John Allen Gay notes that the vice president’s recent impolitic statements about the involvement of Turkey and the Gulf states in aiding jihadist and Islamist groups in Syria were true:

But, as with so many of Biden’s other putative gaffes, the real problem was that he had said something that was true. In this case, Biden probably didn’t go far enough.

As Gay goes on to argue, the trouble with all this is that Biden’s inadvertent admission that leading U.S. allies and clients have supported or at least abetted these groups reflects very poorly on the administration’s Syria policy. There was a time not that long ago when Biden was boasting of the role that the Turks, Saudis, and others played in supporting anti-Assad forces. Biden said two years ago that the U.S. was “working hand in glove with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with the Saudis and with all the people in the region, attempting to identify the people who deserve the help,” and he said this at the time to defend administration policy against charges that the U.S. wasn’t doing enough. This is a good example of how the U.S. commits itself to dangerous, unwise policies largely so that it won’t be accused of “standing idly by.”

Gay might have added that Biden’s recent admissions also draw attention to one of the more absurd aspects of the “broad coalition” against ISIS. The U.S. is partly basing the “legitimacy” of the war against ISIS on the support of authoritarian Sunni regimes that have otherwise been aiding jihadist and Islamist groups in the war against Assad, and it is framing the “coalition” effort as opposition to the same kind of fanaticism that these governments have been freely endorsing and funding when it is espoused by other groups.