Biden raps Bush over Pakistan

November 8, 2007 | Tom Vogel

While most presidential candidates have been talking tough about Iran lately, Joe Biden, a Democratic senator from Delaware, refocused his foreign policy agenda on Pakistan at a Saint Anselm College forum yesterday. He criticized President Bush’s handling of that country’s current constitutional crisis, and outlining a comprehensive alternative, he took the country as a case study of how the administration has squandered America’s moral standing in the world.

Over the weekend, Paskistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf imposed de facto martial law in Pakistan, which he has ruled since staging a bloodless coup in 1999. Last week, he suspended the constitution, arrested supreme court justices who opposed his rule and cracked down on several thousand political opponents. The country has been the beneficiary of $10 billion in U.S. aid, mostly to the military, since Sept. 11., 2001, according to The New York Times.

“We’ve spent billions of dollars on a bet that Pakistan’s government would take the fight to the Taliban and al-Qaida while putting the country back on the path to democracy,” Biden said. “It has done neither.”

Instead of unconditionally supporting Musharraf, Biden said, the U.S. should triple its nonmilitary support of Pakistan to total $1.5 billion annually, as much as the United States spends in Iraq each week. The aid could pay for schools, clinics and roads; foster educational exchanges and public diplomacy; and demonstrate that America is not simply paying the country for its leader’s allegiance.