A8 ez su the washington post.saturday, february 22 , 2020
“This is truly a policy of despair
and cowardice,” he railed.
Even on Afghanistan, Biden
was maddeningly inconsistent,
calling for more U. S. troops and
money in 2008 only to abandon
that position in 2009 when he
moved from the Senate to the
White House.
Some aides a ttributed his tough
stand as vice president to his frus-
trations with Afghanistan’s lead-
ers and his sense that the Ameri-
can people were sick of war. oth-
ers cited his elder son’s deploy-
ment to Iraq in 2009, which
sharpened his view of the stakes
for military families. Biden de-
clined to be interviewed for this
story.
“I wish I could say Biden was a
student of history and understood
how problematic nation-building
would b e in A fghanistan,” s aid one
former top obama Pentagon offi-
cial, who s poke on t he condition of
anonymity to discuss the matter
frankly. “That’s not Biden. He has
gut i nstincts.”
In the years that followed the
Afghanistan surge d ecision, B iden
advised obama not to launch the
risky raid that killed osama bin
Laden, warned against war in L ib-
ya and urged the president not to
vow retaliation in Syria if Bashar
al-Assad u sed chemical weapons.
A few days after Thanksgiving
in 2009 , obama called together
his national security team to end
the m onths o f deliberation and lay
out his final decision on the Af-
ghanistan surge. Biden asked to
huddle privately with obama in
the residence.
“I want to meet you before you
go in,” Biden told him, according
to contemporaneous interviews
done for Bob Woodward’s 2010
book, “obama’s Wars.”
“No,” obama replied. “We’re
fine.”
Biden ignored the rebuff and
intercepted obama on the White
House portico. He had only a few
seconds with the p resident, and he
used them to press obama to
think about the possibility of fail-
ure in the months ahead. Would
his ego allow him to concede that
his war strategy wasn’t working?
Would he stand up to the generals
who would muster mountains of
data and insist that they needed
just a few more months or a few
thousand more troops to make it
work? Biden was sure the strategy
would fail.
“You may get to the p oint where
you’ve got to make a really tough
god----ed decision,” Biden warned.
in the ’90s, an interventionist
As a law student in the late
196 0s, Biden wasn’t the type to
join the angry throngs demon-
strating against the Vietnam War.
“When I was at Syracuse, I was
married.... I wore sport coats. I
was not part of that,” he told re-
porters on the campaign trail in
- others “felt more strongly
than I did about the immorality of
the war,” he said. Biden’s view was
that it was “ lousy policy.”
He got a draft notice after law
school but failed his physical be-
cause of asthma. When he ran for
the Senate in 197 2, opposition to
the war wasn’t a big part of his
campaign.
As a Cold War-era senator with
White House ambitions, Biden
modeled himself after heavy-
weights like Sens. michael mans-
field and Sam Nunn — serious,
independent statesmen who ad-
vised presidents of both parties
and gave big speeches on foreign
policy that drew the attention of
national newspapers and the
Council on foreign relations.
Biden mastered the arcane de-
tails of Soviet-era arms-control
treaties. He tried to make up for
his dovish vote against the Gulf
War by insisting that President
George H.W. Bush should have
removed Saddam Hussein after
the l iberation of Kuwait. The elder
Bush’s caution had led him to
choose the “worst” option, Biden
said in a 1991 speech. The result
was “immense human suffering
within Iraq.”
At a moment of unrivaled
American power, Biden trans-
formed into an ardent interven-
tionist. He returned from a trip to
the Balkans in 199 3 and blasted
President Bill Clinton for i gnoring
the slaughter of besieged mus-
lims. Biden cast American inac-
tion as a moral failing.
biden from A
THE PURSUIT
Biden
guided
by ‘gut
instincts’
election 2020
officials w ere caught looting near-
ly $1 b illion f rom the Kabul Bank.
obama asked U.S. Ambassador
Karl Eikenberry, who was appear-
ing via a video feed, whether
Karzai was capable of cracking
down on the theft.
“It would be politically suicidal
for Karzai to do that,” the ambas-
sador replied, according to offi-
cials at t he m eeting.
“That’s what I’ve been saying!”
Biden yelled. “That’s exactly what
I told you!”
The long wars in Iraq and Af-
ghanistan had been a sobering
experience for many in Washing-
ton — especially those such as
Biden who had been in positions
of influence in the 1990s, when
American power was at i ts peak.
A few months before his death
in 2010, richard Holbrooke,
obama’s special envoy to Afghani-
stan and Pakistan, met privately
with the vice president in Wash-
ington. Their relationship dated
to the 1970s. “ They w ere practical-
ly the same age, similarly domi-
nating, agreed on almost every-
thing, and so naturally they
couldn’t stand each other,” wrote
George Packer, Holbrooke’s biog-
rapher, in his book “our man.”
Holbrooke recorded their brief
and contentious exchange in his
diary.
Both Biden and Holbrooke
were convinced that the war was
unwinnable. Still, Holbrooke ar-
gued that the United States owed
Afghans continued aid and assis-
tance, particularly directed at the
women who had suffered under
the Taliban’s b rutal rule.
The United States simply
couldn’t a bandon the country.
Holbrooke’s appeal infuriated
Biden, who was so angry that he
rose from his chair, according to
Holbrooke.
“I am not sending my boy back
there to risk his life on behalf of
women’s rights!” the vice presi-
dent shouted at h im. “It just w on’t
work, that’s not what they’re there
for.”
[email protected]Intelligence officials told Biden
that there were fewer than 100
al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan
— most had f led t o Pakistan. Biden
and C artwright thought that a rel-
atively modest U. S. counterterror-
ism f orce w ould be enough to keep
the al-Qaeda fighters from cross-
ing the border, where American
forces could operate with no re-
strictions. The remaining U.S.
troops would work to train the
Afghan army and police. Biden
was agnostic when it came to the
survival of the government in Ka-
bul.
In the 1990 s, Biden made an
impassioned argument that the
United S tates’ credibility a nd m or-
al standing demanded that it use
military force to stop a slaughter
in the Balkans. In Afghanistan,
Biden rejected the notion that
America h ad any moral obligation
to improve the lives of Afghans or
prevent civil wars.
“He had that empathy for the
people in the Balkans. He even
had it for people in Iraq,” said a
senior obama a dministration o ffi-
cial who spoke on the condition o f
anonymity to be candid. “I never
saw it in Afghanistan.”‘That’s what i’ve been saying!’
Six months after obama an-
nounced his new Afghan strategy,
Biden huddled with a handful of
like-minded advisers at the Naval
observatory.
All agreed that the war was
going badly. Karzai remained an
unreliable partner. The Afghan
army and police forces were cor-
rupt and ineffective. “Is there a
political solution in Kabul that
bails us out?” Lt. Gen. Douglas
Lute, who oversaw Afghanistan
policy in the White House, re-
called the g roup asking. “Is there a
wild card we can play with Paki-
stan?” They decided there were n o
easy ways o ut.
In Situation room meetings,
Biden seized on the Afghan gov-
ernment’s f ailings to s how that t he
administration’s strategy was un-
workable. In 2010, senior Afghanview. “... I wanted every argu-
ment on every side to be poked
hard.”
Biden a lso sought to ensure that
the Pentagon brass didn’t try to
mislead the new and inexperi-
enced commander in chief. “The
military doesn’t [screw] around
with me,” he told aides. “I’ve been
around too long.”
But his relentless questioning
and l ong Situation r oom speeches
irritated top Pentagon officials.
Defense Secretary robert m.
Gates complained that Biden was
subjecting obama t o “Chinese w a-
ter torture.” “ Every day [he’s] say-
ing, ‘the military can’t be trusted,’
‘the strategy can’t work,’ ‘it’s all
failing,’ ” Gates recalled in his
memoir, “Duty.” Upon leaving of-
fice, he accused Biden of being
wrong on “nearly every major for-
eign policy and national security
issue over t he past f our decades.”
Biden’s defenders blamed the
barb on lingering animosity from
the Afghanistan review. “Gates
was unhappy that Biden was a
wrench in the Pentagon’s finely
calibrated works,” a senior Biden
aide said.
Dissatisfied with the troop-
surge-focused strategies put for-
ward by the Pentagon, Biden
sought out his own experts. He
met quietly with Colin Powell,
who h ad served a s chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary
of state. “If we leave Afghanistan
now, who the hell is going to re-
member?” Powell told him, ac-
cording to officials who took part
in the meeting. Biden urged Pow-
ell to pass the same message to
obama.
He found another ally in ma-
rine Gen. James Cartwright, a
fighter pilot and vice chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, who shared his
view of the war. Senior Pentagon
officials maintained that the U.S.
government had t o build a c apable
Afghan government and army to
prevent al-Qaeda’s return to the
country.
Biden and Cartwright dis-
missed that approach as too costly.then-Afghan President Hamid
Karzai over corruption and the
growing heroin trade. “He was
getting more and more irritated,”
said Chuck Hagel, a senator who
accompanied Biden on the trip.
“Eventually I had to grab Joe’s arm
to settle h im d own.” Biden wrested
free and slammed his fist on the
table in frustration, Hagel re-
called. A few minutes later, the
meeting e nded.
Back in Washington, though,
Biden took a position that was
largely in line with the presiden-
tial front-runners, who viewed t he
war a s faltering b ut still winnable.
“more blood will be spilled, and
more treasure will be spent,” he
said. “But... it’s n othing, nothing,
nothing compared to the blood
and treasure we’ve already devot-
ed to Iraq. And, notwithstanding
that, it is much more doable than
what we’ve done thus f ar in Iraq.”
Later that summer, obama
chose Biden a s his r unning m ate.‘it’s all failing’
Biden told friends that he had
visited the vice president’s resi-
dence at the Naval observatory
only twice during his f our decades
in Washington — one time each
during the reagan and Clinton
administrations. Because he was
one of the few modern vice presi-
dents who had never lived in the
nation’s capital, he and his wife,
Jill, h ad no furniture for their new
home. A few days before the inau-
guration, they dashed out to buy a
mattress. They chose couches and
tables from a government ware-
house and toured the observatory
with outgoing v ice president r ich-
ard B. Cheney, joking with him
about his i ndifference t o color.
“Everything was beige,” Biden
said, “all b eautiful but b eige.”
Biden seemed giddy to be at t he
center of the action, and the center
of the Afghanistan debate, where
obama urged him to voice his
skepticism.
“Joe, I want you to say exactly
what you think,” obama recount-
ed telling Biden in a 2010 inter-“We have turned our backs on
aggression. We have turned our
backs on atrocity,” h e warned. “ We
have turned our backs on con-
science.” A year later, Clinton be-
gan bombing Bosnian Serb tar-
gets.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks
and the toppling of the Taliban,
Biden called for setting aside bil-
lions in a id to rebuild A fghanistan
— a proposal that was rejected as
too costly. Later, he dramatically
recounted an encounter in fallu-
jah, Iraq, with an unnamed U.S.
general to make the case for more
U.S. f orces. “Senator, anybody tells
you that we have enough troops
here, you can tell them they’re a
GD liar,” Biden recalled the officer
confiding to him in 2004 as he
boarded a Black Hawk helicopter
for B aghdad.
Two years l ater, Biden w as look-
ing for a way out of the war. The
answer came to him on a flight
from New York to Washington
when he was seated by chance
next to Les Gelb, the president of
the Council on foreign relations.
The men used a serendipitous
three-hour delay to sketch out a
plan to separate the warring com-
batants into self-governing Shiite,
Sunni and Kurdish e nclaves.
The main goal of the Biden-
Gelb plan was to minimize the
costs of an American defeat and
withdrawal. “Biden had begun to
understand that he didn’t under-
stand much about these places,”
Gelb said in an interview shortly
before his death last year. “Iraq
was t he moon to him.”
Biden’s foreign policy views are
a product of a passionate interest
that dates back decades, aides
said. As a senator and vice presi-
dent, he relished the pageantry of
state visits and enjoyed jawing
with world leaders, such as Israeli
Prime minister Benjamin Netan-
yahu, his friend and frequent
nemesis.
Chance encounters overseas
with think-tankers and policy ex-
perts o ften turned i nto hours-long
debates. middle East expert Den-
nis ross bumped into Biden dur-
ing the Second Intifada in 2002 at
Jerusalem’s King David Hotel,
where they spent a long, un-
planned b reakfast discussing how
to stem the violence.
“Do y ou have ideas I can pass to
the president?” ross recalled
Biden asking h im. Biden was guid-
ed by a “genuine curiosity” about
how to fix a “terrible situation,”
ross said.
Brian Katulis, a national securi-
ty expert at the Center for Ameri-
can Progress, crossed paths with
Biden late one n ight in 2008 at t he
marriott H otel in Islamabad, Paki-
stan. Both men were unable to
sleep, so Biden invited Katulis
over for a milkshake and then
spent two hours laying out his
ideas for a new Democratic for-
eign policy.
By that point, Biden was begin-
ning to turn against the war in
Afghanistan. He had just arrived
from Kabul, where he “blew up”
during a briefing from the U.S.
ambassador and the top military
commander that p ut an optimistic
gloss on U. S. operations, recalled
then-ambassador William B.
Wood. “I didn’t feel he was con-
vinceable,” Wood s aid.
Later that evening he assailedpete souza/White house
AbOVe: Vice President Joe biden listens to President barack Obama at a Situation Room briefing on the Afghanistan war in October 200 9. biden objected to plans for a
troop surge. beLOW: biden salutes at a november 2009 memorial in Washington state for seven A rmy soldiers killed in Afghanistan. His son beau served in iraq for a time.ted s. Warren/associated press