Q&A: Sen. Joe Biden On His Iraq Votes and Plan

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, a long-time U.S. senator from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, campaigned in western Iowa over the Memorial Day weekend.

Biden sat down for a 20-minute interview in Carroll with Iowa Independent and Carroll Broadcasting.

The senator strongly defended his vote last week in favor of more Iraq war funding, and while not calling out other presidential candidates who voted against the supplemental, Biden did take an indirect shot at the Democrats who voted against the money.

 “I’m not going to play politics with their (troops') lives,” Biden said.

Biden said funding for the war should include billions of dollars for better vehicles to save lives of troops – Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.

In the interview and remarks to crowds in western Iowa Biden detailed his Iraq plan.

His idea is to maintain a unified Iraq by federalizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis “breathing room in their own regions.”

The following is the text of the Iowa Independent and Carroll Broadcasting interview with the senator.

Iowa  Independent: In your campaign Web site’s biography one of your first lines is “Joe Biden thinks the Democratic Party has become too timid.” Isn't your vote in favor of the Iraq supplemental funding an example of that criticism, of that timidity?

Biden: No, No, what we have to do is tell the truth and truth is there is no way that vote is going to end the war. But at the same time, that vote would delay, and I’m not questioning anyone else’s vote, that vote would delay by two months the ability to start building these mine-resistant vehicles. We can’t wait that long. Everybody knows we don’t have the votes to cut off the funding now. I just can’t vote against the troops in the field – and it’s indiscriminate.

There’s a big difference between voting for something that makes you feel good and voting for something that will have any impact. There’s no possibility of it cutting off funding, No. 1, and No. 2, if it did cut off funding right away, what’s going to happen? You’re going to delay another two, three, four weeks. We don’t have the votes to override the veto. In the meantime you back up by the better part of a month the beginning of construction these vehicles that are going to begin to save lives of people on the ground right now. I’m not going to play politics with their lives.

Carroll Broadcasting: How do you think you can hold off, because  you were talking with President Bush 20 more months. How can you hold off as the Democrats?

Biden: The country can’t afford 20 more months. Here is the one thing that is happening in my view. You see more and more Republicans begin to walk away or announcing they’re about to walk away from the president. In my view there’s no possibility that this president, this fall, is going to be able to continue to maintain 160,000 forces in Iraq without his party just revolting, just totally revolting. I don’t think there’s a dozen Republicans that support his present posture, his present strategy in Iraq.

You’re going to see the erosion take place and its going to take place very rapidly. When it starts it’s going to be like a dam breaking.

We will end this war in this president’s term when 17 Republicans decide enough is enough.

Iowa Independent: I spent the better part of Thursday with a friend of mine, who is like a brother to me, who is getting called back up in the Reserves. If God forbid he were to lose his life, what do a I write? What did he die for? How do I explain his death? What did it mean?

Biden: You write that a close friend of yours felt so deeply about his obligation to his country that even when he may have doubted the tactic or rationale for what his country asked him to do, he was prepared to do it and that his life was not wasted. At a minimum what he would have done was begin to change the course of history in the region by forcing because of the additional tragedy, the loss of his life, enormous pressure of  fundamentally changing the way we conduct foreign policy in this world.

The public, once we’re by this, is not going to allow a president to have this kind of leeway again. They’re not going to trust a president. That’s one of the tragedies here.

I don’t believe a soldier’s life is ever wasted. But I do think that sometimes the loss of a soldier’s life brings about a change in the mentality of a country, that sets it on the right track again. I don’t consider that a waste but I do think this is an unnecessary war.

Carroll  Broadcasting: You said earlier today that you’re the only candidate who has a plan, and is willing to say that when there are a lot of other candidates who seem to get a lot more media attention because of the money they’re willing to go out there and spend, how are you going to get your voice and your plan out there to the people and maybe get it pushed through Congress?

Biden: What’s happening is there are two levels at which I think I will win this debate in terms of how to proceed. One is the foreign policy establishment is signing on to where I am, Kissinger and Albright and versions of it with Baker and Hamilton. The overwhelming body of military and foreign policy heavyweights are moving toward exactly what I’ve been proposing or something close to it. The force of the idea, not me, is going to carry the day.

I predict to you that every candidate running will end up where I am.

Iowa Independent: Bill Maher has long endorsed the federalized — with some divison of warring parties — plan on his talk show on HBO.

Biden: Bill has been a supporter of the position and you have unholy alliances. When we get back after this Memorial Day recess I’m introducing it in legislation form. It’s going to be called Biden-Brownback. Brownback is now embracing it, a Republican candidate for president. Guess who else? Barbara Boxer, one of the most liberal members of the United States Senate.

Iowa Independent: You have been a senator for 34 years. In your speech you referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a shadow government, and decribed the access you have to foreign leaders. We have many other candidates out here that are beating the drums with the Democratic message. Wouldn’t it make se
nse with your seniority and your access to stay in Washington, for you to go to places like Brussels, for you to use the contacts you’ve developed?Wouldn’t that be the responsible thing to do if you were really concerned about moving an agenda and doing something that’s right rather than just getting a higher office?

Biden: I think that’s a fair question. As you may remember I had a chance to run last time (2004). The people who went to Clark and others went to me first and I decided I didn’t want to do it because of that reason. Anything I said about the war would have been viewed in partisan terms once I was a candidate.

I made a decision back in 1988 I wasn’t going to run for president and if you’ve noticed you haven’t heard anything about me making political speeches in the last 20 years. I haven’t come to the Iowa JJ. I haven’t come to any of these functions I used to do and I’m not a bad speaker.

I give you my word, guys, the decision I made was after Kerry lost, I realized that everything I did that was consequential in my first 32 years was done in the Senate where there were 54, 56 Democrats and half a dozen or a dozen moderate Republicans.

The reason I’m running this time is that all the things I care about I have virtually no chance of changing from the Senate, none.

The Senate can’t make foreign policy. It can stop bad ideas. It can support good ideas. But you can’t pass a piece of legislation saying Mr. President, you most negotiate.

I made a judgment — maybe I’m wrong — that I’m the single most qualified person in either party at this moment to help change the direction of this country, particularly in foreign policy.

Look, I’m going to get myself in trouble here. I don’t want to live in the White House.

Iowa Independent: Would you be like Truman and find alternative accommodations or take as much vacation time as Bush?

Biden: You know what I mean. That’s the only place you can make the decisions. I’ve been around a long while. I can die a happy man not hearing “Hail To The Chief.”

I don’t need to be president. But it frustrates me because there are clear answers within our reach.