- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

1. Of all the articles on Scheunemann that I have read, his is the most scathing

2.  It is precisely because his politics is so far removed from the progressive/reality based community that makes his scathing critique of McCain and his advisor so interesting.  Had it been written by a "progressive", it would just have been par for the course, if rather more outspoken than usual.

3. Obama and the progressive left seem to have given McCain a pass on this one.  I find the lack of moral outrage astonishing.

4.  Discredited in the US or no, he is one of the few conservatives in the US who is well enough known this side of the pond to ring a few bells.  Given my credibility on this issue was called into question in both the Irish Times, and Irish Independent, it seriously undermines charges that I am pro-Russian if someone like Buchanan is making the same or similar argument.

5.  I fund it interesting that many of the older conservatives (non-neo) seem to be moving to Obama.

However his criticisms of Scheunemann seemed to me to be consistent with the realist school of international relations - that Nations should act in their own self-interest - and that Scheunemann's activities were tantamount to Treason because they were encouraging the US to put its lives and treasure at risk in the interests of a rather rash regime in Georgia, which arguably has no great democratic legitimacy even in Georgia, and certainly no great claim the American loyalty except perhaps on the basis of the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

It has been characteristic of the neo-con project that the US Government has been suborned to act in the interests of a small commercial/political/industrial and military elite - and not in the interests of the US as a whole.  Surely, in that context, a return to real politique is an improvement?

Vote McCain for war without gain