Joe Biden spoke in Warsaw to a crowd waving Polish, American and Ukrainian flags and he spoke directly to Vladimir Putin.
He did not say, "Mr. Putin, tear down this wall," because it was Mr. Putin tearing down and, in fact, sending tanks over walls already; that, in fact, is the problem.
What President Biden did say was good enough: To say that Russian troops are blasting through Ukraine to "denazify" Ukraine is "obscene" Biden said, of a country which elected a Jewish President whose father's family was murdered in the Holocaust.
That many Ukrainians took part in the Holocaust nearly 80 years ago, should not be forgotten, but some protected Jews and the point is, they elected a Jewish President just lately. To talk of Ukraine today as being run by Nazis, Biden said, "Is just obscene."
"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."
The President is saying what is obvious to anyone paying attention to the news, even in New Hampshire. The problem is not some historic coalescence of grievances, or some geopolitical game; the problem is one man, as surely as the Third Reich was one man and his obsessions. The only way for this war to end cleanly is for Putin to go the way of Hitler, with a bullet in his head. There, I said it. Everyone knows it, but nobody wants to say it. There might be some minions supporting him, but if Putin died tomorrow, those Russian troops and tanks would stop in their tracks.
Were it not for Putin and his dreams of glory and empire, there would be no problem between Russia and Europe or the United States.
Of course, while the President was in Europe, back at the White House some self important staffers were saying, "The President's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change."
Oh, that's a very fine point there, darling. We don't care what he does inside his own borders, but when he crosses borders, we are staunch. (By that policy, had Hitler not invaded Poland, then we would be fine with all those concentration camps inside Germany--but that's an argument for another day.)
You can imagine all the meetings at the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department where everyone agreed we should not say we wanted Putin's head, but simply we wanted him to use his power differently, because, "It risks confirming Russia's central propaganda claim that the West, and particularly the United States, is determined to destroy Russia."
And what do we care about confirming Russian propaganda? Are we afraid we'll lose the Russian public? As if anything we do or say will affect the opinions of the Russian public, given Putin's lockdown of opposition journalism?
No, what Biden is saying, which he should be saying as President, is that but for Putin we would have no quarrel with Russia, but we cannot deal with a psychopathic dictator and we'll treat him and his country accordingly. He can't concern himself with how this message is received inside a slave state. He is speaking to the rest of Europe, to China and to his folks back home, and he is speaking clearly.
What is aggravating is to see the rest of the American government unable to realize that when it comes to foreign policy, the United States has one leader, the President, and if he wants to say Putin has to go, then everyone else must scramble to catch up.
Biden has spoken his mind before, confounding the underlings and even his boss. He said he thought gay marriage was fine before President Obama had got to that point, but ultimately, he convinced Obama, because Biden, while he might have lost some brain cells, is still functioning on enough cylinders to know what right is.
Lincoln once said, "If slavery is not wrong, then I do not know what wrong is."
Biden is saying the same thing.
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