Analyzing What I Now Call the Biden Doctrine

When I said that Senator Biden didn't make any major mistakes in the last debate, I must not have been paying attention to the whopper he pulled regarding Hezbollah, Syria and Lebanon. Here is how Michael Totten described the error.

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.”

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

So, let's track the number of gaffes in that statement. First, as Totten points out, Hezbollah hasn't been kicked out of Lebanon. Second, if he meant to say Syria, it was the Lebanese largely on their own that kicked out Hezbollah. It's actually impossible to know what Biden meant because Ifill didn't catch the error and neither did Palin. Furthermore, the MSM has pretended as though the error didn't exist.

Since I can't decipher for sure, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and analyze the one that is closest to a semblance of a thought. Let's suppose that he meant to say that the U.S., along with France, kicked out Syria out of Lebanon. Let's also just dismiss the thought that Lebanon did this largely on its own. Let's examine what he said after this.

First, Hezbollah had long ago became a fixture not only in Lebanese government but society. They did this in two ways. First, they created a so called political wing that ran candidates. They have had an active minority in the government for much longer than Syria has been kicked out of Lebanon. Second, and much more importantly, much like Hamas, they have created another wing to their movement that provides basic food and services to the poor in the area in they area they occupy in Southern Lebanon.

Also, UNIFIL has had a peace keeping force in Lebanon since 1978. In fact, this UNIFIL force was supposed to carry out exactly the sort of peace keeping operations that Biden claimed on Thursday that a NATO force should carry out. What exactly did Biden think this mysterious NATO force could do that the UNIFIL force had failed at so miserably? The idea that a bunch of Europeans fighting in a country that they could care less about would be able to quell Hezbollah when Israel, for the better part of 20 years with everything on the line, couldn't accomplish the same goal is patently ridiculous.

Joe Biden is supposed to have gravitas on foreign policy. Barack Obama was supposed to have picked him so that folks wouldn't be concerned about the direction of our foreign policy under a novice President. Yet, not only can't he keep his facts straight in an area of vital importance to our interest, but even once you decipher his incoherent rant, you get a doctrine that is totally void of reality. If Joe Biden thinks that peace can be created in the Middle East through European lead peace keeping forces that take on embedded militaries/political forces/civil servants like Hezbollah, then God help us all as this foreign policy doctrine is implemented.