Even before it was announced that 35-year Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware (that's a state?) would join Senator Barack Obama's ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate, the commentary Biden compliments Obama on his cleanlinessalmost entirely surrounded Biden's foreign policy experience and his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Obama has had sharp words for the democratically mandated process in Venezuela and supports current policies meant to destabilize or punish Cuba. He has spoken in favor of tactical strikes against Iran, and his alleged opposition to the occupation of Iraq is belied by his consistent votes in favor of war spending. Obama's international policies are largely the same old-hat reactionary ones we can find from any one else, all the way to died-too-old Jesse Helms and the Bush presidency. And with the announcement that Biden will be his running mate, we have even stronger evidence. So here, I offer you, just some of Biden's so-called seasoned foreign relations experience. You can go somewhere else to seejust how many times he voted in favor of the DOMA, the FBI and the RIAA and against your bourgeois liberties.

Central America

Along with Kennedy, Kerry, and Gore, Biden was among the ninety-nine Senators that gave Bush I the go ahead for the 1989 invasion of Panama. Jamas olvidaremos.

Biden consistently voted in favor of bills and amendments through 1989 that called for millions (actually, a minimum was set at one million) to be sent to the opposition to the Sandinistas and for any and all 'non-lethal' aid (see amendments to S. 760). He voted to call for democratic elections in Nicaragua (H.R. 3385), even though they had had them in 1985, under the duress of a United States-sponsored war. And, how exactly are elections free and fair when a foreign superpower sponsors one of the parties in an election after having sponsored ten years of war and having sponsored the dictatorship that was ousted at the beginning of that decade? And for the record, Al Gore-lovers, he voted the very same way.

In 1989, Biden voted on the losing side of S.Amdt. 1188 to H.R. 3743 which called for restrictions of military aid to El Salvador until investigations of the deaths of the four North American nuns by government-sponsored death squads were completed. In other words, he voted in the reactionary minority.

West Asia/North Africa

Biden voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and consistently votes for war funding. His only regret in voting for the war was the Bush administration's execution of it, and he takes the same tact as many liberal politicians who put the onus for their 'mistaken impression' that Saddam Hussein had WMDs on Hussein, not the Bush regime. Will liberals be happy to know that Obama has a Vice President who will plan out more successful imperial adventures than Bush's veep did?

Biden is thoroughly pro-Israel, and sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, a failed bill to punish Palestinians for voting for Hamas through economic and political sanctions. He also supports sending troops into the Sudan.

Elsewhere

In other parts of Latin America, Biden votes consistently for strengthening the embargo against Cuba and US intervention. He also attacks Hugo Chavez and the democratic process that is taking Venezuela out of the grips of United States and capitalist control, and voted for Plan Colombia and its extensions. In 1993, Biden voted for NAFTA, but joined most Senate Democrats in voting against CAFTA-DR in 2005, though they all made it clear that they would have voted for it under a Democratic president. Elsewhere, Biden has supported strengthening the anachronistic NATO, glossed over Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, and admonished China for things that the United States does.

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