Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, October 20, 2008 11:15:26 AM
Joe Biden continues to try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
for Barack Obama. In a stunning statement, Biden acknowledged that
Obama’s lack of foreign-policy experience will provoke America’s
enemies into creating an international crisis. Biden apparently thinks
this is just terrific:
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.,
on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will
be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in
power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough,
and possibly unpopular, decisions.
“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at
the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six
months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.
The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old
senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it
standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re
gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the
mettle of this guy.”
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might
originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the
Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And
the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not
financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence,
your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s
not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re
right.”
Isn’t this an argument for electing someone with more experience?
Let’s not forget the example that Biden himself uses here. John
Kennedy got tested because he met with Nikita Khrushchev with “no
preconditions”. Kennedy acknowledged afterwards that it was an “unmitigated disaster“:
Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that
behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American
diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union,
later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul
Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a
disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American
president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev
agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too
weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low
opinion of the leader of the free world.
Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only
a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II
veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit
meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He
just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks
I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we
won’t get anywhere with him.”
What resulted? The Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis.
Kennedy wound up trading strategic intel and missile installations in
western Asia in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of the nuclear missiles
from Cuba. The entire Kennedy administration turned out to be a
foreign-policy disaster that was only overlooked because of the tragic
assassination of Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.