Joe Biden and Terrorism by Daniel Lazare!
(2020-11-29 at 10:36:54 )

Joe Biden and Terrorism by Daniel Lazare!

As Joe Biden unveils his hawkish cabinet picks, it is hard not to get the sense that we are all hurtling back in time to those glorious days of regime change when the United States believed it had a sacred right to topple any government that got in its way.

It also seems like we are returning to the days that when jihadi terrorism aimed at the United States of America and its allies was horrible, terrible, a crime against humanity, and so on, while terrorism aimed at people the United States did not like was, well, distasteful and unpleasant but not something to bring up in polite company.

While no one wants to blow up innocent civilians, in other words, what really counts is which civilians and in whose behalf.

With that in mind, it is worth revisiting a talk that then-Vice President Joe Biden gave at Harvards Kennedy School in October 2014. If you enjoy listening to an empty-headed politician spouting endless cliches, you can access all ninety minutes of it here. But if you are not a glutton for punishment, you can jump to the 53:35 mark and zero in on Sleepy Joes specific thoughts regarding the United States of Americas Mideast partners and their inordinate fondness for ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The topic was the United States-Saudi effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and here is what the veep had to say, run-on sentences and all:

"The Saudis, the emirates, etc. what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Mr. Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Mr. Assad, except 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. .. So now what is happening? All of a sudden everybody is awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in .. eastern Syria, worked with Al Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened?

Now all of a sudden, I do not want to be too facetious, but they have seen the Lord. .. Saudi Arabia has stopped funding, Saudi Arabia is allowing training on its soil.. the Qataris have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations, and the Turks, President Erdogan told me, he is an old friend, he told me, you were right, we let too many people through. Now he is trying to seal their border.."

Words like these are worth savoring because they undermine years of propaganda about United States of American exceptionalism and the United States as a force for good.

Barack Obama, for instance, claims to oppose sectarianism. Yet here was his second-in-command saying that United States allies did not merely want to topple Mr. Assad, but that they wanted to topple him by fomenting "a proxy Sunni-Shia war."

In other words, they wanted to mobilize thousands of bigoted Sunni head-choppers in order to topple the Alawite president of one of the most religiously diverse countries in the Middle East.

Barack Obama also claims to oppose terrorism and, of course, vehemently objects to any suggestion that Al Qaeda is a western creation. Yet here was Joe Biden stating in the very next sentence that Saudi Arabia & Co. had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into .. Al Nusra and Al Qaeda" and that "we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them."

So they did supply Al Qaeda despite United States protests, which, in any event, were strictly private. While Joe Biden went on to say that the Saudis have seen the light thanks to the dramatic rise of the Al Qaeda offshoot known as ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), his wording was curious. Qatar, he said, had cut off support for "the most extreme elements," while adding that Turkey, after admitting that it had let too many fighters traverse its border, was now trying to close the barn door after the horse had left.

But what does "most extreme" mean? That Qatar was still funding some Al Qaeda elements providing that they were not too outre? As for letting "too many people through," was Joe Biden suggesting that Turkey was right to let some Al Qaeda fighters cross, but that too many were spoiling the stew?

So it seems, and so numerous other reports attest. So not only did the Saudis fund Al Qaeda and ISIS to the hilt, they cut off aid to the latter only when they finally figured out, as Joe Biden went on to say, "that ISILs target was not Ramadi" in northern Iraq, but Mecca and Medina in their own kingdom.

Killing thousands of people, raping and enslaving hundreds of Yazidi women, imposing a terrifying theocracy - such activities are permissible as long as they remain confined to Syria and Iraq. But once they threaten the House of Saud, well, that is more than any civilized nation can bear.

The fresh-faced Harvard students who listened to such nonsense did not respond by booing, jeering, or tossing buckets of red paint. Amazingly, they instead responded with polite applause. Even more striking was the reaction when word got back to Washington,D.C. Instead of congratulating Joe Biden for his forthrightness, Barack Obama ordered him to go on what the New York Times described as "a Middle East apology tour" by phoning up Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Ankara, etc. and conveying his personal regrets - not for being incorrect, that is, but for being indiscreet. Vice presidents are supposed to know what they can and cannot say in a public place.

All of which calls to mind something known the Bush Doctrine. In case no one can remember that far back, it goes like this:

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

So George W. Bush told a joint session of the United States Congress just a few days after 9-11-01, and since no subsequent administration has expressly repudiated those words, presumably they are still in effect.

If so, then the next time reporters get an opportunity, they should ask the president-elect if he still supports the doctrine and whether he plans to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE if he does.

They might also ask Hillary Clinton whether she would recommend a cut-off since, right around the time Joe Biden was holding forth at Harvard, she was confiding in an email that "the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia .. are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region." It is yet another example of top United States officials saying one thing in public and the opposite when they think no one is listening.

Of course, the chances of severing ties with the Saudis are zero, while the chances of the United States of Americas fearless press corps posing such a question in the first place are nil as well.

The Saudis may be terrorists, but they are the United States of Americas terrorists, and that is all that counts.

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