What if Joe Biden were to admit to Vladimir Putin the obvious truth, that the United States is an expert in all the acts of villainy Russia is committing and accused of in Ukraine? What if he warned Russia that it would suffer the same loss of credibility United States has in criticizing Russia?
American politicians and television viewers have been deeply moved by images of the suffering people of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the main response has been to impose brutal sanctions on Russia that will destroy the Russian people but not their leaders, who are well insulated from the effect of sanctions. If humanitarianism is the point here, what about the people, the human beings, of Russia?
This is a really stupid country and it gets even stupider during war. After war fever abides and people calm down, they inevitably look back and wonder what the hell they were thinking. Then it happens all over again.
It is virtually inconceivable that Ukraine will be able to defeat Russia militarily. Russia is simply too powerful. So what’s the point of sending weapons to Ukraine? There can only be one net effect, to prolong the war and the suffering to the benefit of the defense industry.
Many Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, are protesting angrily about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the peaceniks-come-lately were nowhere to be found over the last two decades as the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, waged a brutal proxy war in Yemen and Syria, destroyed Libya and terrorized much of the world with assassination drone planes. When the US is the guilty party, citizens of the US are silently complicit. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and many other countries destroyed by US military forces never enjoyed the sympathetic media coverage, much less the humanization, that Ukrainians are getting during the Russian invasion. To the contrary, Afghan patriots who shot at American forces were portrayed as terrorists and enemy combatants. Why the difference?
Joe Biden and the media outlets that support the Democratic narrative support Ukraine against Russian invasion without pausing to consider the fact that the United States is by far the biggest interventionist power in modern history. A nation that carries out drone strikes, assassinations, covert coups d’état and massive invasions and occupations of countries all over the planet has no moral standing to complain about the actions of any other country.
The dumbest thing you can do in politics is to fall into the framing of the opposite party. But that’s exactly what the Democrats are doing by constantly comparing President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats to former President Donald Trump and his allies.
For identity politics “woke” liberals, symbolic gains in diversity are all that really matter when gauging progress. Rather than focusing on policies that actually improve people’s lives, they promote privileged subsets of historically underprivileged groups. The absurdity and futility of this approach manifests itself when token representatives like Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton join the ruling classes and become just as oppressive as the traditional old white males.
The United States doesn’t have much moral high ground to criticize Russia’s incursion into Ukraine considering the fact that it constantly violates the sovereignty of other independent nations with drone attacks, airstrikes, CIA coups and outright invasions and occupations.
