The Biden Administration thrives on saying nothing or at least on the flawlessly imprecise use of the English language. At times they might as well be speaking French because they would be just as understandable to the American people.
The result is nearly always disaster.
Clearly President Joe Biden is not in charge of his presidency because when he is unleashed upon the media without talking points he is completely out of synch with the staffers who control his policies.
The unraveling of the Ukraine crisis illustrates this completely.
Biden has made such an enigma wrapped in a riddle of U.S. policy in Ukraine that it has been left to the pusillanimous and timid Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “clarify” that administration’s position. This is attempted to do on Sunday:
"If a single additional Russian force goes into Ukraine in an aggressive way, as I said, that would trigger a swift, a severe and a united response from us and from Europe," Blinken said to CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union.”
Well, that is helpful. A “swift, severe, and united response” can mean just about anything that Blinken and Biden want it to mean, including an angry trip to the grocery store.
It makes you yearn for the days of President Dwight D. Eisenhower who had a secretary of state named John Foster Dulles who told the Soviet Union that if they attacked Western Europe with nuclear or conventional arms, it would result in “massive retaliation” of nuclear weapons from the United States and NATO. No lack of clarity there.
President John F. Kennedy didn’t murder the language either. Whether he was telling the Soviets that they had to remove their missiles from Cuba or their ships would be stopped and searched or promising to send a man to the moon and “return him safely to the earth,” JFK avoided weasel words.
We learned Monday that Biden was not merely spending a weekend of leisure at Maryland’s Camp David getaway. Apparently his “advisors” were busy presenting Biden with his options to at least appear like he is aware that there is something resembling a global crisis in Ukraine. More like it, Biden is being told what he has to do if he doesn’t want to be replaced by his vice president, who is sure to do an even worse job of it.
Reportedly, the President is thinking about sending as many as 5,000 troops to Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Clearly, the Biden administration’s geography has not improved since it failed to read the Taliban’s progress throughout Afghanistan and how these terrorists were days and not months away from Kabul.
On Monday, chief Pentagon flak Rear Adm. John Kirby, who often appeared as a confused junior DoD staffer, said that number could go as high as 8,500 but confirmed they would not be going to Ukraine. He was as clear as a foggy day in London town.
If Biden could not withdraw from Afghanistan without creating a military fiasco, a crisis of command and a portent of continued disaster, what makes you think he can insert himself into the Russia-Ukraine crisis and emerge with anything but further disgrace?
This is a President who telegraphs his incompetence.
At Biden’s now legendary news conference of last week, The President may have resembled an aging prizefighter who was bruised and blooded and way beyond his prime but at least he seemed to be his own man for a couple of hours, refusing to take a fall as his handlers behind the curtain shook their hands at being betrayed. Which is why he blew the minds of world leaders and even a lot of Democrats by declaring that he really didn’t give a damn if Russian President Vladmir Putin wanted to have a little mischief in Ukraine.
“And so, I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”
Et cetera, et cetera.
“But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further ingra- — invade Ukraine, and that our allies and partners are ready to impose severe costs and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy.”
Uh huh.
Biden went on to say that he has sent “$600 million of sophisticated military equipment” to Ukraine without saying exactly what that was and continued, “The cost of going into Ukraine, in terms of physical loss of life, for the Russians, they’ll — they’ll be able to prevail over time, but it’s going to be heavy, it’s going to be real, and it’s going to be consequential. In addition to that, Putin has — you know, has a stark choice: He — either de-escalation or diplomacy; confrontation or the consequences.”
Yes, confrontation or unnamed consequences: what can be clearer than that?
Hey man! It’s gonna be heavy! What does this mean? What are the consequences? A minor incursion is okay though. That won’t result in anything heavy? That is precisely what the West allowed Adolf Hitler to achieve at the 1938 Munich Conference when he made a minor incursion into Czechoslovakia and absorbed the Sudetenland into the Third Reich. The policy then was called appeasement. It is still called that.
So defacto White House chief Psaki quickly issued a statement that was supposed to clarify Biden’s jaw-dropping remarks. But flak Psaki is incapable of being precise either and she talked in generalities too!
"If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies," the statement read.
Sounds great. What does it mean?
Kamala Harris did her best on Thursday morning to read the tea leaves.
"I will repeat myself, and I’m vice president of the United States, and the president and I work closely together, and I know his position because he’s been consistent in that regard. If Vladimir Putin and Russia takes aggressive action, it will be met with a cost that will be severe," Harris told NBC’s “Today.”
Perhaps Harris is so incredibly unclear because she works so closely with the president.
Thanks for repeating yourself, Kamala, but it didn’t help define what exactly you mean by severe. Is Vladmir Putin in for the kind of tongue-lashing that Biden usually reserves for Republicans that he fancifully compares to Bull Conner?
Clearly Biden is not prepared to fight over Ukraine. Will he impose sanctions? What would hurt the Russians the most would be a boycott of their oil. But ironically, this is not a foreign policy option for Biden because the idiot cannot even fulfill our domestic energy needs because he has gleefully been shutting down pipelines and drilling operations and has destroyed our energy independence. He began his cursed presidency by saying goodbye to the Keystone XL pipeline and has been retiring oil exploration ever since. Europe and especially Germany is heavily reliant upon Russian oil.
Ironically, while Biden is focused on a global crisis that ultimately does not affect Americans very much, he will be even less inclined to focus on the issues that are grinding them into the ground: urban crime, inflation, a U.S. border crisis more relevant than the one in Russia and an encroaching recession. This administration just can’t keep its priorities straight, let alone its policies.
