Our shadow president, John McCain, has an op-ed agitating in the WSJ. Typically McCain, no details, just we should help Georgia and remind Russia who they are (have fun with that).
Surest sign the area is dangerous- CNN has sent Michael Ware there.
A Georgian diplomat is, tragically, beginning to understand:
“I’m talking about the impotence and inability of both Europe and the United States to be unified and to exert leverage, and to comprehend the level of the threat,” said the senior Georgian official, who had sat in on the talks between Mr. Sarkozy and Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili.
The Washington Post begins to point out the obvious:
Yet Bush’s statement, along with the moderate measures that came with it, served to underscore the limited options available to the United States, which has neither the wherewithal nor the willingness to enter into a military conflict with Russia on its territorial border.
The administration has proposed relatively little in the way of concrete consequences for Moscow if it does not comply with U.S. demands, focusing instead on Russia’s standing in the world and its perceived desire to be accepted as a major player in international organizations. “Russia is putting its aspirations at risk by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with the principles of those institutions,” Bush said.
I predict that this editorial in the Guardian will be the most linked piece on memeorandum by the end of the day.
I will add more as I find it.
dmsilev
Rhetorical question alert: So, I assume we can immediately expect all of the media gasbags to blather on endless about how presumptuous Senator McCain is being by acting like he’s President before he’s even officially nominated? RIght?
-dms
Face
Whiskey Toga Frenchman on Obama declaring his desire to see Georgia in NATO yesterday? Did he take a Stoopid Pill, or was he just trying to look like Senor Baddass?
Xanthippas
Just a note from the McCain op-ed:
Uh, like Sarajevo, 1914? I mean, when we’re talking about a conflict between large powers, provoked by events in smaller nations, that’s kind of the main conflict that comes to my mind. I’m not sure if I’d want to help a reader make that association, as McCain seems to.
Also, his idea of an international peacekeeping force is nice and all…but where are they going to come from? And who’s going to kick the Russians out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to do it?
Jake
Matthew Yglesias has been excellent of late taking down the nonsense that is the McCain campaign’s stance on Georgia.
See this, and this, and this, for starters.
4tehlulz
And Obama supposedly is putting himself before his country? Fucking lol.
Heshe
Watch McSame’s poll numbers rise.
Bushy sends Condi to Georgia! Shouldn’t she instead go to Moscow? What a bunch of bumbling amateurs. Sure, Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. What he really saw was his own evil self.
If this keeps up I may need to go out and get more duct tape and plastic sheeting.
4tehlulz
Depends, who’s Randy Scheunemann taking money from this week?
Jake
I’m afraid it’s Obama being subtle again. He didn’t actually call for them to be in NATO. He called for a “membership action plan for NATO”. Yes, I know it’s a distinction without much of a difference to the public, but I think he knows full well that Georgia’s not going to join NATO anytime soon.
Barbara
McCain seems to be proceeding under the illusion that the Cold War never ended. Notice that he didn’t seem to think the world was coming to an end when China cracked down in Tibet. One might go so far as to say that McCain simply has a soft spot for Georgia because his sustained, emotional reaction just can’t be explained by tactical threats to the U.S.
For God’s sake, we have missiles in the Czech Republic aimed at Russia. What would we do if Russia or China used a Latin American country as a staging ground for missiles aimed at us? Wouldn’t we at least be somewhat paranoid if an even closer country started making grand gestures about joining Russia and China in its grand alliance against us? (Indeed, I think we would probably go off the deep end, or at least the neocons would.)
I have no quarter for Russia and I think Putin is a highly negative development for Russia and Europe at large, but I can certainly see this situation from Russia’s perspective even if I think it overreacted.
cleek
of course. it simply could not turn out any other way.
David Hunt
Hmmm. I’d from what I’d heard, the Russians didn’t “overreact” because they weren’t actually reacting. I’d heard that they had managed to provoke the Georgians into a crackdown in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and then they “reacted” by doing exactly what they planned on from the beginning the moment they had a plausible excuse.
numbskull
Linky link? Otherwise, I heard Davy heard his mama heard from his daddy that if his aunt had balls, she’d be his uncle!
Gay Veteran
too bad the Georgian people have to suffer for their leader’s stupidity
but then you could say the same for Americans
maxbaer (not the original)
John McCain, Wm. Kristol, Robt. Kagan is this clear enough for you?
maxbaer (not the original)
Has anyone asked McCain if his support for Georgia is based on principle or if it’s a result of Scheuneman’s lobbying? If it would be his policy anyway what are the Georgians paying for? If not, it’s not very mavericky.
maxbaer (not the original)
What’s McCain saying here? It sounds to me like the South Ossetians didn’t want to be part of Georgia.
Delia
Oh, dammit, that’s not the big exciting war Johnny wants you to remember. He’s hoping you think about the Sudetenland. The neocons can’t say anything without Godwinning. That first big exciting war, they don’t like to think about it, because it was too confusing.
The other thing that all the neocons have forgotten is the one basic strategic dictum that’s even older than “Never fight a land war in Asia.” It’s “Never fight a land war in Russia.”
Kathy Hussein in MA
Thanks for your link to the editorial in the Guardian. Do we ever need news from a non-US (=non-Bushie) perspective right now! — Btw, the PBS News Hour had an interesting interview this evening with a Heritage Foundation fellow (who said just what you’d expect) and Anna Vasilieva of the Monterey, CA Institute of Int’l Studies, who gave quite a lot of info from Russia’s point of view. She also mentioned that the S. Ossetians and the Georgians have exchanged gunfire every August for several years.
cleek
be nice to McCain, or Hannity will shit a brick sideways.
5 and a half years!!!!!
grandpajohn
Can”t be on principles, he doesn’t have any
bootlegger
Sweet jesus! And this is the same guy that constantly bloviates against situational ethics and moral relativity? Then again, why should I be surprised?
Splitting Image
Relax. If it were really dangerous, they’d send the First Lady.
Marshall
An essential read here is as usual William Pfaff – Why Georgia Does Not Belong in NATO
I think that the Russian elite has a much clearer view of the American elite than vice versa.
Nancy Irving
Imagine the outrage if Obama had interfered in the nation’s foreign policy in this way.
Just imagine.
Joshua
What Russia is: a country that has outfoxed us every day for the past 8 years. A country run by a man who knows our leader is a small man that will kowtow to you the second after you massage his ridiculously overinflated sense of grandeur. And he has played it for everything it is worth since day one. Damn, its amazing to think what this Bush-Cheney Administration has not fucked up. Everything is in shambles.
p.s. that Hannity Youtube was hilarious. Wasn’t Hannity one of those principled conservatives that said he would not support McCain because McCain is not “one of us”?