2010
Gaza Flotilla Raid

Jeremy Scahill

April 27 2021, 7:12 p.m.

Dozens of Palestinians gather at the Gaza city port on May 31, 2015, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Mavi Marmara ship attack.

Photo: Quds Net News Agency/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In the early summer of 2010, a group of mostly Turkish activists attempted to deliver a flotilla of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. The attempt was interdicted by the Israeli military, which launched a raid on one ship that resulted in the deaths of nine people, including one American citizen. The raid triggered an international outcry and led to a diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey, while drawing further attention to the civilian impact of the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza.

Joe Biden took the lead in defending the raid to the U.S. public. In an interview with PBS, he described the raid as “legitimate” and argued that the flotilla organizers could have disembarked elsewhere before transferring the aid to Gaza. “So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?” Biden asked about the humanitarian mission. “Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people.’” No weapons were ever found on the ship, only humanitarian supplies. Amid the fury that the raid generated and the muted response from President Barack Obama, Biden’s remarks were welcomed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee spokesperson Josh Block, who said at the time, “We appreciate the many strong statements of support for Israel from members of Congress and the vice president today.”

The
Intercept_

2011
Egyptian Revolution

Murtaza Hussain

April 27 2021, 7:13 p.m.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak meets with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, on June 7, 2010.

Photo: Amr Nabil/AP

Joe Biden vocally supported Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak after the outbreak of a protest movement against him in early 2011. In an interview given while protests in Cairo were building to a crescendo, Biden said Mubarak “has been an ally of ours in a number of things, and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel.” Pressed further, he said that the Egyptian government should seek to compromise with the protesters but defended Mubarak personally. “I would not refer to him as a dictator,” Biden said. When the protesters later succeeded in toppling Mubarak despite U.S. reservations, Biden referred to it as a “pivotal moment” in history.

The
Intercept_

2011
Libya Intervention

Murtaza Hussain

April 27 2021, 7:14 p.m.

Rebel fighters are seen in downtown Misurata, Libya, on April 20, 2011.

Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Joe Biden has said that he always internally opposed the Obama administration’s decision to intervene in Libya. In a 2016 interview on PBS, Biden told host Charlie Rose that from the outset, he had expressed concerns that the war would create a vacuum in Libya that would be filled by extremists. He also said there had been insufficient planning for what the country would look like after Muammar Gaddafi had been deposed.

At the beginning of the NATO-led intervention in 2011, several months after the uprising in Libya had begun, Biden publicly indicated that the U.S. should step back from involvement and that NATO should handle the war on its own. “If the Lord Almighty extricated the U.S. out of NATO and dropped it on the planet of Mars so we were no longer participating, it is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya — it does not,” Biden said. “This is about our strategic interest, and it is not based upon a situation of what can the traffic bear politically at home.”

Despite this reticence, once Gaddafi was killed in the fall of 2011, Biden said that NATO had “got it right” in Libya, even describing the war as a model. “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn’t lose a single life,” Biden said. “This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.” In a CNN interview, Biden spoke about Gaddafi, saying, “This is one bad guy, one really tough guy. He for 40 years had his folks under his thumb. And he’s dead, and it’s going to give the people of Libya the first chance in four decades to actually put together their own government, have a little bit of freedom. Little bit of opportunity.”