JOE BIDEN'S OCTOBER SURPRISE
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JOE BIDEN’S OCTOBER SURPRISE
Joe “Bigmouth” Biden (this is a term of affection – I personally like Senator Biden) may have delivered the final October surprise.
Decoding his words is not always as straightforward as this.
Sunday in Seattle at fundraiser, Senator Biden revealed that he thinks that Senator Obama’s inexperience and lack of national security credibility will provoke a major attack on American interests – if not the USA itself – within six months of his election.
Of course, he added that Obama will be up to the challenge.No, Senator Biden did not say this in so many words, but he did actually Make The Point by necessary implication.
History is an excellent teacher here.
Saddam’s Iraq invaded Kuwait after a US ambassador held a conversation with an Iraqi counterpart in which she simply left Kuwait off a list of countries that the US would defend with force. The omission was taken as an invitation.
JFK cancelled air support for the CIA’s Cuban ex-pat invasion, resulting in the Bay of Pigs disaster.
[Years later I had a private conversation with Senator Frank Church, who was close to John Kennedy and reported that JFK knew he had made a mistake and attempted to resign.]
Later JFK met with Khrushchev who left with the impression that the young president could be rolled.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a Russian test of the young president’s resolve. It was a test that would never have been attempted when Eisenhower was in office.
The world nearly blew up.
Senator Obama has been careful to stop short of pledging the direct use of American military might to defend Israel in the event that stalwart democratic ally is attacked, say, by a coalition of Iran and Syria. Other candidates have deliberately left the matter ambiguous enough that an adversary would conclude that we won’t “stand idly by” (as the code goes) while Israel is attacked.
Biden is an old pro at this and fully understands the implications of Obama’s choice of rhetoric, but he is not at the head of the ticket and cannot directly address the problem in public without making things much worse.
With that context, consider carefully what the Seattle press reported about Biden’s remarks on Sunday:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
10-20-08, Describing 10-19-08 fundraiser where Biden said:
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“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama the way it tested John F. Kennedy,” he said.
Unmentioned was the fact that JFK was bruised by his initial testing: the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and a Vienna summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev.
And
"Pakistan is already bristling with nuclear weapons, all of which can hit Israel."
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Here is the full text:
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"Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy," according to press accounts. “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. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help."
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And here is how I decode this warning.
If we elect Obama as POTUS we’ll suffer the following: a major attack on American interests – if not the USA itself – within six months of his election.
This will not be the case if we elect John McCain. But with Obama, Biden has raised the collateral damage issue.
So here is the question:
Just how many casualties are the audacities of hope worth ?
JBG
