Via The Telegraph:
Joe Biden has caused a bit of a stir this week with his bizarre suggestion that “the Taliban per se is not our enemy”, just a decade on from the 9/11 attacks, carried out by al-Qaeda, and aided and abetted in Afghanistan by none other than the Taliban. The comments formed part of a wider interview on foreign policy given by Biden to Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. The stupidity of the vice president’s remarks on the war in Afghanistan were matched only by his reckless, almost surreal advice on the European financial crisis, which is so out of touch with reality that I doubt even the delusional Herman Van Rompuy would agree with him. Joe Biden’s solution for the EU’s massive debt crisis? A mammoth Obama-style bailout across the Atlantic, but this time in euros not dollars:
NEWSWEEK: I know you feel strongly and correctly that economics is really at the heart of not only our country’s future, but our power in the world. You have a bank crisis in Europe right now. And Goldman Sachs just said that at a minimum this means a 1 percent drop in our gross domestic product. And it’s likely to be much worse, as you know, because the Europeans can’t seem to conjure up the courage to tackle their problem seriously. What are we planning to do about it?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’re using every bit of influence, cajoling — from my getting in a plane, to the president appearing, talking to [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner, engaging, and being very blunt. I was in Greece [earlier this month]. The president has been meeting with our G8 partners and specifically — very, very specifically on the phone with everyone from [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel to [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy, [British Prime Minister David] Cameron. I mean we are engaged in making it clear to them that there is an answer. They’ve got to step up.
NEWSWEEK: But they’re looking to us for something we can’t give anymore, which is cash to bail them out.
BIDEN: We’re not going to. These guys at the end of the day are going to have to choose: they either lose now or lose later. And if they lose later, they lose real, real big.
NEWSWEEK: And it’s got to be their bailout, not ours?
BIDEN: Exactly right. We did our bailout. They’ve got to do their bailout.