DC Wright, Firedog Lake - As hard as it is to believe, the politics of the war in Syria has gotten even more dysfunctional. Vice President Joe Biden has now apologized both to the leader of Turkey and United Arab Emirates after correctly stating – publicly – that the two nations bare considerable responsibility for the jihadists operating in Syria. It has been an open secret since the civil war began in Syria that Turkey and the Sunni gulf states were a significant source of money, arms, and recruits flowing to insurgents that were fighting the Iran-aligned Assad government.
The Sunni Saudis in particular see Assad as a threat given his alliance with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Funds from Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni gulf states as well as Turkey have flowed to Al Nusra/Al Qaeda and ISIS. Something Vice President Biden knows and accurately stated in a speech at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government last Thursday.
Biden told attendees that the militant Islamist group had been inadvertently strengthened by actions allies took to help opposition groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and 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 and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,”
Biden told students. “We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them,” he said.
Telling the truth has consequences and Biden has personally apologized to Turkey and UAE leaders for noting something that was true related to the war in Syria. He won’t make that mistake again.
Though given that Biden has publicly stated this conspiracy, how can the Obama Administration keep pretending that the objectives it claims to have in the Middle East of “fighting terrorism” are possible as long as the US’ key allies in the region are funding those same terrorists? Time for regime change in Saudi Arabia or is terrorism not the threat the Obama Administration makes it out to be?
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