So Is Obama Really Bluffing on Iran?
In a speech defending Obama's foreign policy, Vice President Biden is apparently going to invoke the prospect of another war as a knock on Romney:
Electing Romney could again "waste hundreds of billions of dollars and risk thousands of American lives on an unnecessary war," Biden said in a clear reference to the unpopular Iraq war that Obama ended.
This would certainly be a useful contrast to draw, but how well positioned in the Obama administration to make it? I'm assuming here that this "unnecessary war" is against Iran. But here's Biden's boss a few weeks ago:
I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff. I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say...I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks. And obviously, the bin Laden operation is the most dramatic, but al-Qaeda was on its [knees] well before we took out bin Laden because of our activities and my direction.
Now we have Biden running around warning that to elect Romney is to court a war with Iran. Does that mean that President Obama was bluffing and that he actually has no intention of using military force against Iran's nuclear program? Or maybe Obama was being honest and it's Biden who's playing fast-and-loose in an effort to court a war-weary public? Or maybe President Obama has an unbelievably optimistic view of what his diplomacy can achieve? Either way, Biden's line of attack raises some uncomfortable questions.
