Joe Biden Is the Only Honest Man in Washington
The vice president's apologies to Turkey and the UAE show the dangers of accidentally telling the truth
Vice President Joe Biden has had to apologize, twice, to two key U.S.
allies in the fight against the Islamic State. It wasn't because he
lobbed false accusations at them. It was because he accidentally told
some inconvenient truths.
Speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University late
last week, Biden departed from his prepared remarks to deliver a series
of broadsides against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE), three powerful members of the emerging U.S.-led coalition
battling the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia and the
UAE took part in the initial U.S. airstrikes against the group, and
Riyadh has offered to host a training facility for thousands of moderate
Syrian rebels. The Turkish parliament recently voted to authorize military strikes into both Syria and Iraq.
But those weren't the parts of the three countries' records that Biden
focused on. Turkey, the U.S. vice president said, had failed to close
its long border with Syria, allowing militants with loyalties to the
Islamic State to easily cross the frontier and join the fight there. He
said that Saudi Arabia and the UAE, meanwhile, had transferred hundreds
of millions of dollars and large amounts of weaponry to a variety of
Islamist militias inside Syria, including at least one with ties to al
Qaeda.
The leaders of the three countries were apoplectic, but there are
elements of truth in everything Biden said, particularly when it comes
to Turkey, which would be a pivotal player in any serious effort to
defeat the Islamic State.
Take Turkey. U.S. officials have long believed that Ankara has done
virtually nothing to seal its border with Syria and has avoided taking
any direct military action against the Islamic State, in part because
the militants had until recently held dozens of Turkish diplomats and
other citizens as hostages. The New York Times reported
in September that as many as 1,000 Turks have crossed the border into
Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State, along with an unspecified
number of foreign fighters.
In September, when he announced the start of the current campaign
against the Islamic State, U.S. President Barack Obama alluded to the
border issue -- though he didn't specifically mention Turkey -- when he
stressed the need to "stem the flow of foreign fighters."
As many as 1,000 Turks have joined the Islamic State, according to
Turkish news media reports and government officials there. Recruits cite
the group's ideological appeal to disaffected youths as well as the
money it pays fighters from its flush coffers. The CIA estimated last
week that the group had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and
Syria.
Some U.S. officials hope that Turkey will be willing to do more against
the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, now that the hostages have been
freed and the militants appear to be potentially only days away from
conquering a strategically important city on the Syrian-Turkish border.
"We have identified the tightened security at some of these borders,
including the border between Turkey and Syria, as a key priority in
shutting off support to ISIL and other extremists who are operating
inside Syria," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday, Oct. 6.
The diplomatic flap dates back to Biden's remarks at Harvard, where he bluntly said,
"Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria" in
response to a question from a student who asked whether the United
States should have acted earlier to stop the civil war in Syria and why
it has chosen to act now.
"The Turks were great friends, and I've a great relationship with
[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, … the Saudis, the Emiratis,
etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down [Syrian
President Bashar al-]Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war.
What did they do?" Biden asked, according to a recording of the speech
posted on the White House's website. "They poured hundreds of millions
of dollars and tens of 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."
"President Erdogan told me -- he is an old friend -- said, 'You were
right; we let too many people through. Now we are trying to seal the
border" with Syria, Biden said.
Erdogan denied making such remarks, insisted that no militants had ever
crossed into Syria from Turkey, and said Biden would become "history to
me" over the vice president's comments. The UAE's foreign minister said the remarks were "far from the truth."
Biden apologized to Erdogan, and the White House said the vice president called the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to
say that his remarks were not "meant to imply that the Emirates had
facilitated or supported" the Islamic State, al Qaeda, or other
terrorist groups in Syria. On Monday, the White House said Biden "has enough character to admit when he's made a mistake."
Since Obama assembled a coalition against the Islamic State, "Saudi
Arabia has stopped the funding going in. Saudi Arabia has allowed
training on its soil of American forces," Biden said. "The Qataris have
cut off support for the most extreme elements of terrorist
organizations."
But here's the rub: Biden's comments may have been impolitic -- and in
some ways imprecise -- but the substance of his remarks match up with
what the U.S. intelligence community has known for some time and has
even publicly alluded to.
"Syria has become a proxy battle between Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah on
one side and Sunni Arab states on the other," James Clapper, the
director of national intelligence, said in Senate testimony
in January. The "unhappiness of some Arab Gulf States with U.S.
policies on Iran, Syria, and Egypt might lead these countries to reduce
cooperation with the United States on regional issues and act
unilaterally in ways that run counter to U.S. interests."
The State Department's latest report on counterterrorism says
that though Qatar has cooperated with the United States on some
important areas of counterterrorism, its efforts to stop fundraising for
terrorist groups have been inconsistent. "Qatari-based terrorist
fundraisers, whether acting as individuals or as representatives of
other groups, were a significant terrorist financing risk and may have
supported terrorist groups in countries such as Syria," the report says.
Indeed, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have given significant support to
the Free Syrian Army, a militia seen as far more moderate that the
Islamists now leading the fight against Assad. Some of that money and
weaponry is believed to now be in the hands of fighters from the Islamic
State, al-Nusra Front, and other extremist groups. In a key nuance lost
in Biden's remarks, though, many U.S. officials believe that the
Islamists took possession of the money and armaments after overtaking
Free Syrian Army positions or welcoming in defectors from the rebel
force, but didn't receive the funds and supplies directly from either
Gulf government.
Officials from the UAE and Saudi Arabia strongly deny that they ever
funneled weapons or money to the Islamic State or al-Nusra Front, though
they acknowledge taking steps to support the Free Syrian Army after
Obama overruled his senior national security advisors two years ago and
refused to have the United States support the group. Obama has recently
reversed himself and announced plans to mount a significant effort to
train, fund, and equip the Free Syrian Army, though some rebel
commanders believe that it is too little, too late.
Jon Alterman, a senior vice president for global security at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden's comments weren't
incorrect but were a bit imprecise.
"There was certainly support for terror groups coming out of friendly
countries in the region," Alterman said. But one could conclude from
Biden's comments that the "governments in the region were directly
supporting these groups, and I don't think that's what he meant to say.
The extent to which governments supported or condoned such support is
unclear."
The role of America's allies in supporting groups battling Assad was well documented in a research paper commissioned by the Brookings Institution in December 2013.
As new armed groups opposed to Assad were forming in 2012, donors from
Kuwait -- a key ally of the United States in the region and a staging
ground for American troops in the last two wars in Iraq -- were ramping
up their donations, according to the paper
titled "Playing with Fire: Why Private Gulf Financing for Syria's
Extremist Rebels Risks Igniting Sectarian Conflict at Home," by
Elizabeth Dickinson, who's a contributor to Foreign Policy.
In early 2012, "there was an explosion of videos, tweets, and photos on
social media, announcing the creation of new rebel brigades -- some even
named after individual Kuwaitis who had contributed," Dickinson wrote.
"The buzz attracted donors not just from Kuwait but likely from
individuals across the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar."
Kuwaiti contributors consolidated donations for specific rebel groups, including al-Nusra Front, Dickinson wrote.
Although Saudi Arabia discouraged the country's religious establishment
from getting directly involved in Syria, in 2012 the kingdom conducted a
telethon to raise funds, Dickinson wrote.
Many Persian Gulf countries have gotten better at tracking the flow of
funds from their nationals to rebel groups in Syria and elsewhere.
However, "they have not been 100 percent effective," the Center for
Strategic and International Studies' Alterman said. That's partly for
"their own internal political reasons."
Having the freedom to donate to Islamic charities is somewhat similar to
the passionate defense of Second Amendment rights in the United States,
Alterman added.
"We have people who feel strongly about gun rights," Alterman said.
"They have people who feel strongly about citizens contributing to
charities in an unfettered way. It sounds like a trite comparison, but
the emotional content is similar."