Some past comments on Kerry (Albright and Biden)

SECRETARY MADELEINE ALBRIGHT:

Between now and November, the electorate will focus and broaden to include a closer look at Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. If foreign policy continues to dominate the campaign, Democrats will congratulate themselves for selecting a candidate who is able to speak knowledgeably about the world. A veteran and a war hero with 20 years of senate experience, Kerry is well positioned to earn a fair hearing from independent voters worried about America’s current direction.


SENATOR JOSEPH BIDEN, JR.: Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. I just want to set the record straight. I'm here to speak for George Bush. Frank, former Chairman, as we came in said, "Someone’s got to do it," so I’ll do it. I have Bill Kristol’s notes and it won’t take long.

There is one thing I do want to set straight. When I was a 28-year-old kid deciding to run for the United States Senate, and God only knows why I thought that was a good idea back then, I wanted to see one person. I didn’t want to see Teddy Kennedy, I wanted to see Paul Kirk. This is a true story. Because I thought and believed and found out it was true, that if I could convince Paul Kirk that I could get elected to the United States Senate before I was constitutionally eligible, which was literally true, that I had a chance.

And I’ll never forget walking into Senator Kennedy’s office, and he was then the Majority Whip of the United States Senate, and there was a large -- I guess it was what we would call from my neighborhood -- swordfish hanging on the wall, and I remember walking in and starting off-- I'm trying very much to remember now; literally, I was 28 years old, almost 29. I got elected on November the 3rd, I was still 29 years of age, not constitutionally eligible to take office, and this was a year before that.

And I walked in working up, practicing on the way down every way I could to figure out how I'm going to impress this guy that this kid from Claymont, Delaware, a little steel town in Delaware, was capable of being a United States Senator in 1972. And I walked in and said, "Hello, Mr. Kirk," I said, "my God, that’s a big fish!" And as soon as I said it, I thought, what in the hell am I doing? And I've been that glib since then.

Paul, thank you for your friendship.

I don’t purport to speak for John Kerry, but I've worked with John for more than 20 years, and as I understood sort of the way this was going to go, and Bill Kristol and I really do see each other quite frequently, I thought it was going to be more of a little bit of a debate as I understood between Bill and me, and that I was supposed to lay out what I thought based on 20-plus years of working with John on the Foreign Relations Committee what I thought you could look forward, the kind of foreign policy that a Kerry administration would provide.

So I'm going to presume to do that, if I may, since that’s what I prepared for rather than tell you about how Senator Kennedy caught that fish.

For more than 20 years, John and I have worked together on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and I've known John for 32 years, but that doesn’t mean I am able to speak for him, although I think I have a pretty good idea of his basic views on American foreign policy and where a Kerry administration would take us.

I'm speaking to you today as the leader, in a technical sense, of the Democratic Party in the Congress. I'm the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. For you foreigners that are here representing other countries, a ranking member is a euphemism for having no power. So I'm able to speak about everything with great authority.

I want to begin by saying, and I mean this sincerely, and it sometimes gets my more partisan Democratic friends angry, I have an inordinately high regard for the men and women in the Bush Administration. They're among the brightest, the most patriotic Americans that I have encountered in my almost 32 years as a United States Senator, and I do not question their motives. They truly believe the dominant wing of the party that’s prevailed with this President, those proposing what we all are characterizing as a neoconservative view of American foreign policy, truly believe it’s the way to make this country safer, and they believe it’s the way to make the world safer, and they truly believe that if the power is used well, it will in fact mean that in the future we’re less likely to have to use military power.

So I don’t for a moment question their motives, but I have serious and profound disagreements, as John does, with their judgments. It’s not just the mistakes that were made. If Al Gore were president, if I were president, if any one of us in here, we would have made a number of mistakes thus far, particularly in the face of what happened on 9/11.


What I think this Administration will be judged most harshly for is the opportunities it has squandered, especially after the events of 9/11, squandered the opportunity to unite this nation and the nations of the world in a common cause. Here at home, after 9/11, millions of Americans yearned to help, to do something, to do something for their country. Remember those blood lines at blood banks that went on, snaked around city blocks for close to a mile, even after there was no need for anymore blood to be given; people stood there to give blood, because they wanted to do something.

I remember the headline in Le Monde. Those of my friends from other countries that are represented here know it’s France’s largest newspaper. The headline said, "We are all Americans." For the first time in the history of NATO, Article V was invoked without any prompting by us, which said that an attack on America was an attack on NATO, meaning we’re all at war.

In my judgment, this Administration could have rallied this country in ways that it failed to do. I believe it could have rallied it behind a new campaign for national service. Young people in this country are yearning, yearning to do more. I believe they are ready to do great things. Nothing has been asked of them.

I think it could have asked Americans to support a real energy policy, a conservation policy that would appeal to their patriotism, tell them to get out of their big cars and start to deal with the energy problems we face in terms of conservation beyond their automobiles.

I believe it could have focused our resources on critical needs in homeland security, which the Council on Foreign Relations estimates we are still, and I believe it to be true, $100 billion underfunding over the next five years. But instead, they chose a tax policy that in fact was an alternative because we could not afford both.

Beyond our borders, this Administration, I believe, squandered an historic opportunity to bring nations together against the forces of intolerance and destruction that had become a common cause of concern for every nation state.

This was a remarkable moment after 9/11, as I said, when everyone seemed poised to unite. The nations around the world look to us for leadership, the kind of leadership we provided after World War II; the kind of leadership that gave others a voice and to whom we listened; the kind of leadership that built the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the IMF, rebuilt Western Europe and Japan; the kind of leadership that set a foundation for security and prosperity that helped us prevail in the Cold War; the kind of leadership that understood that the secret to our success, from the time the first shot of the Revolution was fired in this state to the time that the Cold War ended and the Wall came down, was based not merely on our military might, but on our ideals and our ideas.

To those in this room who are hoping for a John Kerry victory in November: be careful what you wish for, because that’s exactly the kind of leadership I think you're going to get from John Kerry, one that demands a great deal of you and demands a great deal of the world.

As a result, a Kerry administration, I believe, would ask a great deal of our friends and our allies around the world just as it would ask of a lot of the American people. You won’t have this administration, I say to you from other countries, you won’t have this administration used as an excuse for your occasional inaction, an excuse not to engage in the fray, an excuse that some of you use now to do what you know you should be doing.

I believe the Kerry administration would seek to build a new consensus in three areas. First, the need for strong, effective alliances in international organizations; and second, the importance of not a preemption but a prevention strategy to defuse the threats to our security long before the only choice is for us to go to war or to ignore the problem; and thirdly, a commitment to bolster failing states and to promote democracy. This new consensus is going to require some important changes in American foreign policy, but it’s also going to require of our friends and our allies the need for them to reconsider their own reflexive approaches across the board. Let me say a few words about each of the pieces of this new compact I expect you're going to see.

This Administration has shown little interest in using international alliances and organizations. It has made little effort to reform them. That’s not a surprise when you consider how most of its dominant players understand US power and its purposes. These are very bright, patriotic Straussians; these people really, truly believe the way to secure our place in the world and secure the world’s security is not through those organizations.

To them, our military might is the most important tool in our foreign policy kit, if not our only tool, because that might is so much greater than anyone else’s in relative terms. We spend more on defense than all the rest of the world combined. Every other defense budget in the world added up does not meet the amount we spend yearly on the budget. I make no apologies for that; it’s just merely a fact. It is a fact.

And my friends in this Administration believe that simple fact that we have such great might means that allies and treaties are more of a burden than they are a benefit. In their view, international institutions and alliances are, as my friend -- and he is my friend -- Bill Kagan says, the Lilliputians that are tying down Gulliver.

In fact, some in the Administration believe the United States should go out of its way to reject the help of others. By demonstrating to the world that the United States can do what it wants, where it wants, without anyone’s assistance, the argument goes, we can leverage our already extraordinary physical strength.

The rationale is being offered with regard to Libya, which I hope someone asks me about in the question-and-answer period, because I met for two hours two months ago with Khaddafi in his tent about this very issue. The argument goes, because of our demonstrable power, the shock and awe that the world saw and witnessed – I made the lights go on and off; I tell you what, that must be either a Democrat or a Republican trying to blind me, one of the two, I don’t know which it is.

But all kidding aside, the argument goes, and you’ll hear it repeatedly in this Administration, that because of the force we showed in Iraq, immediately Khaddafi said, "My God, I'd better get it straight with these guys, I'd better get it straight now." That’s what they mean by leveraging power.

I would add parenthetically that it might work had we had a 12-million-man army and a $600-billion-a-year surplus instead of deficit, and then I'd believe it would only work for a while. But the point of the matter is, that’s the rationale. It is not some harebrained scheme. These guys are not the Christian Coalition. These are very serious people, and I profoundly disagree with their view. And I suspect some of the Democrats in here share my view.

Think about the dangers we face: terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states that flout the rules, international crime and drug trafficking, ethnic conflict, infectious diseases of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc., economic instability, environmental decay. Not one of these international threats -- not one -- has any respect for borders and not one can be met solely with a military response.

The friends and allies this Administration has disdained, the international organizations it has disparaged, the treaties it has decried do not hold America down, as they purport; they help us to spread the risks and share the burdens of leadership.

This Administration said that there would be no price for going it our own way or going it alone in Iraq. I respectfully suggest they were profoundly wrong. Because we waged war in Iraq virtually alone, we have been responsible for the peace virtually alone. And the price is all too easy to calculate. In Iraq, nearly 90% of the troops are American; nearly 90% of the casualties are American; nearly 90% of the deaths are American.

This has been the core of John Kerry’s message, but it’s not its entirety. John and I, and many others, believe as important as alliances, treaties and international organizations are to America’s success, their credibility depends on a willingness not only to live by the rules, but to enforce the rules. To enforce the rules.

That’s the principal reason I voted to authorize President Bush to be able to use force in Iraq. It wasn’t about preemption; as a matter of fact, the Biden-Lugar authorization for the war and the ultimate one we finally voted for expressly and explicitly said "this is not based upon a doctrine of prevention," in my view a foolhardy notion, which I will speak to in a moment.

It’s about summoning the world to enforce the rules. Iraq had systematically violated those rules for 12 years. Had we taken Iraq out of Kuwait in 1919, Saddam would have sued for peace and signed a treaty at Versailles. Instead, it was the United Nations, and he violated every aspect of every agreement he made in every way. This was about enforcement.

Of course, other countries run afoul of UN resolutions, but few, if any, as clearly and consistently as Iraq and add to that Iraq’s past use of WMD, its failure to come clean about its arsenals, Saddam’s abuse of the Iraqi people, and the ongoing threat he posed to Iraq’s neighbors, and you had a perfect storm.

I believe, and believed then, that we could convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam: Disarm or be disarmed. And in so doing, we could make war much less likely. Saddam failed to listen and forced us to act. We would have had the world with us, or least a significant part of the world with us, to build a peace, which in the hearings I held prior to going to war, every expert said would be a multibillion, multiyear and require multihundreds of thousands of troops in order to do.

That strategy produced UN Resolution 1441, but then this Administration and our European allies, each, in my view, terribly misplayed their hand. This is where you Democrats won’t like this part. I think our European allies misplayed their hand, too. The extremes in both sides of the Atlantic took over.

In Washington there’s a group for whom not going to war with Iraq was never an option no matter what Saddam did, and in Europe it was those for whom going to war with Iraq was never an option no matter what Saddam did or did not do.

Many of you remember that Kofi Annan was critical of the US and NATO for going to war in Kosovo without UN approval. That’s something Madeleine and I worked very closely on, and she led on. But he was just as critical of the Security Council for not acting when faced with "crimes against humanity betraying the very ideals that inspired the founding of the United Nations." More recently, in the context of Iraq, Annan said, "It is not enough to denounce unilateralism unless we also face up squarely to the concerns being raised and show that these concerns can and will be effectively addressed with collective action."

In short, we should strive for a rule-based international system with the UN playing a central role. But if we are not willing to enforce the rules and our interests are at stake, the system will collapse. And I hope that our friends and allies will take that truth to heart.

In my judgment, this Administration’s effort to turn military preemption from a longstanding option into a one-size-fit-all doctrine has created more problems than it has solved, and has literally left us less secure than we were before it was announced. Such a doctrine says to rogue states that their best insurance policy against regime change is to acquire WMD as quickly as possible. It gives a green light to India and Pakistan, Israel and the Arabs, Russia and Georgia, China and Taiwan, to use force and ask questions later. It sets the bar so low for the use of force that there’s no credible standard that can be applied that would allow one to acquire legitimacy in the international community if and when force is used.

I believe the Kerry administration would adopt a much more comprehensive prevention doctrine that gets to problems well before they're on the verge of exploding so that we are not left with a Hobson’s choice between acting at the last minute with force or doing nothing at all.

Prevention doctrine would include much more emphasis on threat reduction programs to secure and destroy WMD; new international laws to seize suspect cargo on the high seas; new alliances to enforce intelligence and financial obligations and to work with intelligence and financial officials to uproot terrorists to end the funding; new and tougher arms control and non-proliferation strategy, including no notice on-site inspections and a reformed non-proliferation treaty; better public diplomacy so we can explain our policies, to expose the lies and distortions; and a sustained commitment to the development of democratization to prove to people around the world that we offer hope, and our enemies offer nothing but hatred and despair.

In saying that, it’s also very important for our foreign friends to understand that, in my view, under John Kerry’s administration America’s military will remain second to none, and John will not -- John will not -- I emphasize John will not hesitate to use it, and, if need be, without asking permission when the circumstances require it and the world fails to react in the face of overwhelming flouting of the international rules and conventions.

And don’t misunderstand this fellow; this is the same guy that turned that Swift boat on a 90-degree angle to change the profile and hit it full throttle and went up on the shore and charged the machine gun nest. Not because he was so brave, but because he knew it was the only way to save the people on his ship. Don’t misunderstand who this man is.

And the fact is, trouble has become far more aggressive in coming to look for us. Together we face a nexus of new threats -- terrorism, rogue states, WMD. Demand for new responses are required, and containment and deterrence will in fact continue to be applicable tools that will work with nation states. And they make sense the vast majority of the time. But they're not enough when the enemy is stateless, has no population or no territory to defend, and it requires some articulation of a doctrine somewhere between this rogue preemption notion and the Treaty of Westphalia of 1638.

Europeans will see, I hope, that in fact they're going to be required to in fact go back to where they had been in terms of considering that we have to come up with intermediate responses.

On the use of force itself, we also need a new consensus. As I said, the Treaty of Westphalia of 1638, the debate since then has been about the limits on the right of intervention. I think we need to change the terms of the debate and focus on the responsibility we share to protect our citizens against aggression from tyrants and terrorists alike.

We got part of the way in 1990 under the leadership of Madeleine and President Clinton, and with great difficulty we got there. We basically, without using the term-- I used the term; she was smart enough not to use the term. And I got the devil beat out of me for about four years from the internationalists and my own party. I said when in fact a nation harbors terrorists and we can prove it and they are using that as a base to strike us, unless they cooperate with us getting them, they forfeit their sovereignty. They forfeit their sovereignty. And remember, many of my party said, "Oh, my God how can you say they forfeit their sovereignty?" Well, the fact of the matter is the same is applied when a nation state in Europe, or anywhere else, decides under its leadership that it is going to engage in genocide that’s clear to the whole world. They forfeit their sovereignty.

There are new rules of the game. If you notice, I say to the international audience in here, even Kofi Annan is articulating them as basic elements of international policy now. So the question is, are we going to in this fundamentally changed world we find ourselves in, actually engage Europe and the United States in an open debate and discussion and in hardnosed sessions among us, as friends and allies, as to what the new rules of the road should be, what is the changed circumstance and how we deal with it.

I respectfully suggest that I think you’ll see John Kerry aggressively trying to work out a consensus and demand a consensus, if you will, by hardnosed discussion with our friends in private as to what are the responsibilities we share in this profoundly different world we find ourselves.

Finally, I believe we need a new commitment to bolstering failing states, to expand democracy. In the interest of time -- and by the way, I apologize, my staff told me you wanted me to speak 25 minutes and I know I wasn’t supposed to speak that long. My staff is fired, by the way.

But let me just say this, let me give you one example. Fundamental difference between John Kerry and this administration -- and many really fine people in this administration, like Paul Wolfowitz and others; he’s a fine, decent, honorable guy -- is John Kerry does not believe you can impose democracy on any part of the world, particularly one that has never had any indices of democracy. It takes time. We think you should start by withholding support for those countries that in fact are impediments to democracy. That’s a nice place to start. We should send a little clear message -- this is Joe Biden speaking -- to our friends in Saudi Arabia and to our friends in other places: You have become our problem. We are being held accountable. We are being held accountable for your failure to begin the process.

Governor Morris of Pennsylvania in writing our Constitution, when debating a particular clause which I will not bore you with, turned to one of his colleagues from Virginia and said, "It squints toward monarchy." All we’re asking is that Saudi Arabia and many of the others start to squint toward democracy. The process has to begin to change.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s much more to say. I've said too much already. But let me just suggest to you that anyone who thinks electing John Kerry President of the United States, which I suspect -- and he got criticized for this -- a significant number of people around the world would like to see, rightly or wrongly, anybody who thinks that means the rest of the world’s going to all of a sudden beat a path to our door to cooperate is mistaken. You will continue to attempt to take advantage of us.

Understand: John Kerry will be no one’s patsy. John Kerry will ask a great deal of the rest of the world. But John Kerry will be prepared to listen. John Kerry will be prepared to negotiate the new rules of the road. John Kerry will treat with respect and honor those great allies we have always had.


Ladies and gentlemen, we all have a whole hell of a lot of work to do, and the next President of the United States, whether it’s George Bush or whether it’s John Kerry, is going to inherit a world that is in bad and sad need of significant repair.


Thank you very much.


http://www.jfklibrary.org/forum_albright_biden.html

I opened my Economist, and once again they were bashing Kerry for another "long winded speech" about Iraq. But here's the thing: his speeches do have a point. He doesn't meander all over the place like Biden repeatedly does. I can follow a Kerry speech, although I do have to concentrate. With Biden, it's like talking to an Irish person at 1 AM after a night of pints of Guinness(oh, and I'm Irish so I have the right to make fun of them). Geez, buddy, is there a point to this story, or what?

And what's with this "I love * administration officials" crappola from Biden?

Anyway, thanks for posting. Interesting speech.

He's very knowledgeable, but like this speech, his positions are all over the place. He gives the impression that he has a finger in the wind, but then sometimes I think he just comes to the wrong conclusion. The stuff about Bush cronies, who the hell knows where that comes from. Wolfowitz? Sheesh!

after the election, telling a story about a Delaware waitress lamenting that he would have won because he said things clearly. In addition to repeating a RW lie and it being both unkind and self serving at the time, it's not true.

What it may be is the Biden does give short pungent Sunday talk show answers - where Kerry makes all the neccesary qualifications. But Kerry can say far more memorable things and his speeches are far better. (Or made I prefer linear, logical arguments to meandering thoughts that sometimes cross each other going the opposite direction in the same speech.

What I found weird was that although he makes a case for Kerry's philosophy of goverment and for how he views the world - on a personal level - he defends the PERSONAL characteristics of the Bush administration - with words like decent, honorable etc - then says nothing about Kerry personal characteristics. Now, I'm sure Biden does see Kerry as honorable, decent, honest etc but here he doesn't say it - inspite of saying he's known him for 32 years.

behind Joe LIEbermunch but this excerpt was enlightening. I do agree that he goes where the wind blows far far too much. But this is an interesting side of him that I haven't seen.

I still am steamed he voted for Clarence Thomas at the confirmation... I keep bringing that up as it seems most people have forgotten that disaster.

I think Biden is a nutter and an opportunist, but I also like his (possibly often disingenuous) candor and find him deeply entertaining. That said, I certainly don't want him anywhere near a national ticket!

Have to agree with the comments here -- he should get right OFF the Administration train, even if he hasn't paid for an actual seat and is just schmoozing with them in the club car. I love what he says about what JK would be like in terms of an unwavering dedication to the interests of our security and our global alliances, but he does take a damn long and twisty road towards saying it!

Sorry, he does nothing for me. Here's what I heard.

Biden:
Thanks. Let me tell you about me.
Oh yea, Kerry. But let me tell you about this administration, bla…bla…bla…
If I were president, bla…bla…bla…
Me, me, me…I, I, I…
(Oh, yea Kerry.) Well John Kerry and I…
But let’s get back to me for a minute…
(Oh, shit. Got to say something nice about John Kerry, this is supposed to be about '04.) John Kerry’s tough. Wolfowitz is great, though.
Oh. And John Kerry’s no patsy. (Did I say that already?)
Anyway, whoever wins, we’re in a world of shit.

Then I checked the link and there was more of the same, including that he tells foreign leaders that he thinks bush* will win to get them engaged. WTF is that?

Biden did make some positive comments about Sen Kerry, so I'll give him that. And no doubt he's bright and his heart's in the right place, generally speaking. But he just comes off smarmy and disingenuous to me. He'd be OK if he didn't talk so damn much about himself. I know. I have the same problem, but I try to keep it in check.

I was focusing on his comments related to Kerry's foreign policy knowledge and experience.

I was really not responding to your post as I should have been.
I just get so angry thinking about the opportunities these guys had to help get JK elected, and they completely blew it.
Then I go off.
It did make me feel better, though.
Again, not a proper reply. My fault.