“The Vice President has Enough Character to Admit When He’s Made a Mistake”

photo_1319734434085-1-0_s660x390

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.

  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    Biden has enough character to fill Goofy’s shoes. No, wait. Goofy was black and a “racist” cartoon character. We’ll try again. Biden has enough character to fill Barney Rubble’s sandals. But maybe he went around barefoot, I’m not sure.

    • Fed Up

      Barney was often the brighter of the two. Soooo, if Biden is smarter than The One, we’re really in trouble.

      • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

        I don’t recall everything about the show, but he was Fred Flintstone’s Ed Norton. About Goofy, I’ve always wondered why Goofy was a talking, fully clothed dog who wore shoes but had a quadruped pet dog that was more or less mute except when it barked, and what was going through the minds of their creators. They may have been on “something.”

        • KevinBattspuv

          my Aunty Caroline recently got a nice 12 month old BMW X5 Diesel by part time working online from home.visit their website EARN NOW

  • Sara

    “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, this is no Apology Tour.

  • glpage

    Is this an apology tour or a suck up tour?

    • Bamaguje

      Perhaps because of his Muslim upbringing, Obama feels a reflexive need to appease Islam… even when he doesn’t need to.
      Remember when he genuflected before the King of Wahabi Islam during his earlier apology tour of the Muslim world at the beginning of his maladministration..

  • Fed Up

    “The Vice President has Enough Character to Admit When He’s Made a Mistake”

    Yeah, but if he only had a brain.

    • Gee

      More of one than his boss

  • contemptuous Maximus

    Biden made a political gaffe, he accidentally told the truth. But he couldn’t even get that right, he only told part of it.

  • namberak

    He’s a big character alright …

  • guyjones

    Biden could have showed some balls and given the middle finger to Obozo by stating “I stand by my remarks.” Instead, he cowered and gave in. He should have stood his ground; what would Obozo do, fire him? We know that Obozo hates controversy.