President Joe Biden correctly reflected the world’s outrage last year when Russia amassed troops on the border with Ukraine then invaded with levels of brutality that included the targeting of schools, refugee encampments and hospitals. Russian President Vladimir Putin now faces arrest for war crimes. Undaunted by U.S. criticism, he has annexed two occupied Ukrainian regions on top of his 2014 annexation of Crimea.
On Feb. 23, 2022, Biden tried to rally the world against Putin, saying that “what literally is at stake is not just Ukraine, it’s freedom. The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country. … Since World War II, nothing like that has happened. Things have changed radically. And we have to — we have to make sure we change them back.”
This week, instead of echoing Biden’s outrage, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow to celebrate his friendship with Putin. Other leaders have been more restrained but nonetheless reluctant to side with the United States. That at least partially can be attributed to the blatant hypocrisy behind Biden’s position. Twenty years ago this week, the United States amassed more than 100,000 troops on the border of Iraq and invaded that country, citing justifications that turned out to be baseless. It’s a historical fact that belies Biden’s assertion that nothing like the Ukraine invasion had happened since World War II.
