While the left is still reeling from the fallout of Qasem Soleimani’s death (or, as the New Yorker put it, that “flamboyant” and “dapper” character), Joe Biden is hastily trying to buff up his record when it comes to foreign policy.

The hand-wringing from the left would be hilarious if it wasn’t so disgusting.

Trump decided to kill Iran's General Soleimani in part to appear stronger than Obama was on Benghazi: Report https://t.co/YZLYbBuyJT

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 4, 2020

Oh. Well, it worked, then. And Biden knows it. Which is why he is busy condemning Trump for tweeting out that he’s got a list and he’s not afraid to pick a few targets if necessary.

“Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters,“the president tweeted. “He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years.”

Trump also warned: “The USA wants no more threats!”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, campaigning in Iowa, questioned whether Trump was acting alone or with support of allies. “We have no idea – I have no idea – whether he has any plan at all,” the former vice president told reporters Saturday night. “But when he makes statements like that, it just seems to me to be he’s going off on a tweet storm on his own, and it’s incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.”

WATCH: @JoeBiden rips @realDonaldTrump's tweets on Iran and calls them “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible” @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/GWv0THOHfH

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) January 5, 2020

The problem is that ol’ Joe has been trying to rewrite history when it came to making the big call on the Osama bin Laden raid.

FLASHBACK: In 2012, Biden said he was opposed to Bin Laden raid: “Mr. President, my suggestion is don’t go” pic.twitter.com/sdJRG55o7m

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 3, 2020

And this didn’t just start now. This began a few years ago, while Biden was still vice-president and there was still a chance that he would enter the 2016 election.

Now that he’s faced with Trump having gambled and won in a big way on the drone attack on Soleimani, Biden has to sound big and tough and like he didn’t completely make the wrong call on bin Laden.

“It’s not to suggest I haven’t made mistakes in my career but I would put my record against anyone in public life in terms of foreign policy,” Biden said Saturday at a rally in Des Moines, when a voter asked him how he could be trusted given his past positions.”

The voter cited Biden’s 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq and how he reportedly discouraged President Barack Obama from moving ahead with a raid on the Afghan compound where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.”

Biden acknowledged that his advice to Obama while in the White House Situation Room with other senior officials was, “I would vote for you to do another pass to determine whether he’s there,” but said he was more bullish once he was alone with the president.”

And as for his record on the Iraq War?

Biden also offered a rare defense of his Iraq war vote, suggesting he’d been misled by President George W. Bush.”

“He looked me in the eye in the Oval Office and promised me all he was doing was wanting to get the authority to be able to send in inspectors” to determine whether Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, Biden said. “The president then went ahead with ‘Shock and Awe’ and right after that and from the very moment he did that, I opposed what he was doing and spoke to him.”

This has always been Joe Biden’s biggest Achilles heel. He has complete name recognition among Democrat voters because of being Obama’s vice-president, but he’s been in politics for so long that every position, every vote, and every flip-flop has video to back it up. Biden is not seen as a strong foreign policy wonk, nor as an especially decisive man. He has already tried rewriting his past once before, and the press called him out on it back in 2015 (when Hillary Clinton was sure to be the anointed nominee). Now that the Democrats are watching the field narrow considerably to Bernie vs. Biden, are they going to let ol’ Grandpa Joe have a pass on foreign policy?

Given their meltdown over Soleimani, Democrats very well might let Joe Biden off the hook on his Iraq War vote and his bin Laden decision. But the real question is, how much cash will Joe Biden promise to give Iran if they pinky-promise him that they’ll behave?

Featured image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr at GunSense Forum August 10, 2019, cropped and modified, via Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)