Saakashvili might also have calculated that it was now or never - Bush is a lame duck, and McCain's campaign was going nowhere, so if he wanted US support he was more likely to get it during, and not after, the hyperventilated atmosphere of a Presidential Election campaign.
Even Obama -as you noted - has had to sharpen his anti-Russian rhetoric despite his willingness to talk to US enemies as in Iran.
But all of that is not my point. Is it appropriate and proper for a Presidential Election candidate to employ as a close adviser someone with close links to a foreign power, and who is a player in the ongoing development of that relationship? Obama was criticised for acting as if he were already President when he was in Berlin. But here we have McCain aides actually becoming major players in a war situation.
You cannot have Presidential candidates benefiting from the exacerbation of conflicts by their own people. The least McCain should do is sack Scheunemann - for a possible conflict of interest. (Scheunemann partner in a two man Lobbying consultancy is still drawing fees from the Georgian Government).
This has nothing to do with left, right, Democrat or Republican. It is the basic ethical principle that should apply in a democracy. It's time I got out of this game....
This has nothing to do with left, right, Democrat or Republican. It is the basic ethical principle that should apply in a democracy.
It is abundantly clear that a significant fraction (at least in terms of influence, even if possibly not in terms of numbers) of the Right either doesn't give a damn about democracy and rule of law or are openly hostile to it. There are no such organised anti-democratic forces in the Left (such as it is and what there is left of it), hence the constant need for wingnut apparatchiks to slander the democratic left with the crimes of extinct Stalinists.
In my considered opinion, that makes it a left-right issue.
Now, it may not be productive to start that discussion in the current LTE exchange, but there is no reason to not acknowledge it in our own discourse.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
