Vice President Joe Biden landed himself in hot water with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates after comments last week suggesting they had materially contributed to the
rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), a gaffe which is considerably more serious than the numerous others he has made during his tenure,
according to The Washington Post.
Biden was forced to apologize to leaders in both countries for "any implications" he made suggesting they had supported extremist groups.
He had said: "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 Qaida and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."
The UAE foreign affairs ministry demanded an official explanation for the remarks, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily insisted Biden apologize otherwise he would be "history to me."
"As Biden's many gaffes go, few are as damaging as this one. And in case anyone thought Biden has a real shot at becoming president in 2016 — something we've argued for a long time is folly — this should remind us why that almost definitely won't happen," the Post said.
The Post contends that Biden's most recent comments not only demonstrate he is careless with words, as many of the other gaffes have shown, but they are of considerably higher importance because of the potential impact they could have for America on the world stage.
"Sometimes that carelessness seeps into much more serious issues. And few things are as serious as international diplomacy," the Post said.
In the last month alone, Biden has made numerous other verbal missteps.
Another comment on foreign policy landed him in hot water last month when he left the door open to the possibility of the United States putting
"boots on the ground" in the conflict with ISIS, an express divergence from the president's insistence otherwise.
On Thursday, during a question and answer session following a speech at Harvard University, Biden referred to being vice president as
"a b*tch" after a student introduced himself as vice president of the student body.
During a speech in September, Biden described lenders who prey on members of the military as
"Shylocks." He was later forced to apologize for his "poor choice of words" after he was called out by the Anti-Defamation League for using the anti-Semitic slur.
Last month, when describing a meeting he had with former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, he referred to him as "the wisest man in the Orient." Use of the dated term earned him widespread criticism on social media and in the press.
And earlier that week, at a Democratic National Committee event celebrating women's leadership, Biden praised former Oregon GOP
Sen. Bob Packwood, who resigned in 1995 after sexual-harassment allegations by as many as 10 former female staffers and lobbyists.