Opinion | For Joe Biden to call what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine ‘genocide’ is a no-brainer the media should stop debating

The media keeps second-guessing Joe Biden for telling the truth about Vladimir Putin.

It’s strange. Whenever the U.S. president highlights the obvious — Putin is a “butcher” and “war criminal” — the media recoils to its fainting couch to parse semantics. Was it wrong for Biden to say that? What are the broader implications of this White House messaging?

Last month, during a powerful speech in Warsaw, Biden ad-libbed a line about Putin after meeting with Ukrainian refugees: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

Biden’s skittish handlers immediately walked back the comment, insisting the boss was not calling for regime change. For a few days, the media was fixated on that one line. The actual horrors unfolding in Ukraine took a back seat to achingly stupid commentary.

Of course Putin should not remain in power. He should not have the power to boil an egg. If this murderous sociopath was to drop dead tomorrow, the world would become a better place. The Star has policies that prevent death wishes. So that’s not what I’m doing. But put it this way: if a swarm of killer bees attacked the Russian president, stinging him in his dead eyes until his heart stopped from anaphylactic shock, my greatest fear would be for my liver.

Man alive, the champagne toasts that night would be epic.

Putin is a “leader” in the same way aloe vera is socks. If your car broke down and Putin drove by, he’d shoot you in the face and then steal the radio.

I spent a few years studying serial killers and even some of those monsters had a softer side. The disconnect between inhumanity and humanity was jarring. So-and-so strangled prostitutes along an interstate and then, come morning, volunteered at a food bank. Putin has no soft side. He is a hardened coward who is annihilating a sovereign nation while destroying his own. Putin only cares about the deranged voice in his head, an evil clown with a sadistic cackle.

And you know who gets this? Joe Biden. From the start of this barbaric invasion, he has called a spade a spade. He has shared intelligence that was eerily prescient. He has helped unify the NATO alliance in ways once unfathomable. The free world, led by Biden, now sees Russia for what it always was under Putin: a terrorist state that poses an existential threat.

Ukraine isn’t just fighting for Ukraine. It is fighting for democracy itself.

If this asshat Putin wins, we all lose. This is not complicated.

But instead of focusing on what Biden and Western allies can do to help Ukraine — and there is so much more that should be done — the media keeps getting sidetracked in a parlour game of What Biden Says. It’s like ignoring the playing field to scrutinize the colour commentary. It happened again on Tuesday when the media clutched its pearls after Biden said “genocide.”

Spoiler alert: what’s happening in Ukraine is genocide.

The mass slaughter of civilians? Genocide. Russian “soldiers” killing every Ukrainian they see? Genocide. Entire cities bombed into oblivion? Genocide. The murder, rape, destruction and pillaging of an entire country? Genocide.

Responding to Biden’s “genocide” label, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted these were “true words of a true leader.” Exactly. The sad truth is, previous U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama and Donald Trump, utterly failed Ukraine.

One of the reasons Putin is now so insanely emboldened is that Obama was so insanely weak. Obama kept threatening red lines and then suddenly got conveniently colour blind. Meanwhile, Trump, who like Putin only cares about himself, saw Ukraine as nothing more than a scavenger pit to be extorted and excavated for dirt on his political enemies.

If I can’t build a Trump Hotel in Kyiv, then Kyiv is dead to me.

For years, the West has viewed Ukraine as an empty vessel of low-value strategic significance as opposed to what it is proving to be: a battleship that cherishes our values more than we do.

During this unspeakable tragedy, I have lost countless tears listening to besieged Ukrainians talk about how they will never stop fighting for their freedom. That fight plays out on our TV screens every day. It’s unbearable to watch. But there is only one framing context: this is a battle between good and evil, between all that is right and all that is wrong in our world.

Joe Biden, to his eternal credit, gets this. The use of “genocide,” for international lawyers, comes with a challenging burden of proof. But for the leader of the free world, describing what Putin is now doing in Ukraine as “genocide” is a no-brainer.

As Biden explained this week: “I called it genocide because it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian.”

Yes. No point in sugar-coating evil. Putin is a butcher and war criminal who is actively engaged in genocide. He tried to carjack a Rolls and then, when the driver resisted, decided to slash the tires and smash the engine: If I can’t drive this, nobody can.

But the media keeps dissecting Biden’s words instead of amplifying his moral indignation.

Let the man talk and listen to what he’s saying outside the realm of partisan theatre.

Joe Biden is right. Vladimir Putin is wrong. This is not complicated.

SHARE: