During the 2016 President Election I authored candidate perspectives that explained the positions of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump and how they would confront the threat posed by the Islamic State. This post explores the positions of former Vice President and now presidential candidate Joe Biden on a host of counterterrorism topics. The post closes with an evaluation on whether those positions helped, or hindered U.S. counterterrorism should he be elected President of the United States.
A note to the readers. Many of you may be new to this blog and may be wondering why no separate post exists that details President Trump’s positions and contributions (pro/con) on the subject of U.S. counterterrorism? In answering this query, one should be mindful that I have written a host of comprehensive posts on then candidate and now President Donald Trump on counterterrorism. Please consult the following posts: “Trump And Syria: Leadership And Counterterrorism Revisited,” “President Trump’s Emerging Counterterrorism Strategy,” “The Future Trajectory of Donald Trump’s ISIS Strategy,” “Trump’s War on Terrorism: An Early Assessment,” “Making Sense Trump’s War on Terrorism,” and “The Evolution of Trump’s Plans to Defeat ISIS” for information on the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Biden’s Record On Counterterrorism
Vice President Joe Biden has a fairly extensive record on counterterrorism. There is a record during his tenure as a Senator. There is another record on key counterterrorism issues during his service as vice president during the administration of President Barack Obama. And yet another record developed during his quest to become the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.
In the midst of the divisive general election, Biden made several significant statements criticizing President Trump’s record, and he announced positions on a wealth of counterterrorism topics simulating how he would act as the President of the United States. Some, but certainly not all, of Biden’s key statements will be addressed.
One of Biden’s major efforts to assist in establishing a new mechanism of terrorist prevention is one that actually failed. In the wake of the domestic terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, on February 10, 1995, after considerable consultation with and eventually in support of the administration of President Bill Clinton, then Senator Biden co-sponsored The Omnibus Counterterrorism Act with Senator Tom Daschle.[1]
The proposed legislation had seven critical provisions. The most significant of provisions include Antiterrorism Assistance, Control Over Terrorist Fund-Raising, and Substantive Criminal Law Enhancements. Despite support from the Clinton White House the legislation was never submitted for a vote. It should be noted “much of [the legislation was later]… incorporated into the 2001 Patriot Act which [Biden] later supported. In 2015, the Obama administration approved the USA Freedom Act, which renewed the Patriot Act with some new restrictions on surveillance.”[2]
Though Biden supported the Omnibus bill he was opposed to a key provision of the legislation that if approved would have permitted the federal government “to use evidence from secret sources in deportation proceedings for aliens suspected of terrorist involvement. Under the measure, the Government would not have to disclose the source of the damaging information to the person whom it is seeking to deport.”[3]
In 2007 Senator Biden, at the time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed his opposition to administration of George W. Bush’s use of rendition as an instrument of counterterrorism. He used a committee hearing on the matter to amplify that opposition.
His opening statement served its purpose. Biden offered this statement that is emblematic of his position: “Rendition, as currently practiced, is undermining our moral credibility and standing abroad and weakening the coalitions with foreign governments that we need to effectively combat international terrorism. We also put our own intelligence officers at risk, by not providing them with clear guidelines to govern their conduct.”[4]
Fast forward Senator Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate on the strength of his foreign policy credentials. Biden shared President Obama’s positions on rendition and torture. During the early months of the Obama presidency Biden’s influence set the stage for twin decisions, both of which transformed the war on terrorism and represented a dramatic shift away from President Bush’s policies.
With respect to Afghanistan, Vice President Biden opposed the large-scale introduction of U.S. combat forces to counter the Taliban’s reemergence in the country. In spite of the increasing Taliban resurgence in the country, Biden privately argued to President Obama the U.S. should reduce troops and limit its mission and he expressed opposition to nation building.[5]
One of the central components of Biden’s approach to confronting terrorism is the continued use of the “counterterrorism plus” strategy. Better known as Obama’s light footprint strategy, “this approach emphasizes fighting terrorist networks in foreign countries using small groups of U.S. special forces and aggressive air strikes instead of large troop deployments.”[6] Obama implemented the strategy in a host of countries to include Afghanistan (which occurred at the close of the Obama administration), Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen and elsewhere around the world.
There is another side of Biden’s approach to counterterrorism—the unwillingness to support major counterterrorism raids to eliminate high value terrorists. In an illustration of the point, on Obama’s signature foreign policy decision, the authorization of the SEAL-Team raid that culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden Biden privately and later publicly expressed his opposition to the raid.
President Obama, according to an account, queried all members of his senior foreign policy team on the whether they thought the raid should move forward.[7] Most officials present in the meeting urged the president to move forward.[8] According to the account, “the president turned to Biden: ‘Joe what do think?’ Biden simply responded as follows: “Mr. President, my suggestion is don’t go.”[9]
Important details of the deliberations of the meeting surfaced. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, writing in her book Hard Choices, made this statement about Biden and his position on the U.S. raid: “I respected [Biden’s] concerns about the risk of a raid, but I came to the conclusion that the intelligence was convincing and that the risks were outweighed by the benefits of success.”[10] On the fallout from Biden’s decision not to support the raid, a former Biden aide stated, “He took a lot of heat.”[11]
Biden has incessantly targeted President Trump’s counterterrorism approach. In a notable example, after the president successfully eliminated the ISIS caliphate, Biden remained critical of Trump’s policies arguing there is an absence of a plan to ensure the Islamic State and Al Qaeda do not reconstitute their networks.[12]
More problematic, Biden failed to congratulate the president on a salient counterterrorism victory. Instead, Biden attempted to undermine a major triumph not just for Trump but for the country. Additionally, during a Democrat Presidential Debate Biden actually claimed credit for eliminating the ISIS caliphate.
Biden’s actual statement is as follows: “I was part of the coalition that put together 68 countries to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 various other nations. That’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate for ISIS. They’ll come back if we do not deal with them and we do not have someone who can bring together the rest of the world to go with us.”[13]
In October of 2019 candidate Biden argued President Trump lacked a strategy to secure the homeland against terrorism. Biden argued, “I’m glad President Trump ordered the mission. But as more details of the raid emerge, it’s clear that this victory was not due to Donald Trump’s leadership. It happened despite his ineptitude as Commander-in-Chief.”[14] The statement occurred after President Trump ordered the mission that eliminated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.
President Trump made another significant counterterrorism decision—the authorization of the order to launch the targeted air strike that eliminated General Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s vaunted Quds Force and mastermind behind the death of over four-hundred American serviceman.
Rather than offer a statement of bipartisan support for the counterterrorism strike, Biden instead criticized Trump’s decision. In the words of the former vice president, General Soleimani, “Deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region is a hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region.”[15]
In a tweet Biden issued this additional statement: “President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and a plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests, both here at home and abroad, and our partners throughout the region and beyond.”[16] What Biden missed, or perhaps valued to acknowledge, is the president, in concert with senior foreign policy officials, was prepared to respond to any Iranian reprisal attack.
Analysis
There are several critical counterterrorism issues that continue to haunt Biden’s bid for the presidency. On critical counterterrorism decisions, Biden like Obama, had a strong “suspicion and distrust of senior military officers.”[17] This, say some, is what explains why the Obama-Biden administration reduced the Pentagon’s input during the administrations deliberations leading up to President Obama’s announcement of his September 2014 anti-ISIS strategy.
Another important impact of the deliberations is the outcome is consistent with Biden’s view on curbing the Pentagon’s influence. With Biden’s input, Obama ensured no U.S. combat forces would be dispatched to Iraq or Syria during the opening phases of the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve.
Second, Biden’s record on counterterrorism is absent of any support for major counterterrorism achievements by his predecessors. And on too many occasions Biden openly opposed signature counterterrorism decisions. Worse, in the case of Trump and his signature victory over the Islamic State—ending their caliphate—Biden attempted to take credit for the counterterrorism triumph and touted Obama’s approach for dealing a serious blow to the Islamic State’s influence.
Biden argued in an October 2019 address that the Obama-Biden approach represented the mechanism that set the stage for the collapse of the ISIS caliphate. The Obama administration, according to Biden, “laid the groundwork to end ISIS’s territorial caliphate. That’s the way we built the very relationships that ultimately delivered this victory.”[18]
Robert Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary, once declared Biden was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”[19] The statement represented a devastating critique of Biden’s foreign policy record. How does this criticism translate to Biden’s record counterterrorism?
In the case of Biden, he opposed the Osama bin Laden raid despite overwhelming intelligence the Al Qaeda leader was present at his lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Consider that during the administration of President Obama at a point that marked his parties signature counterterrorism decision, Biden demonstrated a conspicuous aversion to the use of force to eliminate the world’s number one terrorist.
In the aftermath of the killing of Soleimani, Biden’s aversion resurfaced. Biden appeared to be more concerned about Iran’s response rather than the significance of the elimination of the individual that killed four hundred plus U.S. military personnel. He endeavored to make the case that Trump’s decision to eliminate Soleimani was reckless and provocative and could lead to an unnecessary war with Iran. Biden should be cognizant of the evidence of The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year War with Iran. As the aftermath of the Soleimani strike illustrated, Iran does not desire a wider conflict with the United States. The verdict is conspicuous: once again Biden was proven incorrect.
In the final analysis, the American voter, given the candidates troubling record on counterterrorism, must consider this significant question: Are we ready for Joe Biden as the Counterterrorism Commander in Chief?
Endnotes
[1] S.390 Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 104th Congress (1995-1996). Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/390.
[2] Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 23, 2020. https://www .cfr .org/election2020/candidate-tracker/joe-biden.
[3] Neil A. Lewis, “TERROR IN OKLAHOMA: IN CONGRESS; Anti-Terrorism Bill: Blast Turns a Snail Into a Race Horse,” New York Times, April 21, 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995 /04/21/us/terror-oklahoma-congress-anti-terrorism-bill-blast-turns-snail-into-race-horse .html.
[4] Opening Statement of Chairman Joseph R. Biden, Senate Foreign Relations Hearing on Extraordinary Rendition, Extraterritorial Detention, and Treatment of Detainees: Restoring Our Moral Credibility and Strengthening Our Diplomatic Standing July 26, 2007. Washington, DC.
[5] Mark Lander, “Obama’s Growing Trust in Biden is Reflected in His Call on Troops,” New York Times, June 24, 2011.
[6] “Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 23, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/us/politics/25biden.html.
[7] Michael Crawley, “Joe Biden 2016: ‘No’ on bin Laden raid could haunt him,” Politico, August 27, 2015. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/joe-biden-bin-laden-raid-defense-hillary-clin ton-2016-campaign-121779.
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] See the Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on President Trump’s Lack of Strategy to Secure our Nation Against Terrorist Threats, Medium.com, October 28, 2019, https://medium.com/ @JoeBiden/statement-by-vice-president-joe-biden-on-president-trumps-lack-of-strategy-to-secur e-our-nation-a125bc21e776.
[13] Carlos Christian, “Biden Blasts Trump’s Foreign Policy, Then Takes Credit for Beating ISIS,” The Union Journal, January 16, 2020. https://theunionjournal.com/biden-blasts-trumps-foreign-policy-then-takes-credit-for-beating-isis/.
[14] See the Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on President Trump’s Lack of Strategy to Secure our Nation Against Terrorist Threats.
[15] Yelena Dzhanova, “‘A Stick of Dynamite into a Tinderbox’–2020 Democrats Rip Trump’s Decision to Kill Iranian General Soleimani,” CNBC.com, January 3, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/biden-warr en-sanders-rip-trumps-decision-to-kill-iran-commander-soleimani.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Nicole Gaudiano, “Gates’ Book Stirs Debate on Biden’s Foreign Policy Creds,” USAToday, January 10, 2014. https://www.usatoday.com/story/ news/politics/2014/01/09/joe-biden-foreign-policy-criticized-book/4393761/.
[18] Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on President Trump’s Lack of Strategy to Secure our Nation Against Terrorist Threats.
[19] Tim Hains, “Gates Stands by Statement That Biden Has Been Wrong on Nearly Every Major Foreign Policy Question,” RealClearPolitics.com, May 13, 2019. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/13/gates_stan ds_by_statement_that_biden_wrong_on_nearly_every_major_foreign_policy_question.html.
