Return to the failed policies of the Carter administration

Amir Taheri:

BY choosing Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presiden tial running mate, Barack Obama sent three messages. The first two are implicit admissions that Hillary Clinton had a point in the primaries. The third tells us more of what Obama means by "change."

Biden is supposed to make up for Obama's lack of the knowledge and experience needed to leader on national security and international affairs. And the Delaware senator, with his humble working-class origins, is also meant to reassure the "simple folk" that Obama seems to be losing.

But the third message is that "change" means a return not to the Camelot of President John Kennedy, but to the foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. For Biden, an early supporter of Carter in his quest for the presidency in 1976, shares the former president's view of the world and the United States' place in it.

In 2004, I was astonished to hear Biden doing his own bit of America-bashing in front of an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The US, he claimed, had no moral authority to preach democracy in the Middle East. "We don' have much of a democracy ourselves, " he said mockingly. "Remember our own presidential election; remember Florida!"

Biden has the experience of more than three decades in the US senate, at least two of them dealing with foreign affairs and defense. But experience is no guarantee of good judgment. And Biden has been wrong on almost every key issue.

* In 1979, he shared Carter's starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights. Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, he opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialogue.

* Throughout the 1980s. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan's proactive policy against the Soviet Union. Biden was all for détente - which, in practice, meant Western subsidies that would have enabled the moribund USSR to cling to life and continue doing mischief.

* In 1990, Biden found it difficult to support President George Bush's decision to use force to kick Saddam Hussein's army of occupation out of Kuwait.

* A decade-plus later, the senator did vote for the liberation of Iraq from Saddamite tyranny. But as soon as terrorists started challenging the new democratic system in Iraq, he switched sides and became a critic of the whole war effort. He claimed that the Iraq war was lost and suggested that the US partition the newly liberated country into three or more mini-states.

Biden's misreading of the situation in Iraq shows that experience is no substitute for judgment. He judged the situation on the basis of headlines and CNN footage - not the long-term, geo-strategic interests of the United States. In short, he lacked what President Harry Truman called "strategic patience."

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He is also wrong headed about Iran. At one point he suggested we could bribe them by offering $200 million. The guy is not as smart as he thinks he is and that arrogance makes him dangerous. He has no executive experience. He is like a movie critic being given an opportunity to act as a director.

It is amazing that Democrats have nostalgia for the Carter years. As much as they gripe about President Bush, it is clear that Carter was teh worst President of the 20th Century by a long shot. He was wrong on the economy and disastrous on national security and foreign policy. Obama would be as bad or worse and Biden is just the guy to help him do his worst.