The Book of Joe, by Jeff Wilser: on War & Peace


Joe Biden: Vietnam war was horrendous waste based on a flawed premise

[In his 1972 Senate race, Biden] used the Vietnam War as a wedge issue, denouncing it as a "stupid and horrendous waste of time, money, and lives based on a flawed premise," and wondering why the United States was "spending so much energy in Southeast Asia that we had left truly vital interests unattended." (Swap out "Southeast Asia" with "Middle East," and it's easy to spot a coherent through-line from 1972 to the present.)
Source: The Book of Joe, by Jeff Wilser, Oct 24, 2017

Joe Biden: 1993: Arm the victims: end the Bosnian embargo

As a dictator [of Yugoslavia], Tito had a clenched grip on the uneasy alliance. Then Tito died. Order collapsed. In 1991, the power vacuum was filled by Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb. Then, bloodshed.

Biden visited Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and he saw the nightmare. He learned of mutilations, beatings, gang rapes. Biden was unafraid to call it what it was: genocide. An estimated 100,000 people would die.

He came back to the Senate, impassioned. He prepared detailed recommendations of air strikes and policy proposals. "The West has dithered so pathetically, and Bosnia has suffered so terribly," Biden wrote in 1993. Biden's basic request: "arm the victims." He urged first George H. W. Bush, then Bill Clinton, to lift the UN embargo against Bosnia and send weapons to those getting slaughtered.

It's a gross oversimplification to suggest that Biden was the only reason that Clinton, finally, moved to intervene. When you look back, Senator Biden got Bosnia right earlier than anyone.

Source: The Book of Joe, by Jeff Wilser, p.112-3 Oct 24, 2017

Joe Biden: Son Beau served in Iraq while Delaware Attorney General

When Joe visited Beau's National Guard's unit in Iraq, Stephen Colbert offered to film a segment of a father-and-son-reunion. Beau nixed the idea--he didn't want the free publicity, and why should he be treated differently from his fellow soldiers? At the time he was Delaware's attorney general, and clearly that segment would have been good for "optics." Beau wasn't an optics guy. "He didn't want any special attention," remembered Colbert. "He didn't want to leave his unit. He didn't want to be singled out.")

Beau did things the hard way, the right way. At first, Delaware's governor offered to appoint Beau to be the attorney general, filling a vacancy. He turned it down so that, Obama said, he could run in an election and "win it fair and square."

Source: The Book of Joe, by Jeff Wilser, p.159 Oct 24, 2017

  • The above quotations are from The Book of Joe
    The Life, Wit, and (Sometimes Accidental) Wisdom of Joe Biden
    by Jeff Wilser    .
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