Rich Welsh| On Thursday, President Joe Biden made a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, remarkably, he then took some questions from reporters. The whole thing took less than a half hour.
Among other things, the president highlighted the severity of the sanctions that the United States and other countries are imposing on Russia while at the same time he said that sanctions will not stop Putin’s aggressions against Ukraine.
As of the time of Biden’s statement, it appeared that there were no sanctions yet levied against Vladimir Putin himself who ordered the invasion, or anything involving the international SWIFT bank. It wasn’t made clear during the statement, but it seemed like the president gave off the feeling that he did not get the full international support for additional sanctions that he bragged about imposing.
After weeks of hyping up the possibility and then the probability of a Russian invasion into Ukraine, the Commander-in-Chief made it clear that there will be no NATO or US military response to the Russian invasion. Regardless of Biden’s tough talk rhetoric, the people of Ukraine are alone and on their own. He did the same thing to many American citizens stuck in Afghanistan, leaving them behind when try as they did, they couldn’t get to the Kabul airport in time for the final flight out of the country.
The president stumbled when reading from the teleprompter and he looked even worse when answering reporters’ questions. He grinned at inappropriate times, which some doctors say is a sign of dementia (not saying Biden has dementia) but watching Biden’s performance today lends credence to the theory that his apparent weakness as a leader is one of the reasons why Putin felt he could invade.
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This never would have happened under Donald Trump, especially after President Trump warned the Russians in Syria that if they continued to allow Spetsnaz (special forces troops that Putin referred to as mercenaries) he would bomb them. The Russians didn’t believe him, and Trump gave the order to General James Mattis, who ordered the bombing which killed about 190 mercenaries, 90 of them Russian soldiers. From that time on, Putin thought Trump was too unpredictable, and he never tried anything overt again. Right now, we have the exact opposite in the White House and it’s a problem. Joe Biden is as predictable as it gets.
For example, in June 2021, Biden said he gave Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure entities that he said to the Russian president were “off limits” for cyber attacks. I don’t know why he didn’t just give him the nuclear launch codes while he was at it.
Biden said that the “US will defend every inch of NATO territory,” which left out Ukraine that is not a member. This means if Putin decides to attack any NATO country in the Baltics, we will go to war with Russia. In my own opinion, it was an incredibly stupid thing to say. We’re not going to defend Ukraine at all but if they attack any country that we already know they don’t have eyes on, well, then, Mister, they’re gonna get it! OMG!
So the Big Guy said that we would go to war if Russia moves into poor Baltic countries like Latvia or Lithuania, but not the country that he’s invading right now. Incredible.
The president then moved on to other topics, showing he has no idea how the energy industry works by saying he is concerned about rising gas prices and urged American oil companies to not raise prices just to increase profits. Biden clearly doesn’t understand that oil and gas are international products that react to market conditions. Prices are going to rise because of the things Biden has already done to the American energy sector at the beginning of his presidency, on top of unstable times in the world like right now, but it’s looking more and more like he is going to blame the Russian invasion on Ukraine for rising gas prices when our gas prices have risen since he became president.
Biden tried to hammer home the point that international sanctions were going to cause real harm to Russia’s economy, even though the higher the price of oil per barrel, the richer Russia gets. But the president didn’t mention how the US could actually harm Russia’s economy by just returning to the Trump energy policies we had when we were energy independent. In a short time, that would bring the cost of oil down for us, which would harm Russia’s economy far more than the useless sanctions imposed by the West yesterday and today. But don’t count on that happening, because Biden is too embedded with the climate change and environmentalist groups to give a damn about democracy in Eastern Europe.
