Come On, Dude

A fairly nice Biden gaffe.

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer.

You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society.

It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.

Does the Obama Administration really think it can take credit for a peaceful and stable Iraq? What planet are they on? They basically enacted the Status of Forces Agreement the Bush Administration made with the Iraqi government in 2008.

This is why I never thought it was a wise move - long term - for the democrats to get invested in the failure of the Iraq war. Once the debate to go to war was lost in 2003, it still didn't make smart political sense to become invested in failure. An honest, thoughtful, principled person certainly could honestly oppose the Iraq War. It was not a slam-dunk position. There were plenty of ways to legitimately oppose it. Not that much of the main democratic establishment at the time did - Clinton, Biden, and Lieberman were all pretty clear in their support of using force against the Saddam regime. Nevertheless, opposition to war didn't necessitate investment in failure, yet many of the democrats and liberals did so. There were plenty of critics of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq War and some of those criticisms led to improvements in the way we handled it - both from the left and right.

What is pretty despicable, however, from the so-called leadership, is a dishonest and politicized revisionist history of events. Biden seems to want things all ways -

He supported the initial resolution to go to war.
When the war went bad, he argued it was Bush's fault and exploited it politically.
He opposed the surge, and now that it appears to have worked, is trying to take credit for it.

Are we supposed to take this seriously?