Biden's Delusions Of Genius And Relevance Getting Obnoxious (Plus: Liberal Foreign Policy Experts Also Just Don't Know Stuff)
Turns out that Biden more or less made up his dramatic, monumental, history-altering role in Congress's Bosnia stand:
During last week's debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting U.S. policy on Bosnia... But, despite the bravado, Biden was not a key player in the legislation that ultimately forced Bill Clinton to lift an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs, according to congressional officials involved in the issue and a review of Biden's speeches and voting record... Biden's foreign policy expertise -- honed over 36 years in the Senate -- is the main reason Obama selected him as his running mate and offers the strongest contrast with Palin.
36 years in the Senate and Biden still doesn't know shit and yet is utterly convinced in his own genius. His 2006 partition plan for Iraq was so stupid that Sunnis and Shiites - who were engaged in a civil war - united to oppose it. His understanding of Al Qaeda's strategy and territorial presence is the opposite of true. He clearly doesn't understand McKiernan's strategy in Afghanistan - not a surprise, since he also doesn't know the difference between brigades and battalions.
In fairness to him, though, he might just be listening to the bevy of liberal foreign policy specialists who have been getting things wrong about the Middle East for the better part of five decades. Click through for more.
Jonah Goldberg is grumpy because the media is treating Biden as a foreign policy genius when he's so clearly just making shit up. That's obviously true. But it risks underplaying how the rest of the media's favorite foreign policy experts - drawn from academia, think tanks, and the State Department - also just make shit up. Robin Wright is the Washington Post's award winning foreign policy reporter. She's got quite the resume: fellowships at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Yale, Duke, Stanford, UCSB, and USC, plus a bunch of journalism awards for her work on places like Iran and Lebanon. And despite these credentials - or more probably because of them - she alternates between making things up and regurgitating Hezbollah's talking points, citing unnamed "experts" throughout.
This is actually a bit of a thing in the foreign policy community, where leading sophisticates spent years peddling Hezbollah's propaganda about how Mughniyah wasn't one of theirs. That made these tools - and the journalists who cited them - the only people on the planet who didn't think that Mughniyah was a central Hezbollah player. This is a claim not even Hezbollah took seriously - they were just going through the motions for appearance's sake. And yet these experts made Hezbollah's laughable claim the standard and overwhelmingly cited press narrative about Mughniyah.
Unperturbed by how they've been totally wrong about Lebanon again and again, these same tools are now recommending disastrous policies for the next President and insisting that Hezbollah is not involved in terrorism. And by "these same tools" I mean "a sizable part of Obama's foreign policy team."
References:
* Biden Played Less Than Key Role in Bosnia Legislation [WaPo]
* He Misspoke: Biden's Obnoxiously Smug Assertion About Hezbollah Was Actually An Aggressively Stupid Policy About Syria (Plus: They Just Don't Know Stuff) [MR]
* Iraqi Leaders Opposed Biden's Partition Plan [WSJ]
* British Black Ops Taking Out Thousands Of The Bad Guys That Biden Says Don't Exist In Iraq (UPDATE: Biden Screws Up Brigades Vs. Battalions. Again.) [MR]
* Biden's Fantasy World [WSJ]
* Biden confuses “brigades” with “battalions” — for the third time in a week [Hot Air]
* Biden, the master gasbag [Jonah Goldberg]
* One Wright Makes a Wrong [Across The Bay]
* Imad who? [Martin Kramer]
* Kramer on Mughniyeh, Hezbollah [Across The Bay]
* Obligatory Post About Iran's "Hezbollah Radiation Will Destroy Israel" Threat (Plus: Mugniyah Assassination Dramatically Demonstrates Absurdity Of Liberal Foreign Policy Sophistication) [MR]
* Carnegie advice Lebanon can do without [Tony Badran]
* Paging Norton and Other Hezbollah Experts [Across The Bay]
Previously:
* State Department Sophistication Very Close To Triggering All-Out African War
* WaPo Sophistication - Conservatives Too Stuptid To Know That Europe Is Doing Really Super
* Diplomatic Sophistication Heartbreak: Tension Between Iranian Political Factions A Little Exaggerated
