Biden Is Right, Putin Must Go
– By Ed Kociela –
Of all the guys who have occupied the Oval Office, the one I would most like to sit down and have a beer with is Joe Biden.
I don’t like beer that much unless it is an ice-cold Pacifico on a triple-digit summer day.
And, I am not a diehard Biden guy.
But, I do like good, straight-up, unfiltered conversation and would love the opportunity to pop a tall, cool one with Biden and engage in some conversation.
His stories of childhood, which usually begin with “My father used to say, ‘Joey…’” and go on to rattle off some character-building vignette that helps pull back some of the layers of the president, make him more human, more relatable, more accessible. They give us insight into not only the man, but the culture and age that he comes from and a peak at his character. They are inspiring at best, entertaining at least, and prod many of our own childhood memories from the recesses of our clouded minds.
But, his shoot-from-the-hip, unfettered opinions on wider, more profound issues are what would be most intriguing.
That’s why his remark when he addressed the media in the courtyard of a Polish castle saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “for God’s sake, cannot remain in power” are neither startling, as some have posited it, nor improper. Putin is a butcher, a despot, a war criminal. Biden’s comment was not some flippant slip of the lip, it was Biden being Biden. His predecessor was known for some fairly outrageous statements, but nobody with an ounce of reason or clarity took that nut job seriously. We should take Biden seriously. He has been in the game a long time and is considered one of the more brilliant minds when it comes to foreign relations and policy.
There are some who would censure Biden for a remark that suggests regime change, but the United States has consistently endorsed regime changes, whether in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East (most recently Saddam Hussein, if you recall.) The U.S. has a lot of blood on its hands. And, quite frankly, instead of a bloody finger on the trigger, it is now striving for a regime change in Russia by imposing sanctions aimed at stripping wealth and power from the oligarchy that supports Putin. Put them back on a diet of borscht and pirozhki and see how long Putin remains in power. It could be more effective than a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
The Russian spin team is, of course, using Biden’s statement to bolster its image.
Dmitry Rogozin, who heads the Russian space agency, tried to smear Biden by suggesting that clarification of the president’s remarks came from the White House medical unit, criticizing what he termed as “Alzheimer’s sanctions” imposed on Russia by the U.S. over the war in Ukraine, which he termed as a “special military operation.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters that the removal of Putin from office is “not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.” Of course, he did not mention the Russian collusion and interference with the 2016 U.S. election and its cultivation of Donald Trump as an intelligence asset, an oxymoron if ever there was one, by the way.
Look, the bottom line here is that Biden simply said what the rest of the leaders of the free world are saying behind closed doors and that is that Putin is a thug who must go to ensure the peace, love, and harmony of a world severely tilted by his insistence on reversing course and returning to the Russian days of the Cold War. As a Cold War baby, I remember the heightened fear and suspicion that permeated and actually resulted in one of the most intense faceoffs between superpowers in history when John F. Kennedy made Nikita Khrushchev blink when he blockaded Cuba to prevent the installation of Russian nukes in Cuba just 90 miles away from the United States. Khrushchev was stripped of all of his power by the Politburo and ended up a defeated, silenced old man in exile. As a former KGB goon, Putin, of course, would not go gentle into that good night, unless, of course, he has a condo waiting for him at Mar Lago.
Biden is in a sticky position for his comment because anything a sitting president says can and should be taken as a position of the United States and, for the sake of sanity and balance, we simply cannot have one world leader insisting that another be removed. The sovereignty of nations should always be respected, even in the face of unpopular leaders and policies. The world can work to persuade leaders into a more compassionate or understanding stance but booting them out of office rarely fixes the problem, whether Libya, Iraq, Vietnam, or any other place where strongmen have been ousted by force. That’s why the White House has tried to walk back Biden’s statement, even though we would, in effect, really all be better off if Putin was frog-marched to some Siberian outpost and left there to count snowflakes after a bloodless coup.
There is also a chorus of voices calling for Putin to be tried as a war criminal. The problem, of course, is that Putin would have to be handed over to authorities of the International Criminal Court, located in The Hague, Netherlands. There is zero likelihood of that occurring. Russia will not give him up and it is doubtful he would place himself anywhere authorities could pick him up.
A legitimate vote could result in his ouster but is also not likely. The voting machines are already pretty much set for the next Russian election.
There is, however, the possibility of a tumultuous revolution in Russia with a run on the Kremlin by the people, something akin to 1917 when the tsar and his family were executed and Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power. There appears, however, nobody to take up that sword yet.
The best tactic, of course, is to sweat him out, to place such steep sanctions on Mother Russia that the oligarchy that supports Putin gets squeezed hard enough to bounce him. Money talks, you know.
And, let’s hope, it whispers into the ear of those men behind Putin’s power and influence that Biden is right and that Putin must go.
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