Right away in tonight’s debate, Joe Biden was confronted with his 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War. “It was a mistake, and I acknowledged that [in 2006],” he said. “But the man who also argued against that war, Barack Obama, picked me to be his vice president. And once we were elected president and vice president, he turned to me and asked me to end that war.”
So we’re getting a version of the argument from authority here, argumentum ad Obamam, but Biden is also stepping up in his own right to own the 2011-2012 withdrawal from Iraq. But it may not have been his or Obama’s finest moment. Many people have argued that the whole thing was shoddily done and led directly to the power vacuum into which ISIS grew with astonishing pace because the Obama administration failed to take them seriously.
Biden famously bet his vice presidency on getting a signed status of forces agreement with the Iraqis. Then, he failed to do so.
In his new book, Mattis, 68, argues that Biden, 76, was “indifferent” to the consequences of complete withdrawal — consequences that included “tens of thousands of casualties, plus untold misery for millions of innocents,” as well as the kidnapping and beheading of westerners, and horrific terrorist attacks across the world.
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had this to say:
The U.S. pulled out its forces from Iraq in 2011, despite warnings from Mattis that this would be folly. At the time, Mattis was head of Central Command, overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama sent forces back to Iraq in 2014 after the Islamic State seized parts of the country.
“All this was predicted — and preventable,” Mattis writes in his book.
Mattis’s word isn’t necessarily gospel, and I don’t want to treat Biden’s thankless task as something that could have easily been completed successfully.
Still, it just doesn’t sound that bright to my ears to claim that you made up for your vote for the disastrous Iraq War by negotiating a disastrous Iraq withdrawal.
