He was chosen as the VP to bolster BHerO's 'foreign policy credentials'. BHerO "abdicated" his FP responsibilty to Biden early on.
A sample:
"This story begins in early 2009, after Obama swept into office promising to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq. There were still 150,000 American soldiers in the country. The newly inaugurated president turned to his vice president and told him to bring the troops home. “We were sitting in the Oval Office one day and talking about [the troop presence], and Obama looked at Biden and said, ‘Joe, I think you should do this. We need sustained focus from the White House. You know Iraq better than anyone,’” Antony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser, told me. “It was as simple as that.”
...
Biden threw himself into the mission. He chaired meetings and oversaw negotiations. By the end of 2011, the war was over, and the American troops had left. “He is the guy who oversaw the drawdown, in effect, on the political side, of U.S. forces from 150,000 to virtually zero,” Blinken told me.
Then it all went horribly wrong.
The departure of U.S. troops created a vacuum. The Iraqi government and security forces rotted under an authoritarian and sectarian prime minister. Al-Qaeda, still alive, morphed into ISIS, and seized 40 percent of Iraq in the summer of 2014. The extremist “caliphate” ISIS declared across Iraq and Syria—from the Iraqi city of Mosul—set the stage for a new era of regional upheaval and global terrorism. Soon U.S. troops were headed back to Iraq, where they remain today."
(Hello, JV Team)
“I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Obama, wrote in his 2014 memoir.
...
"Amid this chaos, the Obama administration’s lack of a coherent, overarching vision on U.S. engagement became glaringly apparent.
As protests swelled in Cairo, the administration pushed the Egyptian military to oust America’s ally, Hosni Mubarak, only to look on two years later as the same military launched a counterrevolution and coup and established an even more brutal dictatorship. It mostly watched from afar as protesters were arrested in Bahrain, and later supported, half-heartedly, a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. The administration launched a military intervention that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, and then failed to rebuild any semblance of order as the country descended into civil war. Nowhere, though, was the problem as acute as in Syria—which would soon be tied dramatically to the unstable situation America had left behind in Iraq."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...-bidens-iraq-decisions-haunt-him-2020/592669/
A sample:
"This story begins in early 2009, after Obama swept into office promising to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq. There were still 150,000 American soldiers in the country. The newly inaugurated president turned to his vice president and told him to bring the troops home. “We were sitting in the Oval Office one day and talking about [the troop presence], and Obama looked at Biden and said, ‘Joe, I think you should do this. We need sustained focus from the White House. You know Iraq better than anyone,’” Antony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser, told me. “It was as simple as that.”
...
Biden threw himself into the mission. He chaired meetings and oversaw negotiations. By the end of 2011, the war was over, and the American troops had left. “He is the guy who oversaw the drawdown, in effect, on the political side, of U.S. forces from 150,000 to virtually zero,” Blinken told me.
Then it all went horribly wrong.
The departure of U.S. troops created a vacuum. The Iraqi government and security forces rotted under an authoritarian and sectarian prime minister. Al-Qaeda, still alive, morphed into ISIS, and seized 40 percent of Iraq in the summer of 2014. The extremist “caliphate” ISIS declared across Iraq and Syria—from the Iraqi city of Mosul—set the stage for a new era of regional upheaval and global terrorism. Soon U.S. troops were headed back to Iraq, where they remain today."
(Hello, JV Team)
“I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Obama, wrote in his 2014 memoir.
...
"Amid this chaos, the Obama administration’s lack of a coherent, overarching vision on U.S. engagement became glaringly apparent.
As protests swelled in Cairo, the administration pushed the Egyptian military to oust America’s ally, Hosni Mubarak, only to look on two years later as the same military launched a counterrevolution and coup and established an even more brutal dictatorship. It mostly watched from afar as protesters were arrested in Bahrain, and later supported, half-heartedly, a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. The administration launched a military intervention that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, and then failed to rebuild any semblance of order as the country descended into civil war. Nowhere, though, was the problem as acute as in Syria—which would soon be tied dramatically to the unstable situation America had left behind in Iraq."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...-bidens-iraq-decisions-haunt-him-2020/592669/
