Saaksshvili is a regular in the WSJ Op-Ed pages, calling for NATO membership and calling Europeans wimps and cowards for not standing up to bully Russia while provoking it in every possible way - your standard neocon.

He's been playing martyr to distract from his domestic failures, and he's been trying really hard to drag the West in his petty conflicts with Russia.

Russia has a history of palying hardball in the region, so deep wariness is justified, but he's gone far beyond that.

And I worry about his seeming ability to paint himself as the poor oppressed democrat fighting the big bad bully.

I'd also point out that the West, in pushing Kosovo to declare independence, largely caused this crisis because the situation of South Ossetia and other similar territories in Georgia is very much similar to that of Kosovo. Discourse about the territorial sovereignty of Georgia rings hollow when we ignored it for Serbia (despite Russia's repeated warnings).

We've been playing with fire - again - and have been encouraging a neocon to go provoke the Russians and to drag Europe (via NATO) into the conflict. Swell.

Someone called me:

Of course you blame Georgia...

...because you represent the holdovers from the discredited parts of the European Left that tried to justify any Soviet atrocity because it stood up to those evil Americans.

Russia just invaded an ally and escalated the internal conflict.  The reprehensibility of this does not change just because Bush is in the White House.

(on dKos...)


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes