on a side of an incredibly divided administration.” The explanation that follows seems pretty incoherent to me, but Biden’s basic take is that the administration is deeply divided between a reasonable Powell faction and a crazy faction. The crazies are hot for a doctrine of unilateral prevention:
And so some folks believe, and I will not use names, but these folks sincerely believe that if we go it alone even when help is offered to reject it, we will demonstrate to the world our resolve. We will leverage the power we have, and to put it in colloquial terms Khomeini will sit there and say, “Oh my God! Look what they did in the face of the whole world of objecting, in Iraq we better straighten up our act.” Kim will say, whoa, we see what’s coming we’d better, you think I’m exaggerating. The only thing I’m doing here is unfairly and not fully, because of time, giving the complete rationale for their argument. And there is a chance they may be right. But I disagree with it.
Biden seems to believe, in a massive misunderstanding of how things work, that by signing on with the administration he would be able to weigh-in on the side of the non-crazy faction and thus influence events in a positive manner. I don’t really understand why he would have thought that would work, but maybe he had his reasons. Beyond that, the main things that stand out about the speeches in retrospect are that Biden was a bit too credulous about the WMD intelligence, and even as he (rightly) accused the Bush administration of understating the size of the task he himself understated the size of the task, talking about how “it could take from one to five years to win the peace and may take as many as 75,000 troops to secure victory with a cost of 20 billion dollars or more.”
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31 Responses to “Biden and the AUMF”
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August 24th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thanks for wonderful service
August 24th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Biden seems to believe, in a massive misunderstanding of how things work, that by signing on with the administration he would be able to weigh-in on the side of the non-crazy faction and thus influence events in a positive manner.
So did Blair - bottom line: they’re both idiots (or liars) and have enabled a war of aggression.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Whoa. Novakant typed exactly what I intended to, including italicized quote. So I’ll just extend the point that people on all sides thought the administration would be way more competent than was the case.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:18 am
That’s very good work at finding the context for Biden’s vote. Of course, lots of senators would find ways like that to delude themselves into not voting against the administration when that’d cost them big time, given the country’s insane mood at the time, manipulated by the administration, the compliant media, and its own reptile brain. Still, it reminds me of what I’m sure ran through Blair’s head: the administration is going to war whatever I say, so may as well be there when my own personal skills and close personal alliance, Britain’s standing, and the power of any ally could temper the course. Of course, that was tragic for Blair. You might say that while we focus on the truly insupportable liberal hawks, or on Clinton’s willingness to take any side to her advantage, other liberals were having their Richard II moment, so to speak.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I was going to refrain from clogging the thread by typing “What novakant said,” but since Deborah started I guess I’ll throw in my two cents.
Opposing the Iraq war in 2002-03 was political suicide. Trying to parse the various tactical intricacies of ass-covering rhetoric employed by Biden (or any other pubic figure of that period) is a waste of time.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Actually, the reason he thought he would be able to influence things was, according to his book, private conversations with Colin Powell who assured him that in the battle of factions he needed some Democratic votes to be able to weigh heavier on decisions internally.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I think a lot of good will was extended to the Bushies after 9/11 and no one could have predicted that the crazy-stupid motherfucker wing of the Bush Mal-Administration would be as crazy-stupid as they were.
The point is to freeze those crazy-stupid motherfuckers out of polite society and make them crawl back into their wingnut welfare holes and write their papers and blog posts at each other and ignore them.
I’d love to see Biden get up there and name some of these crazy-stupid motherfuckers by name when he’s asked about Iraq, such as:
“Why are you asking me about something Billy Kristol wrote? He is one crazy-stupid motherfucker.”
August 24th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Kerry and Dodd both voted for it with the same stupid rationale — that somehow they could influence things better if they were part of the Yay vote. The politics of the first Gulf War vote are also an underdiscussed factor in the AUMF/Iraq vote. They hedged against their better nature out of the fear of being wrong twice — which really isn’t forgivable. I think Mssrs. Biden, Dodd and Kerry all got their hand burned badly on that stove and won’t ever do it again but that doesn’t excuse them from the judgements of history.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Senators over-rate their self importances. They thought that Bush would listen to them and not lie to them because that was more or less the way it always worked in the past. When presidents did lie, (Watergate, IranContra) there were repercussions. Biden and the Senate were wrong on all counts about the willingness of Bush to lie or to listen to them. Primarily it was people outside DC (Al Gore, Obama, etc) that were more than willing to believe the substantial evidence that Bush was lying and did not care to listen.
Lying to senators typically burns bridges between a president and legislation he wants to enact. Bush never built any bridges to burn and his party faithful have protected Bush against retaliation.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:41 am
So, Biden was (1) naive about what the administration was saying, i.e. easily fooled by them, and (2) voted to give War Powers to a U.S. President for political-strategic reasons, in a context where he didn’t actually want the war powers to be exercised.
Yes, that’s good context. It makes the vote seem far, far worse to me than I had previously thought.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Well, in a sense he was right that he would be able to influence things better. If he had opposed the AUMF, he would never have appeared on a Sunday morning teevee show ever again, and thus he wouldn’t be a VP candidate today. And, boy, he got to go on the teevee shows once a month for the past six years and bloviate about how badly the Bushies were screwing up. Didn’t do the country much good, but there you have it. Biden made a perfectly reasonable assessment of the effect the vote would have on his teevee appearances.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Biden’s vote is not based on incoherent thinking — it’s based on UNPRINCIPLED action. Matt, as is his wont, avoids the main issue (i.e. Biden should have known the WMD story was a hoax) but even based on the incomplete account given here, it is clear that Biden KNEW his vote was wrong and signed on anyway becaue he is a weakling and a coward who jumped on an evil bandwagon.
A MILLION PEOPLE ARE DEAD NOW AS A RESULT.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I don’t know that this was as stupid as everyone else seems to think. That the administration was bent on war no matter what and wasn’t going to listen to anybody about it is clear now, in retrospect. I don’t think there’s any reason to think it was clear then, especially if Powell is urging people like Biden that, with their backing, he might in fact be able to head off the war.
Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s obvious in retrospect that Biden made a mistake. I don’t think the mistake he made was self-evidently ridiculous, though.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:43 am
“Opposing the Iraq war in 2002-03 was political suicide”
And now that a million have died it look smore like political genocide.
I’m sorry but you can’t make votes on war and peace based on political considerations. That is simply unconscionable.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Biden went along with the BushCo/Cheneyburton/AIPAC war for the same reason a lot of dems did. They figured if the war went well they could share credit, and if it went badly they could profit politically. They never imagined a stalemate that would go on long enough for them to inherit. Bad mistake. The dems will now take over a no-win war and confront a no-win choice: continue the war, or withdraw and be blamed for the ensuing Iraq chaos.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:47 am
“Hindsight is 20/20″
Fuck you.
There were tons of people in the blogosphere who meticulously detailed all the holes in Bushco’s case. Anyone who didn’t know the WMD Hoax was, in fact, a hoax simply didn’t WANT to know or was afraid to admit they knew.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:51 am
he himself understated the size of the task, talking about how “it could take from one to five years to win the peace and may take as many as 75,000 troops to secure victory with a cost of 20 billion dollars or more.”
This is how we work as humans. I think it’s in one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books where they did a study asking Americans to name how many countries there are in Africa. The responses are all over the place, but if you ask people are there more or less than 50, they generally said there were about 43 and if you asked if there were more or less than 5, people generally said there were about 12. I’m paraphrasing and my numbers are not exact.
I doubt anybody during the initial run-up was saying it will take 8 years and a trillion dollars. Some were saying that there was no chance of success.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Cheney was going to invade Iraq. The AUMF vote meant nothing. We have basically become a monarchy since 9-11.
August 24th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I should have said a few posts up: now that a million have died voting FOR AUMF it looks more like political genocide
August 24th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Biden or Hillary?
August 24th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Congress abdicated its constitutional role sometime after WWII. The executive branch can start a war whenever it feels like it. Once so engaged it is almost impossible to stop it. Cut off funds? Right. Send my son to fight and not give him the means to protect himself? Sorry, it ain’t gonna happen and shouldn’t. If you want to blame Biden et al go ahead but I’d rather blame the 50% of the voters who elected and re-elected these guys.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I think (probably idiosyncratically) that Colin Powell joined the Republican Party, in 1996, two years after the crazy faction had their greatest victory in the history of the Republic, for similar reasons: he thought he might serve as a counterweight to the atavistic tendencies run amok in the wake of the rise of Gingrich. Of course that worked out about as well as the pro-AUMF Dems & Blair hoping to influence Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. But that’s the only way I make heads or tails of Powell hitching his wagon to the GOP at just that moment.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Oh, and that’s actually a good picture of Biden. He doesn’t look Dukakis-esque at all, even though he’s wearing a damn polo shirt with that flak jacket.
August 24th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Opposing the Iraq War in 2002 was hardly “political suicide.” Nearly half the Democratic senators voted against the AUMF, and many is seats less safe than Biden’s.
August 24th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Yes, the idea that opposing Iraq War Powers was “political suicide” shouldn’t go unchallenged. However, it does seem from their behavior as if a lot of people in Congress at the time thought it was political suicide.
The question is where they (or anyone else) got this idea. I wish I knew. The only explanation one tends to get is people pointing to Bush I’s high approval rating directly after the Gulf War - in short, the conclusion seems to be that war always makes politicians popular and opposing war always makes them unpopular.
The fact that Bush I lost his re-election bid the very next year doesn’t seem to figure into this sophisticated calculation.
August 24th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I’d say that Congress generally votes based on the “what’s in it for me” dynamic - either bribes from wealthy constituents or political benefit. On occasion, these votes may also be influenced by the individual’s view of the world - in primate terms, meaning the US should do whatever it wants and to hell with everybody else.
None of this adds up to giving Biden the benefit of the doubt - since there is no doubt.
The same applies to Obama and McCain.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I don’t think this is what I was talking about. Biden didn’t, according to Matt, support the war because he was terrified of Iraqi WMDs. He voted for the war because he thought that a bunch of Democrats voting for the authorization of force would give Colin Powell leverage to negotiate a potentially non-violent resolution to the crisis from within the administration. This turned out to be a pipe dream - Powell was marginalized, and the people within the administration who mattered were bent on war no matter what. And perhaps Biden was naive for thinking this might conceivably work. But the fact that there were people in 2002 who thought Iraq didn’t have WMDs is completely irrelevant to the argument.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:39 am
You know, reading this did seem to jar some memories about what things were like in that first term. I don’t really remember the details, but I do kind of remember this idea that seemed to be CW that the only way for Democrats to influence things was to go along with them, and hopefully then get a seat at the table to shape policy. Of course, it’s totally idiotic, particularly with that administration and the 50+1 strategy. The administration certainly wasn’t looking for bipartisanship or compromise or input or consensus, and it certainly seemed to take the Democrats getting burned repeatedly to catch on.
I do think they were terrified of being irrelevant, and oddly enough, supporting crap legislation just made them more so, but in their eyes, they were staying in the game. I mean, with the AUMF, the administration had already argued that they didn’t need to go to Congress: they already had the authority. The compromise was: we’ll rubber stamp you if you’ll pretend you need our rubber stamp. It was typical first term compromise — you get everything you want, and we’ll get nothing but pretend we had some say in it.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:02 am
“Biden didn’t, according to Matt, support the war because he was terrified of Iraqi WMDs. He voted for the war because he thought that a bunch of Democrats voting for the authorization of force would give Colin Powell leverage to negotiate a potentially non-violent resolution.”
As Clint Eastwood once said, “Dying ain’t much of a living, boy”.
You don’t stop a war by voting for it. That is nonsense. And Biden doesn’t get a pass on the WMD. If you see that your president is perpetrating a hoax around WMD, you get out there and raise holy hell about it. You don’t vote for it, for goddsakes.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I was eagerly looking forward to Joe Biden’s leadership in early 2003, and was sorely disappointed. I had always been a fan of his, mostly because I enjoy watching him debate, but his cowardice on this life-or-death matter remains pretty much unforigiveable to me. I also remember his Sunday talk show appearances, which were all pretty pathetic. He could never give a straight anwser. When his “experience” counted the most, it was worthless. I’ll be voting for Obama despite Biden, not because of him.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Thanks for wonderful service