Joe Biden is continuing his “Apology Across the Middle East” tour. Next stop is Saudi Arabia.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has one more stop on what has become a Middle East apology tour in the wake of his impolitic answer to a Harvard student’s question: Saudi Arabia.
After apologizing to officials from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, Mr. Biden is trying to connect with Saudi leaders, a senior official said, to clarify that he did not mean to suggest that Saudi Arabia backed Al Qaeda or other extremist groups in Syria.
The vice president’s troubles began Thursday when he declared, in a question-and-answer session at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, that the biggest problem the United States faced in dealing with Syria and the rise of the Islamic State was America’s allies in the region.
Turkey, Mr. Biden said, has admitted allowing foreign fighters to cross into Syria, while Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia funneled weapons and other aid to Syrian rebels that ended up in the hands of Al Nusra, Al Qaeda and other extremist groups.
The White House expressed relief on Monday over Mr. Biden’s apologies, with the press secretary, Josh Earnest, noting that “the vice president is somebody who has enough character to admit when he’s made a mistake.” But asked repeatedly about the substance of his remarks, Mr. Earnest did not say the vice president was wrong.
Obviously he wasn’t wrong, though he certainly didn’t tell the whole truth either. The question is why is Biden even doing this?
He’s the VP in a lame duck administration which is already semi-committed to backing Hillary in 2016. It’s not like Obama is going to kick him off the ticket. So what is he even afraid of? Telling a little bit of truth might actually make some voters like him. A round of apologies won’t.
Obama is forcing Biden to humiliate himself to appease Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey with which the US already has bad relations with, but which currently need US help. So why even bother? The Saudis are not going to pull out of the coalition because Biden badmouths them. Any power player on the international scene already knows not to pay any attention to him.
It’s unnecessary appeasement. But that’s Obama’s foreign policy in a nutshell.





















