Joe Biden (pictured) is in Europe this week meeting with leaders in Berlin, Paris and London.
Over the weekend the US vice president attended the Munich Security Conference where he delivered a speech on the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
In his speech he said:
We have seen positive steps recently to address the eurozone crisis, with the European Central Bank pledging to stand behind countries willing to launch reforms, and with Greece, Ireland, Poland [he said Poland but he meant Portugal], Spain and Italy all taking important steps to put their economies on a sounder path.
Poland is not even a member of the Eurozone, and its economy is in considerably better shape than that of debt-ridden Portugal.
Insulting Poland is not new for the Obama Administration.
Biden’s blunder is the latest in a series of Obama presidency insults relating to Poland.
In May last year Barack Obama was strongly criticized by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after he described Nazi death camps during World War Two as “a Polish death camp.”
Tusk blasted Obama’s statement for its “ignorance, lack of knowledge, (and) bad intentions.”
In 2010 Obama chose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who were killed in the Smolensk air disaster, an act that was viewed as deeply insensitive by many Poles.
In addition, the Obama administration announced the cancellation of Third Site missile defenses on September 17, 2009, which also happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.
The White House, as well as the American media, will inevitably laugh off Biden’s latest slip of the tongue as “Joe being Joe.”
But it is inexcusable for a vice president and the second most powerful man in the nation to be so gaffe prone.
Comments