Regime Change Biden Goes Nuts
Regime Change Biden Goes Nuts
Beltway Republicans also deranged and hysterical
Just when you thought that Washington couldn’t possibly concoct a worse foreign policy, President Joe Biden rose to the challenge—abetted by the Beltway uniparty. Democrats and Republicans alike seem to share the goal of putting America last.
On Saturday, in a speech in Poland, Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” For the first time since Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and George W. Bush invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein five years later, regime change is once again apparently U.S. policy.
This step is only the latest act of self-indulgent, imperious stupidity by Biden and the Harvard Kennedy School glee club running our foreign policy. A year ago, Biden blithely called Putin a “killer.” This month his administration accused Putin of being a war criminal. And now Biden is purporting to direct who can govern Russia.
Not since the Ottomans issued grandiose and widely ignored proclamations from the Sublime Porte in the last days of Constantinople has imperium been so pretentious and pathetic.
Even if Putin is a killer and Russia has committed war crimes, Biden’s pronouncements make no sense. Notwithstanding media fantasizing about Kiev somehow winning the de facto civil war it is fighting with Moscow, Russian military forces are making gradual progress in Ukraine. This unfortunate reality is still developing despite much tougher resistance by Ukrainians than Moscow expected.
Russia is close to consolidating its land bridge to Crimea, where it stations its Black Sea fleet. It now controls the entire Sea of Azov. Russia also is expanding its Donbass beachhead in eastern Ukraine and still has the Ukrainian capital mostly surrounded. Since neither side seems capable of total victory, the only way to end a war is through a negotiated settlement with Russia.
Why then does Biden think it makes sense to call in effect for Putin’s removal from power, trial, and lifelong detention or execution for war crimes? None of these things is remotely likely to happen and they make negotiation much more difficult.
Most Americans can grasp this concept even if the highly credentialed bobos running our foreign policy cannot. If you want to buy a used car, does it make sense to call up the salesman in advance and call him a scumbag, even if he is one?
Kid having trouble at school? Does it make sense to start a campaign to fire the principal before asking him for favorable consideration?
Want the neighbor to keep his dog off your lawn? Do you start off by telling him he should move?
Biden goaded Putin into war, saying “he has to do something,” and is now goading him into more aggressive action.
Biden and his enablers in both parties are being driven by the discredited fantasy that they can install neoliberalism and wokeness abroad, and that American power and money are limitless. Catastrophic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria apparently haven’t given pause to the woke crusaders.
In fact, Ukraine has developed into something of their last stand. Quintessential globalist Anne Applebaum put it plainly in an article in The Atlantic: “Ukraine Must Win.” No amount of killing and destruction around the world will deter her quest: “That goal [in Ukraine] should not be a truce, or a muddle, or a decision to maintain some kind of Ukrainian resistance over the next decade…” Only elusive victory will do, damn the cost of people, money, or risk to America. Prolonging the war and subjecting Americans to the risk of a nuclear exchange with Russia for someone else’s dispute is worth not having to admit one’s world view is wrong.
If the globalists can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in their outpost of empire in Ukraine, which they tried to tilt westward through a successful coup in 2014, then the hundreds of thousands of corpses from their failed interventions and nation-building experiments won’t look so bad, or so they reason.
Given this impetuousness and self-indulgence, it is no wonder much of the world isn’t on board with the Biden-led crusade. Not only China, but India, Brazil, South Africa, the Arabian Gulf states, and Southeast Asia have all declined to join the sanctions regime against Russia. In fact, they are increasingly convinced that if anyone “cannot remain in power” it is Biden.
Unlike our own politicians of both parties, they realize their national and economic security depend on inexpensive and secure energy. They also do not feel the need Washington seems to feel to let rich Europe off the hook again for skimping on its own defense. Why bail out the European Union, a grouping of wealthy nations with 400 million people and a $21 trillion economy that disdains Americans and the idea of America? Reinforcing such a moral hazard only makes sense if one is desperate to cover up a failure and try to preserve a discredited idea that is sinking beneath the waves—the fate of the postmodern, globalist dream.
For sad Biden, there is only failure and discredit. The mystery is why Republicans are supporting him and failing to put America first. Washington’s sloppy sanctions on Russia, not the invasion of a country with no oil, are why Americans are paying an average of $4.24 for gas and truckers are paying $5.10 for diesel. Already high food prices will soon follow in the inflationary spiral. And for what? Another futile attempt to drain the bottomless well of European animosity at little cost to the rich European Union?
Let’s see how this plays out politically. Maybe voters just blame the party in power, led by Biden, for a foreign policy that is every bit as incompetent and ineffective as the party’s economic and social policies. That’s the safe bet for midterm elections this fall.
But what will they think of the minority party that cheered the globalists and wanted them to go farther? Will the swing voters who propelled Donald Trump to victory in 2016 suddenly get excited about globalism and letting other people make their problems into our problems? Or will they want a president who puts America first? If so, they will clearly need someone outside of the Beltway ranks of either party.