Outrage is the appropriate response. And a special onus is on Democrats in Congress, who should be willing to put humanity above party and condemn Biden's extreme irresponsibility. But prospects for such condemnation look bleak.
Biden's impromptu nine words underscore that we must not take anything for granted about his rationality. Russia's murderous war in Ukraine does not give Biden any valid excuse to make a horrendous situation worse. On the contrary, the U.S. government should be determined to promote and pursue negotiations that could end the killing and find long-term compromise solutions. Biden has now made it even more difficult to pursue diplomacy with Putin.
Activists have a special role to play -- by emphatically insisting that members of Congress and the Biden administration must focus on finding solutions that will save Ukrainian lives as well as put a stop to the slide toward military escalation and global nuclear annihilation.
To even hint that the U.S. is seeking regime change in Russia -- and to leave the world wondering whether the president is slipping or threatening -- is a form of imperial insanity in the nuclear era that we must not tolerate.
"I'm addressing the people in the United States," former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said during an interview on Democracy Now just one day before Biden's speech in Poland. "How many times have an attempt by the American government to effect regime change anywhere in the world worked out well? Ask the women of Afghanistan. Ask the people of Iraq. How did that liberal imperialism work out for them? Not very well. Do they really propose to try this out with a nuclear power?"
Overall, in recent weeks, President Biden has jettisoned all but the flimsiest pretenses of seeking a diplomatic solution to end the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Instead, his administration keeps ratcheting up the self-righteous rhetoric while moving the world closer to ultimate catastrophe.
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