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Paul R. Hollrah
The Spider & The Fly
September 17, 2008
“Will you
walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'”Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've many curious things to shew when you are there.”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
–
Mary Howitt, 1821
Although Governor Sarah Palin bears not the slightest
resemblance to a deadly spider, and Senator Joseph Biden resembles a
pesky fly only in that they share a certain nuisance value, the
political “drama” that Biden and his Democratic allies have forced Palin
into puts one in mind of the Mary Howitt poem. In other words, “they’ve
got Sarah Palin right where she wants them.”
Since the moment that John McCain introduced Palin as
his running mate, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and every other prominent
Democrat in America have worked overtime trying to figure out how to
handle this beautiful, charming, successful, and supremely competent
woman.
Being Democrats, their first instinct was to smear
her. So their friends in the tabloid media ran a cover story with the
title, “Babies, Lies & Scandal.” They were able to point to babies, born
and unborn, but when they couldn’t produce any lies or scandals and the
Obama-Biden brand began to suffer in the opinion polls, they looked
around for a new approach.
Their second instinct was to complain that, as the
mother of five, Palin couldn’t begin to manage home, family, and
the vice presidency, all at once. That tactic generated howls of protest
from women across the country who’ve always believed that they should be
free to pursue marriage, motherhood, and a career, if that’s what they
wanted. Who were these Democrats to suggest that a woman of Sarah
Palin’s caliber would find life unmanageable in the fastest of fast
lanes?
Failing that, it appears they have now settled on an
attempt to paint her as incompetent to serve because of a lack of
foreign policy experience. But therein lies the greatest of all traps.
As Democrats attempt to make the case that Palin lacks foreign policy
experience, as compared to Senator Biden’s years of experience on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they run the risk of exposing
Biden’s less than stellar record in foreign affairs. For example:
During the 1970s, Biden opposed giving aid to the
South Vietnamese when they were under attack by North Vietnamese
communists. Biden supported efforts to cut off aid to the South
Vietnamese, a move which made it impossible for them to defend
themselves against communist aggression, contributed to the advance of
communism in Southeast Asia, and led to the mass murder of millions of
men, women, and children across the region.
During the early 1980s, as Ronald Reagan fought to
prevent the establishment of communist regimes in Central America, most
notably in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Biden, along with Senators John
Kerry (D-MA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) led the fight against funding the
Contra freedom fighters… even to the extent of withholding food and
medical supplies from guerilla forces fighting in the jungles of
Nicaragua. Biden also opposed Reagan Administration efforts to send
military assistance to the pro-American government in El Salvador, which
was under attack by the FMLN, a Soviet-backed group of Marxist
guerillas.
Biden has consistently opposed modernization of our
strategic nuclear forces. He was a fierce opponent of Ronald Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the missile defense system that
ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union and brought an end to the Cold
War. Biden opposed SDI funding, saying, “The president's continued
adherence to (SDI) constitutes one of the most reckless and
irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”
In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, an American
ally. President George H.W. Bush sought authorization from Congress to
enforce the U.N. mandate to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Senator
Biden voted against the authorization, asking, “What vital interests of
the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands
of Saudi Arabia?”
In 2006, when
Democrats expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of political
reconciliation in Iraq, Biden sponsored a resolution calling on
the United States to impose an ethnic subdivision of the
country, dividing Iraq into Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regions and
requiring Iraqis to relocate based on their ethnic identification.
In 2007, Biden opposed President Bush's troop surge in
Iraq, calling it a “tragic mistake.” The exact opposite has proven to be
true. Under the leadership of General David Petraeus, the surge has
greatly reduced the level of violence in Iraq, making it possible for
the Bush Administration to begin scheduling the withdrawal of American
troops.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “On many of the
most important and controversial issues of the last four decades, Mr.
Biden has built a record based on bad assumptions, misguided analyses
and flawed judgments.”
As Sarah Palin is confronted with the charge that she
has too little foreign policy experience to serve as vice president she
might simply reply, “Yes, it is true. I do not have the advantage of
Senator Biden’s long experience on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, but I fail to see what value that experience has been for
Senator Biden… given his long record of wrong and misguided decisions.”
Walk into my parlor, said the Spider to the Fly.
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