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By Sean Wilentz
$16.92
Tom Chatfield
$18.45
$35
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AP photo / Chip Somodevilla, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — Was he too calm? Did he pull his punches in an effort to look presidential? Not really. The viewers got a clear choice: a reasoned and reasonable Obama versus an old-fashioned Cold Warrior who would keep us in Iraq endlessly and extend the boundaries we must defend to Georgia and Ukraine.
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Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
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thepage.time.com
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Some flip-flops are more welcome than others. During Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity, which “The Daily Show” likened to an infomercial, the VP candidate said war with Russia would be “off the table.” That’s a different tune than the one she hummed for ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
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cappymcgarrshow.com
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Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel has openly questioned whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has the experience or qualifications to effectively serve as president, the Omaha World-Herald reported Thursday. Also, Hagel’s not buying the argument that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives Palin any particular edge or special insights about U.S.-Russian relations.
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topnews.in
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Although she acknowledged that Georgia fired the first shots in August’s bloody conflict with Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday laid most of the blame for that showdown on Russia. During a strident speech, she also gave several other examples of how she believed Russia’s leaders were taking their nation down a dangerous road.
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By William Pfaff — Thanks to Russia’s incursion into a belligerent Georgia in mid-August, a country in possession of Washington’s assurance that it soon would be given a “membership action plan” for joining NATO now hasn’t a hope of membership in the alliance.
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Politicians, take note: “Local” interviews are no longer all that local. In this interview, Rob Caldwell, anchor for WCSH in Portland, Maine, asks Republican presidential nominee John McCain about his running mate Sarah Palin’s credentials when it comes to “national security, diplomacy, foreign policy” and “the fight against Islamist extremism.”
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abcnews.go.com
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Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is finally answering questions from a journalist in ABC’s three-part interview series with chosen reporter Charles Gibson. Palin comes out of the gate with guns blazing, rewriting history about the Georgia-Russia conflict and considering the possibility of a U.S. war with Russia in the first episode, airing Thursday.
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gov.state.ak.us
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Apparently undeterred by Sarah Palin’s challenging stance from the RNC podium Wednesday night, The Boston Globe and other media outlets went about their business of vetting Palin’s past, as with any other public figure who aspires to play a major leadership role on the world stage. As it turns out, Palin’s own experience on said world stage has thus far been rather limited.
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White House photo by Eric Draper
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The U.S. is giving Georgia $1 billion in aid, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced. That could be just a friendly donation, or, seen in the light of America’s meddling in the Caucasus, perhaps something more sinister. Sorry we didn’t go to war with Russia, baby, but here’s a billion dollars. Buy yourself something nice.
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AP photo / Musa Sadulayev
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Russia announced Wednesday its willingness to withdraw its remaining troops from Georgia if, and only if, some conditions were met: one, bring international peacekeepers in to replace Russian soldiers and, two, Georgia must sign nonaggression pacts with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
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By William Pfaff — NATO has now been broken because it was used by the United States and the European NATO members as a tool for expanding Western power into the Russian “near abroad,” and after that, to make an inexplicably rash and dangerous effort to break into and split off portions of the Russian empire as it existed in the 19th century—long before the Soviet Union existed.
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“Fox & Friends” co-host and international relations genius Steve Doocy filled some time before John McCain’s official VP unveiling extravaganza on Friday by suggesting that McCain’s chosen She-publican, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is actually a formidable player on the world stage because of Alaska’s proximity to Russia.
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boston.com
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Georgia announced Friday that it will withdraw all Georgian diplomats from its embassy in Moscow in protest of Russian soldiers’ presence in the country. Russia is expected to pull its own diplomats from its embassy in Tbilisi, but of course its troops will still be stationed in Georgian territory if Georgia really needs to talk.
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By William Pfaff — The Bush administration has lived by a strategy of tension, and will go out of office bequeathing the wars it has started and the ill will it has created to its successors, to compromise those who come after.
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Republic of Slovenia / BOBO
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Based on information from Russian defense officials and, no doubt, years of KGB savvy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has surmised that the U.S. provoked the Georgia conflict in order to give John McCain a boost: “The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of U.S. president.”
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AP photo / John Raoux
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By Robert Scheer — Just great! Nuclear-armed Pakistan is falling apart, Iran’s nuclear program is unchecked and congressional legislation on cooperation with the Russians on controlling nuclear proliferation is now dead in the water. Horrid news except for Sen. John McCain, who thrills to a repeat of the danger lines of the Cold War, and now stands a good chance of being our next president.
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By William Pfaff — The West’s response to the situation in Georgia evades acknowledgement of the damage Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili has done to the United States and NATO, and to Georgia itself, which for the foreseeable future will now be a nation of limited sovereignty, and an awkward embarrassment to its Western allies.
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AP photo / Dmitry Lovetsky
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Russia has formally recognized the independence of the two separatist Georgian states, prompting jeers abroad and cheers in the regions in question. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili rather theatrically compared the declaration to the conduct of Hitler and Stalin.
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Russian officials beg to differ with Western critics who claim that Russia’s ongoing presence in the Georgian port town of Poti violates the terms of the cease-fire agreement between the neighboring nations, insisting that the remaining Russian forces are of the peacekeeping, not the combative, variety.
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By Eugene Robinson — There’s a candidate in this presidential race who remains a mystery—hazy, undefined, so full of contradictions that voters may see electing him as an enormous risk. I’m referring to the cipher known as John McCain.
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By William Pfaff — Why has the U.S. maintained an aggressive stance toward Russia long after the demise of the Soviet Union? And how on earth does that strike anyone in Washington as a productive strategy for America, not to mention the rest of the West?
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topnews.in
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Where in the world is Condoleezza Rice? Well, as the ink was drying on the deal she signed to secure Poland’s cooperation in the United States’ controversial missile shield project, Secretary of State Rice turned up in Baghdad on Thursday for an unscheduled visit with Iraqi leaders. Surprise!
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thewashingtonnote.com
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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has weighed in again about the recent bloody battles between Russia and Georgia, this time insisting in a New York Times Op-Ed piece that Russia was “dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili” and “did not need a little victorious war.”
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
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By Eugene Robinson — Between the sight of China’s dazzling Olympics and the sound of Russian tanks, it’s clear that America is not the only big shot in the world. Will John McCain and Barack Obama take notice?
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Flickr / DavidDennis
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The Bush administration continued efforts to resurrect the Cold War this week by demanding that European governments back sanctions against Russia. So far, America’s allies in NATO are showing relative restraint in the face of a transatlantic temper tantrum.
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By Patrick J. Buchanan —
For reasons too numerous to fit into a short summary, Pat Buchanan isn’t someone whose writings we’d routinely pick up on this site. However, in this case his essay about the Georgia-Russia conflict, er, bears repeating here, if only to illustrate how not all conservatives see the recent clash in Eastern Europe the way the Bush administration does.
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On Saturday, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the French-brokered peace treaty already inked by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. However, this is clearly an uneasy and tentative truce: Russian officials say their troops will stay in Georgia for an indefinite time.
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yes-ukraine.org
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Since Karl Rove skipped out on his subpoena to appear before the House Judiciary Committee last month, the whereabouts of Bush’s longtime political strategist have emerged—Rove was in Crimea, Ukraine, for the fifth annual Yalta European Strategy summit. Also in attendance: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
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Paul Craig Roberts, who was assistant secretary of the treasury during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, sees the Georgia-Russia conflict differently than the Bush administration does: “Americans themselves have nothing to gain,” Roberts said Friday; “What is operating is the dangerous ideology of the American neoconservatives whose goal is to assert American hegemony over the entire world.”
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“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” an emotional Mikheil Saakashvili said Friday after he signed a cease-fire agreement to end his country’s eight-day showdown with Russia. The Georgian president declared that other European nations ignored clear signs of impending conflict last spring and he hinted that trouble could also be in store for other countries.
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youtube.com
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After spending several hours in a diplomatic huddle behind closed doors with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday signed a cease-fire agreement brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Saakashvili, however, made it clear during a follow-up news conference that “this is not a done deal yet.”
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Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on “Larry King Live” Thursday to give his read on the Georgia-Russia conflict, asserting that Georgia was definitively the first to attack, in “a barbaric assault” on Tskhinvali, and that “there was support and protection” for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili from ... elsewhere in the world. Updated
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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By Bill Boyarsky — Forget the moderate image, promoted by an admiring media. Forget the so-called straight talk and independence. With the Russian-Georgian war winding down, McCain has firmly established himself as an old-fashioned Cold Warrior and a supporter of the huge oil companies that have a big stake in Georgia and the rest of the Caucasus.
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With the worst timing imaginable, the U.S. and Poland announced a missile shield deal on Thursday, which prompted a Russian general to strut like a peacock and threaten to punish the land of pirogi. The proposed missile shield has been a go-to irritant for President Bush to use on old friend Vladimir Putin, and for an obvious reason: It works.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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If there is any doubt that John McCain is gulping down the neocon Kool-Aid on Georgia, one need only read his new manifesto in The Wall Street Journal, where he once again flaunts his Wikipedia-sourced foreign policy expertise.
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By William Pfaff — History—not democracy—provides the explanation for the crisis in Georgia, in which the United States is recklessly involving itself.
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First the showdown with Russia, now the U.S. media tour: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili paid a virtual visit to American news shows on Wednesday, telling CBS News anchor Katie Couric that the Russians were violating the newly instated cease-fire agreement with Georgia, then being buttered up by CNN’s Glenn Beck, who reminded his audience that there are streets in Georgia “named after our president.”
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You’ve seen the quotation, now watch the clip of Sen. John McCain, either in deep denial or completely irony-impaired (those being the more generous of many possible interpretations), giving his pronouncement that “... in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” Oh.
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By Joe Conason — The discovery that John McCain’s remarks on Georgia were derived from Wikipedia is, to put it politely, disturbing and even depressing—but not surprising.
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Upping the ante in Moscow-Washington tension over the border war between Russia and its former satellite state, Bush announced Wednesday that the U.S. military is flying humanitarian aid to Georgia, with his secretary of state to follow. Georgia’s president, however, is spinning this as the first step in a U.S. military intervention.
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John Stewart says it’s the “geopolitical equivalent of the fortune cookie [plus] ‘in bed’ ”: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad (above) trashing Russia’s aggression but limiting comparison to the Iraq invasion by adding a qualifier that tells us we’re talking about someplace that matters to civilized people. Follow-up questions for extra credit: Is Georgia really in Europe? And how many Americans are worried right now the Russians will take Atlanta?
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AP photo, Mary Altaffer / Irakli Gedeniedze, pool
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By Robert Scheer — Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
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AP photo / Georgy Abdaladze
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Early Wednesday morning, Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili agreed to a plan to stop the fighting that flared up Friday. However, the crisis isn’t over and the terms of the agreement aren’t all clear.
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By William Pfaff — British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery was the man who said the first three rules of warfare are “Do not invade Russia,” repeated three times. A footnote to that rule would be that while the disputed Georgian districts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not parts of Russia today, they were yesterday, and probably will again be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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