Joe Biden Has Proven Himself Unequal to the Peril

He Must Stop Dithering and Stand Up Firmly to Putin

As I write these words, the Russian Army is purposefully bombing Ukrainian schools, hospitals (including a maternity hospital), fleeing refugees, city centers, two nuclear plants, and more. Putin is also dispatching brutal mercenaries from Chechnya and Syria to terrorize the Ukrainian population even further. Putin & Co. are thus committing war crimes in plain sight against an innocent population, who only want to govern themselves and not submit to his horrid dictatorship or live again under his puppet government, as they did before 2014.

Under Biden, the US has gone out of its way to give Putin a free hand to conduct this invasion any way it wants, declaring in advance that we wouldn't engage them in Ukraine, refusing to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and even scuttling Poland's attempt to supply fighter jets to Ukraine with our backing. We have basically told the world, "If you threaten us with a nuclear bomb, we will stand down and do nothing serious to stop you, not even if you systematically terrorize, maim and murder an entire civilian population in Europe in order to repress their democracy."

That kind of sniveling approach didn't work against Hitler, and it won't work against Putin or other despots who are closely watching.

Biden's response so far has been to offer weak beer: imposing partial economic sanctions, even though full sanctions against much weaker countries have never worked: for example, we have imposed crippling sanctions against Cuba since 1960 and against Iran since 1979. That has greatly harmed the peoples of those countries, but done nothing to alter the behavior of their leaders, except to harden their resolve. The same is true of North Korea and so on.

In response to Russia's latest atrocities -- bombing refugees as they flee, bombing a nursery school, and bombing a maternity hospital -- Biden announced tariffs on Russia vodka and a challenge of its trading privileges under the WTO. That is at best a wholly inadequate gesture when children are being bombed right now.

At this point, Biden’s talk of defending democracy at home and abroad RINGS HOLLOW.

Under Trump, we had four years of intolerably divisive governance, abuse of power, and corruption.

Now we have milquetoast governance and dithering. It’s better than Trump, but that is not the standard by which we should judge our Presidents.

It's time for Biden and his Administration to stop quaking in their boots, learn from history, grow a pair, stand up to dictators, stop demagoguing everything, and lead the free world during its worst crisis since 1945.

Give me a break, and lead the free world.

-- A former Democrat