Roy Gutman of McClatchy reports:
Vice President Joe Biden apologized to the United Arab Emirates Sunday for charging that the oil-rich ally had been supporting al Qaida and other jihadi groups in Syria’s internal war, his second apology in as many days to a key participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists.
This apology came, it seems, after Biden expressed:
… similar regrets to Turkey, [for having] left open whether the Emirates had supported the rise of al Qaida during the early stages of the war in Syria.
The vice president does this sort of thing so often that one wonders if it isn’t an element of some deeper strategy. An effort, perhaps, to deflect attention from the things his boss says. As Josh Gerstein of Politico writes
While Biden apologized for over the weekend after for remarks that prompted a diplomatic row which could disrupt the international coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, President Barack Obama has expressed essentially the same views that got the vice president into hot water.
Being president means never having to say, I’m sorry.
On the other hand, being vice president, especially if you are Joe Biden, means you say it so often you must think about putting it to music.
