Biden Gets Confused About South America

Democratic candidates have too little intelligent to say about Latin America. The Des Moines Register editorial board interviewed Joe Biden in late December, and a few days ago the Washington  Examiner gleefully picked up his errors. They only play 38 seconds but here is the entire video. The relevant part is right at the end (1:08 out of 1:11). It's just a bit longer than their snippet.

He starts with a somewhat odd made-up story of a fictional dad in Guadalajara, then shifts by asking "what are we doing?" in Venezuela, then pivots illogically to "I'm the guy" who put together Plan Colombia," which "straightened that government out for a long while." Now back to Venezuela, where "millions" of people are "crossing the border" into...Bolivia. And destabilizing Bolivia. They had already been destabilizing the Amazon. He criticizes Trump for having his "thumb in his ear" and instead the U.S. needs "to organize the hemisphere." He asks why populist movements occur but does not answer the question, saying only the U.S. needs to "lead."

What we can take from this is that for all his experience with Latin America, he can't keep things straight. More importantly, his overall view is that U.S. leadership includes use of force. To be fair, the Guadalajara thing is intended in its odd way to demonstrate that the U.S. needs to help promote prosperity and fight corruption in Latin America, which I agree with. But then suddenly inserting Plan Colombia is discordant, a shift to military responses. That's what bothered me about Pete Buttigieg as well, when last November he mentioned the possibility of sending troops to Mexico. Let's stop with that mindsight already.