Telling the Truth About the War

bidJoe Biden is making his latest round of apologies for that rarest of gaffes, especially coming from him: the truth. Biden’s crime was stating that ISIS had been empowered by the backing of Sunni states, including Turkey and the UAE, for the Syrian opposition.

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda,” Biden said.

Biden, who insulted plenty of people over the years, has been forced to apologize, making private phone calls to the Islamist thug ruling Turkey and to a UAE prince. It’s a humiliating performance for a man who is only a heartbeat away from becoming the President of the United States to be forced to apologize to some tinpot despots for telling the truth about them.

When Biden decided to throw a temper tantrum in Israel, it was the Israelis who were forced to apologize to him. Biden recently boasted of insulting Putin to his face (though it probably never actually happened) without being forced to make any apologetic phone calls to Moscow. It’s telling that only Muslim countries appear to be able to compel apologies from the Vice President of the United States.

But the one time that Biden did apologize for something he said was also the one time that he should not have apologized because it was the one time that he was telling the truth.

Biden didn’t tell the whole truth. He left out any mention of Qatar and the blank check its weapons smuggling had received from his administration. He also neglected to mention that the roots of the Syrian Civil War had come out of Obama’s Libyan War and the Arab Spring. Still there’s only so much truth that you can expect from a top Democrat who also happens to be a notoriously compulsive liar.

Truth may be the rarest quality in this conflict.

Obama has been mostly blamed for what he didn’t do, arm the rebels, keep troops in Iraq or maintain ties with the Sunni tribes, than for the things that he did do. Neglect is a safer charge than malfeasance. It leaves open the door for Hillary Clinton to run on some variant of her more aggressive foreign policy so that she can finally take her 3 AM phone call from the Syrian terrorists and send them lots of guns.

Biden’s story that his administration refused to arm the Syrian rebels and pleaded with the Sunni states not to arm them is one of those widely circulated half-truths. In fact Obama and his people chose to maintain plausible deniability in both Libya and Syria, attempting to direct arms without getting their fingerprints all over the merchandise, going so far as to ask the UAE to smuggle non-American weapons.

The New York Times, the outlet of choice for officially unofficial administration leaks, quoted a former official as saying, “The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons. We told them it’s O.K. to ship other weapons.”

That’s what plausible deniability looks like.

Obama did arm the Islamic militias in Libya and Syria; he just chose to do it more indirectly than directly. Only recently has the work become more direct, but even so it’s still shrouded in misleading leaks, sneakers on the ground and plausible deniability. The smuggling began in Libya and culminated in Syria.

The Sunni states did the actual dirty work of smuggling in weapons in Libya while Obama ordered the military to turn a blind eye to what was going on. Again, quoting from the same story, “NATO air and sea forces around Libya had to be alerted not to interdict the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and the emirates.”

The unofficially official story is that the UAE and Qatar were going to ship the weapons anyway and we got involved to see that they didn’t fall into the hands of “extremists.” They kept falling into the hands of the “extremists” anyway and we just threw up our hands and accepted that we couldn’t do anything about it, but let the smuggling continue. Another name for that short play is good cop-bad cop.

The Turkish, Emirati and Qatari bad cops smuggled the weapons while Obama wrung his hands and complained that his Sunni Muslim partners were crazy and he just couldn’t stop them.

In this “best case scenario” story, Obama was a hapless puppet of Qatar, Turkey and the UAE. In the worst case scenario, he was an equal partner. It’s telling that Biden and the New York Times are both sticking with the “hapless puppet” version of the narrative. It makes Obama look incompetent, but the “born-again idiot” routine is becoming an acceptable fallback scenario for the party and the movement.

And it conveniently differentiates Biden from Hillary who has committed to arming the rebels after initially opposing it in interviews while she was still employed by the administration.

Biden’s apologies to Qatar and Turkey are a reminder of who calls the shots on foreign policy and it isn’t the military-industrial complex, the Israel Lobby or the Freemasons. It’s a bunch of desert bandits with oil and a ton of Washington insiders on their payroll. But there’s also a lot more to it than that.

If we accept the version of history put out by Biden and the New York Times, Obama Inc. knew that there were no democracy-loving “moderates” in Syria to arm. And indeed we do have quotes and leaks to support that. But despite that Obama chose to make no moves against Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Syria. Instead he went on working with a Syrian opposition that he knew had no credibility.

That scenario doesn’t hold up too well. If Obama knew that the Syrian rebels were too dangerous to arm, then why work with them at all and why eventually arm them?

The Arab Spring and ISIS are both examples of blowback to the joint projects of Obama, Qatar and Turkey. The Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS proved to be dangerous tools for ensuring Sunni supremacy. Everyone except Qatar and Turkey has abandoned the Muslim Brotherhood. And ISIS is even threatening Turkey and Qatar. Like Carter’s botched policy in Iran, a liberal Islamization project has gone up in flames and the man to blame has managed to make it seem as if the problem was what he didn’t do, rather than what he did. Obama has managed to pull off a Carter.

Neither Carter nor Obama wanted the disastrous outcomes that they got, but they did want to set up Islamist states as part of their foreign policy. They just weren’t counting on things getting so messy.

Biden is complaining about the UAE and Turkey seeking out a Sunni-Shiite proxy war in Syria. But that’s only because he’s an idiot. The Arab Spring was meant to empower Sunni Islamists. What did he and his boss imagine that Sunni Islamists would do with their free time, aside from killing Christians and attacking American diplomatic missions? And who else did he think would end up on top of the pile?

Biden can blame Turkey and the UAE for the outcome, but it was always going to end this way. ISIS is Obamas’ mess. The Egyptian military and the Saudis cleaned up the mess in Egypt. Now the Saudis, the UAE and Obama are belatedly trying to put the ISIS genie back in the bottle in Iraq and Syria.

Obama would settle for being criticized for not intervening aggressively enough, but the real problem was his original aggressive intervention. His foreign policy overthrew governments and armed terrorists while maintaining plausible deniability.

Now he hopes that no one notices that he’s bombing the end results of his own foreign policy.

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  • Yehuda Levi

    Obama picked Biden as VP because he wanted someone to look dumber than he is. The problem is that there isn’t much difference between them. They are both bumbling fools.

    But Obama can always say he has a darker skin color than Biden. That is all that matters to people like the NYT and leftists in general.

  • Bamaguje

    It takes a grovelling dhimmi like Biden to be intimidated by an Islamist bully like Erdogan.
    He’s only taking a cue from his boss who went on apology tour of the Muslim world soon after becoming president.
    Obama’s disastrous Middle east policy is rooted in his insistence on viewing Islam with gold tinted glasses, and obstinate refusal to see Islam for the barbaric evil that it is… despite the abundance of evidence daily provided by rampagingJihadists
    Refusal to deal with facts as they are, and insistence on politically correct fiction that is out of touch with reality… is bound to end in calamity.

    • kasandra

      Your last sentence is a gem and the crux of the problem. Like all good leftists, Obama works on the basis of the leftist narrative rather than on the basis of objective reality. Whether it’s Islam or Ebola, that’s how he “rolls” and it’s leading to disaster in everything he touches. He never learned that facts are very hard things.

    • Pete

      Kobani will fall; Erdogan will be happy.

      Biden called a spade a spade and then backed down. It is worse than if he had not spoken up at all.

      If the 19 dead in Turkey is the edge of the storm, Erdogan is about to reap the whirlwind.

      I wonder how a former Turkish PM would feel about life in exile in Mecca under the Arab thumb?

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    Panetta’s jumped ship. Expect a few more. Their goal is to separate Hillary’s legacy from Obama’s. Panetta was a Clinton guy that joined Obama in his first term. The spin now is “Obama didn’t listen to us.”

    Our job is to make sure that people think Barrak and Biden when they hear Hillary. Huma can help us here.

  • Douglas J. Bender

    Joe Biden exemplifies liberal leadership — Fearlessly toadying up to Islamic thugs.

  • http://geoffreybritain.wordpress.com/ Geoffrey_Britain

    Excellent analysis with a few correctives. Biden’s apologies to the UAE and Turkey are NOT a reminder of who calls the shots on foreign policy. Biden was directed by Obama to apologize to the UAE and Erdogan because Obama needs the public support of ‘moderate’ ME regimes for political cover. With their pretended ‘alliance’, Obama can pretend that he’s doing something in the ME.

    Obama’s “foreign policy overthrew governments and armed terrorists while maintaining plausible deniability” because he believes that an ‘imperialistic’ America has given them cause to hate us and that enough appeasement will lessen their anger.

    Reportedly, we are NOT bombing ISIS’ tanks or artillery, which if true is definitive proof that Obama has no real intention of ‘managing’ ISIS.

    • Pete

      Reportedly where?

      You must have read a news story. Link it please.

      Finding a news story from a few days ago or 2 weeks ago can be a real pain. I know, I have done it and many times it took me 20 minutes or so.

      I am surprised that the 4 story building at the edge of Kobani with the ISIS flag is still standing. It makes an excellent place for an ISIS forward observer directing ISIS artillery or for an ISIS sniper. Point is is that the building is important to ISIS symbolically and militarily. It is bound to contain a few ISIS soldiers. It is w worthy target.

      Yet it stands. I really have to wonder about how we are fighting the war.

    • Bamaguje

      “Reportedly, we are NOT bombing ISIS’ tanks or artillery, which if true
      is definitive proof that Obama has no real intention of ‘managing’ ISIS” – Geoffrey_Britain.

      Surely you are not implying that Obama chooses the targets for Air force bombing.

      • Pete

        I made a mistake.

        I went looking for the truth.

        It was depressing.

        The Daily Mail had an article, which showed pictures of ISIS deeper into the besieged city of Kobani.

        Our air strikes are Shat! The pilots are brave and competent. There just not enough air strike s approved by that loathesome thing that we call the CINC!

        In the last week, it has gotten a 3 point bump in the approval polls. That is about to end as Kobani falls and more people die of ebola in America. It is a disaster and should never have been elected.

        So many African Americans to choose from … so many who were competent, but we pulled pulled from the bottom of the barrel. Just like we did with Clinton and Gore.

  • Sara

    Brilliant piece, the only thing I’ve read which makes any sense. The one thing I don’t understand is if Obama didn’t want the disastrous outcome why does he want to give Iran nukes? It somewhat seems like he wants to finish up what Carter started.

    • cree

      Perhaps it is that Obama is too weak to deny Iran nukes. Obama’s foreign policy reads: his choices suck or he has no choice (capitulation),

      • Sara

        As Mr. Greenfield said, Obama wants to look like a spineless incompetent fool to his critics. The strongest country on the planet shouldn’t get bullied, or maybe we no longer are the strongest.

    • Bamaguje

      As a Muslim sympathizer (if not outright Muslim), Obama buys into the Iranian Mullah narrative of America as the “great Satan.”
      Hence he severally apologized to the Muslim world, and clearly intends to facilitate Iranian nukes as a counterpoise to the “great Satan.”

      • Sara

        According to Islamic jurisprudence he is a Muslim by birth. A nuclear Iran would make ISIS look like a fluffy teddy bear. The fact that he wants a nuclear Iran means that disastrous results are part of the plan, to me at least.

  • Metatrona

    Biden works for an Islam lover. He has to do what he has to do.

  • William

    The main stream media has pretty much stopped reporting on Obama’s drone wars in other countries. There was a series of attacks in Yemen and Pakistan last week and zero coverage in the TV news.

  • contemptuous Maximus

    Bombing the result of his own foreign policy. If that’s not the definition of a failed presidency, what is?

  • ObamaYoMoma

    Why does Charles Krauthammer have so much credibility among most Republicans on Iraq? That guy doesn’t have the first fricking clue. Heck, he vilifies as Islamophobes all people who unlike him understands that there is no such thing as so-called radical Islam and so-called moderate Islam, as he still adheres to Bush’s proclamation that Islam is a so-called “religion of peace” being hijacked by so-called radical Islam.

    I hate to rain on Krauthammer’s idiotic parade, but all Muslims are our eternal mortal enemies, otherwise they are not Muslims, and lifting up Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to shooting ourselves in the foot.

    Hence, the only way you can consider Iraq and the Surge a victory is if you don’t have a clue about Islam. By the way, if the Surge was so successful, how did ISIS come into being.

    Charles Krauthammer is a loon, yet many Republicans believe every word that fool says.

  • De Doc

    It was obvious that Joe was chosen to be the goofy, White fall guy to make his boss look good.

  • Tzila Godzilla

    Taking it a step further, this all looks like a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and it looks obvious what side the U.S. regime has been helping. No wonder Saudi’s are not sitting peacefully, but the Iranian mullahs couldn’t be happier. Any attention on them has been conveniently diverted by ever-burgeoning crises: ISIS, ebola, bumbling POTUS and VPOTUS, government scandals, etc., to build-up their nuclear capabilities.

  • G. Friedman

    Another horrible, substandard (even by blog standards) article by Greenfield. I am ashamed that utter racism, militant zionism and ignorance are getting paid to be spread in Jewish America. Read a book Daniel.

  • Texas Patriot

    The truth about the war is that Turkey is using ISIS and America to eliminate its political enemies. ISIS to eliminate the Kurds, and America to eliminate Assad and Iran. ISIS gets Syria and Iraq. America gets…. body bags, a big bill, and a black eye for being on the wrong side of history. America has never had a more corrupt and treacherous ally than Turkey, and that’s saying something.