The McBush Veep Push From “Comrade” Holy Joe

Oh, by the way, with all of the overwrought navel-gazing from our corporate media and blogger types such as your humble narrator concerning Obama’s No. 2 person, did anybody besides me notice the latest from Connecticut’s Republican senator (here, concerning Russia’s incursion into Georgia)?...

"We're not going to let Russia, so soon after the Iron Curtain fell, to again draw a dividing line across Europe," said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut and close friend of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. "It is simply unacceptable."

I hate to break the news to Mr. Excitement here, but the Iron Curtain fell 19 years ago, though this does echo nicely with previous comments from John W. McBush (R-Too Many Homes).

And even though I’m the last person in the world who will defend Vlad Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, I thought our former pal Gorby had some interesting – though highly biased towards his country, I thought – observations in yesterday’s New York Times on the crisis...

What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. (Georgian President) Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.

The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.

In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.

These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?

Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

Aside from his point about “the unending expansion of NATO,” I find it hard to argue with a lot of that prior paragraph; despite what may have been Clinton’s best intentions regarding Kosovo, I have no evidence to indicate that conditions on the ground have ever improved.

Still, though, anyone who denies that Putin has expansionist designs is a liar or an idiot, and Gorbachev definitely isn’t the latter. The former Soviets are playing this game of chicken with both Georgia and the Ukraine, trying to keep them both under their thumb but knowing that they both seek autonomy and greater cooperation with the West. For this reason, the Georgia conflict was inevitable, and a confrontation with the Ukraine looks more likely as well. However, adult leadership in this country could have seen this coming and, through something called “diplomacy,” tried to head it off; I grudgingly give that point to Gorbachev.

But as we know, “no one could have foreseen this” (here)…