17 March 2021 : Biden calls Putin a “killer”;
17 March 2022: Biden calls Putin a “war criminal” ;
18 March 2022: Biden abuses Putin as “murderous dictator” and “pure thug”;
26 March 2022: Biden calls Putin a “butcher”.
How did Putin respond? He didn’t.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov speaking on his boss’s behalf told the media blandly:
“We do hear and see statements addressed to (sic) (against) President Putin that in fact constitute a personal insult”.
The Kremlin official then glumly said that Biden took the liberty of making such statements virtually every day.
“Bearing in mind Mr. Biden’s irritability, fatigue and forgetfulness, which eventually results in aggressive statements, we will possibly prefer to refrain from making any strong comments so as not to trigger more aggression,” Peskov said.
What a stark and such a revealing cultural contrast … a chasm, in fact … between the American and the Russian character and behavioural trait.
I bring up all this only because it leaves me asking myself this rather strange question to myself :
In an imaginary or hypothetically similar situation, if POTUS President were to hurl the same choice abuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, how would he react?!
And I wonder too how would Indians react? Would we all behave with the same self-restraint as the Russians? I doubt it.
How would TV anchors like Arnab Goswami erupt or someone like a Srinivasan Jain gleefully explain it as Truth and not Hype?
What kind of commentary would a historian like Ramachandra Guha pen in another one of his boiler-plate, instant-coffee columns for the HINDU or the WIRE?
Or what would the ever petulant Digvijay Singh or the vicious Mehbooba Mufti have to say about it?
And lastly, how would our neighbours the Pakistanis exultantly celebrate the occasion ? !
Modi as we all know of course was once called by the Indian media and politicians the “Butcher of Godhra” … And even much worse, in Hindi , by the Queen of India then, HM Sonia Gandhi, he was branded as “maut ka saudaagar”— the merchant of death.
The Butcher of Godhra was once upon a time denied a U.S. Visa . The US State Department explained it : “The Chief Minister of Gujarat state, Mr. Narendra Modi, applied for a diplomatic visa to visit the United States. On March 18, 2005, the United States Department of State denied Mr. Modi this visa under section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was not coming for a purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa. Modi’s existing tourist/business visa was also revoked under section 212 (a) (2) (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Section 212 (a) (2) (g) makes any foreign government official who “was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom” ineligible for a visa to the United States.”
That unforgettable US action against Modi was almost the same in its degree of punitiveness as the one that has now been taken against the Butcher of Ukraine … Putin has been sanctioned personally by the US State Department .
After Modi was elected overwhelmingly by the people of India in two consecutive general elections in 2014 and 2019, America suffered no pangs of any contrition at all over the unwarranted insult they had dealt Modi, an elected representative and Prime Minister of 1.3 billion people who had put him in office. That should surprise none in the world. America never apologises for its misdeeds …. Not even for Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That’s “American Exceptionalism”
President Biden is an unqualified disgrace to American Diplomacy … He is even worse than Donald Trump in the sheer coarseness of his manners, his indelicate utterances and in the way he has shown how the dignity of the mighty office of American Presidency ought to conduct itself on the international stage and especially towards its counterparts, the heads of other sovereign states. Biden is a disgrace to his age too and to his stature as an elder politician of a country that goes around the global town boasting it is the greatest democracy in the world .
Just the other day in Hollywood at the glitzy event of the annual OSCAR Awards presentation, the actor Will Smith behaved like a common street-oaf in front of a world audience of millions watching him on TV. He slapped and then mouthed filthy 4-letter profanity at the host, Chris Rock … all on some silly pretext, some petty imagined personal slight.
Biden is to the world of international diplomacy what Will Smith showed himself to be to the world of Hollywood. In using the unbecoming language that Biden did against President Putin last week, he did nothing but deliver a low-blow that was no less ungracious and outrageous as Will Smith’s “slap” .
Both Hollywood and the White House this week clearly revealed … nay methinks indeed, they abjectly confessed to … the general culture and the real character of America.
Sudarshan Madabushi