IS THE President of the United States losing his marbles? So asked a BBC journalist this week, employing a somewhat indelicate turn of phrase. Western commentators had got themselves worked up over a phrase that President Biden had tagged on to the end of a speech condemning President Putin, in which he exclaimed: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!”
White House officials scrambled to put a spin on the remark, insisting that it was an expression of moral outrage, rather than President Biden announcing a new policy of regime change. But it was a diplomatic gaffe, since it was immediately pounced on by the Russians, who said: Aha! So that was the plan all along!
No doubt President Biden let his tongue run away with him. And in doing so he committed a rather different blunder than the one seized on by press and politicians; for his ill-considered remark eclipsed the rest of his speech entirely — which was a shame.
Speaking in Warsaw on Saturday, he began by recalling the first words spoken in Poland by a Polish pope, St John Paul II: “Be not afraid.” They were words, the US President said, that would change the world. The message that the Pope brought back to his homeland was a message about power: the power of faith, the power of resilience, and the power of the people. A year later, the Solidarity movement took hold in Poland.
“In the face of a cruel and brutal system of government, it was a message that helped end Soviet repression,” he said. And today it is “a message that will overcome the cruelty and brutality of this unjust war”. The hammer blows that brought down the Berlin Wall were not struck by a political leader, but by ordinary people who had struggled silently for decades to free themselves.
That battle was won. But, over the past 30 years, the forces of autocracy have brought a new darkness all around the globe — with a contempt for the rule of law, for democratic freedom, and for truth itself. “Time and again, history shows that it’s from the darkest moments that the greatest progress follows,” President Biden said. “And history shows this is the task of our time, the task of this generation.”
It took a full ten years for the words of Pope St John Paul II to bear fruit in the collapse of the Soviet Union and for the light of freedom to spread across Eastern Europe. Nothing about that battle for freedom was simple or easy, the President said. It was a long, painful struggle, fought over not days and months, but years and decades.
President Biden ended with this peroration: “So, in this hour, let the words of Pope John Paul burn as brightly today: ‘Never, ever give up hope, never doubt, never tire, never become discouraged. Be not afraid.’” Perhaps the words which followed that were a mistake. Perhaps blurting out the truth at the wrong moment is a gaffe. But perhaps “for God’s sake” was not an expression of moral outrage. Perhaps it was a prayer. These are dark times indeed. But, as President Biden reminds us, quoting Kierkegaard, sometimes faith sees best in the dark.