Biden’s Omission
By As'ad AbuKhalil
Al-Akhbar- Tuesday, October 7, 2014
It is said in Arabic: take their secrets from their minors, and we can also take the administration's secrets from its minors, i.e., Joe Biden. Joe Biden is infamous for not being smart, and is well known for bombast, buffoonery, and plagiarism. But Biden can also, due to lack of judgment and mental restraint, reveal what Obama wishes to conceal. Obama is quite adept at concealing his intentions and even his policies [and wars] when it is politically convenient. Biden is less skilled in concealment and for that he is rarely assigned important tasks of policy. One wonders whether Biden is even privy to the secrets of the administration.
Biden singled out Qatar, The United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Turkey. But he noticeably omitted two other players in Syria who are as guilty as the other three, namely the US and Saudi Arabia. It is interesting that the administration treats the Saudi regime with such reverence and respect. Biden could not even utter the name of the Saudi regime for fear of antagonizing the kingdom of horrors. He is less restrained but not completely unrestrained. But he also left out the US: The New York Times indicated two years ago that Saudi Arabia and Qatar did not wish to start shipping weapons to Syrian [militants] without the prior approval and consent of the American administration. Those two are quite cautious after September 11 and would not on their own risk their relationship with the US even in their attempt to unseat the Syrian [government]. Furthermore, the relationship of the US with those allies is such that the US would not allow them to ship weapons without knowing about the operation in details, and the Times also reported on CIA planes participating in the transfer of arms to Turkey.
Yet, Biden did not blame the US, when the US was the one power that created the fertile ground for the rise of [so-called "Daesh"] ISIL [just as it had created the fertile ground for the rise of al-Qa`idah in Afghanistan, and the various monstrous militias in Libya]. Nevertheless, it is easy for the administration to shift the blame and absolve itself of responsibility. Furthermore, information about the varieties of Al-Qai`dah in Syria were available to the administration for at least two years and the US did not act upon that information, nor did its allies, until recently - or until the fall of Mosul. Was the American calculation that [so-called] ISIL AND al-Nusra Front would be useful tools [just as the US considered al-Qa`idah or whatever formation that preceded it under the sponsorship of Prince Turki with the full knowledge of the CIA] against the Syrian regime, but when they failed in their mission and when their excesses became too famous to ignore, the US and its obedient allies turned against it?
Biden had to "clarify" his statement and had to apologize to the UAE ruler [the actual ruler does not rule, so Biden called the Mohammed bin Zayid, the real ruler]. But the official statement merely stated that Biden did not mean that those countries "intentionally" assisted ISIL. The implication is that those states are innocent and that their funding and arming of ISIL and the al-Qa`idah variants are unintentional. But had the US not armed and assisted fanatical...terrorists in Afghanistan in the 1980s also unintentionally?
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