Joe Biden - Candidate For Me?!

Senator Joe Biden gave a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institute today and though I'm loath to consider voting for someone who came up with the RAVE Act and was involved in most other major legislative aspects of the drug war, this is the most sensible beginnings of a foreign policy platform I've seen from any of the potential candidates - other than Hart of course. He takes both the multilateralists and the neo-cons to task and proposes a middle ground of "enlightened nationalism":

one that understands the value of institutions but allows us to use military force, without apology or apprehension if we have to, but does not allow us to be so blinded by the overwhelming power of our armed forces that we fail to see the benefit of sharing the risks and the costs with others.

In my view, the stakes are too high and the opportunities too great to conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

It's somewhat long but you should read the whole thing if you want to know how things should have been done and need to be done from here on out.

Some in my own Party have said it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place, and the benefit is not worth the cost. I believe they're wrong. The cost of not acting against Saddam would have been much greater, and so is the cost of not finishing the job. The President is popular. The stakes are high. The need for leadership is great.

I wish he'd used some of his stored-up popularity to make what I admit is an unpopular case. I wish the President, instead of standing on an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that said: "Mission Accomplished" would have stood in front of a banner that said: "We've Only Just Begun." I wish he would stand in front of the American people and say: "My fellow Americans, we have a long and hard road ahead of us in Iraq, but we have to stay in Iraq. We have to finish the job. If we don't, the following will happen. Here's what I'll be asking of you and, by the way, I'm asking the rest of the world to help us as well. And I am confident we'll succeed and as a consequence be more secure."

I'm waiting for that speech.

Me too.

[via Political Wire]