Roger Waters defends labelling Joe Biden a “war criminal”
After labelling US President Joe Biden a war criminal, former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has offered an animated defence of his stance. Waters is currently touring North America with his latest stage show This Is Not A Drill, which utilises a stage paved with projection screens. At one point during the show, these screens light up with a slideshow of people Waters deems to be “war criminals”. Biden, as well as his presidential predecessor Donald Trump, are both up there. According to Waters, Biden is “just getting started”.
Michael Smerconish of CNN sat down with Waters to discuss the controversial slideshow. Defending himself, the Pink Floyd singer said: “Well, he’s fuelling the fire in the Ukraine, for a start – that is a huge crime.” He then went on to pose the question: “Why won’t the United States of America encourage [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, the [Ukrainian] president, to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war that’s killing… We don’t know how many Russians.”
Smerconish, a fan of Water’s music who disagrees with his political views, accused the musician of mistakenly “blaming the party that got invaded”. Waters then defended his stance by asking: “Well, any war, when did it start? What you need to do is look at the history, and you can say, ‘Well it started on this day.’
Waters continued: “You could say it started in 2008 – this war is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
Smerconish went on to argue that the Americans are (and always have been) liberators rather than invaders. Waters strongly disagreed, raising his voice to add: “You have no role as liberators! What are you talking about?” Smerconish then used World War Two as an example, which Waters promptly undermined: “You [the US] got into World War II because of Pearl Harbour. You were completely isolationists until that sad, devastating, awful [inaudible] in 1941.”
Smerconish subsequently accepted that Pearl Harbour “pushed [the US] into WW2,” adding: “But thank God the United States got in, right?” to which Waters replied: “But thank God the Russians had already won the bloody war, almost, by then. Don’t forget, 23million Russians died protecting you and me from the Nazi menace”.
Attempting to bring things back to the original topic of conversation, Smerconish pondered: “You would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from war and wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine – fair?” Not fair, according to Waters: “With all your reading, I would suggest to you, Michael, that that you go away and read a bit more, and then try and figure out what the United States would do if the Chinese were putting nuclear-armed missiles into Mexico and Canada,” he replied, only for Smerconish to interject: “The Chinese are too busy encircling Taiwan as we speak.”
“They’re not encircling Taiwan,” Waters barked back. Taiwan is part of China. And that’s been absolutely accepted by the whole of the international community since 1948 – and if you don’t know that, you’re not reading enough. Go and read about it! You’re believing your site’s propaganda.”
You can find the full interview below.
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