Bill Kristol thinks we owe Georgia. Do you?

[BurtWorm]

Will the United States put real pressure on Russia to stop? In a news analysis on Sunday, the New York Times reporter Helene Cooper accurately captured what I gather is the prevailing view in our State Department: “While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.”

But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.

For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11kristol.html?hp


As for me, I am still astonished that such boneheaded simplism passes for commentary in the New York Times. It shouldn't be taken seriously anywhere in the US media, but Kristol's pea-brained vision is virtually identical with "mainstream" Republican foreign policy. Us vs. them. Our side or their side. No nuance, just jerked knees.

Anyone who thinks "we" owe Georgia anything should beware: someone is probably jerking your knee.


PS: Didn't Georgia owe us the intelligence not to provoke Russia over South Ossetia?

[opihimoimoi]

1. Then Billy should go a payoff the debt

[DailyGrind51]

3. Thank you! Bill Kristol needs to get his skinny condescending ass into uniform and fight!

[Frances]

15. My thoughts exactly

So many of those people who were for invading Iraq had never been in the military

I remember being at a restaurant with about 12 people. We had been talking car insurance. I have USAA, which is for families of military (my husband was in the Navy), and so I asked if anyone else had family who had been in the military. No one had. Yet when we got word Bush was invading Iraq, everyone but me was ecstatic. I gave quite a speech on the reality of war as it affected my husband. The people listening were shocked.

[KharmaTrain]

2. And His Consulting Fee Is???

Seems like Georgia is a haven for a lot of the wingnuts...there's Gramps campaign manager who is a registered lobbyist and a little digging will surely show a lot more GOOPers and their sleezy corporate buddies who have pumped money into this country to prop up this regime that they knew could provoke the Russians. They led the Georgians down the rosey path and now they're about to find out, like we have, how much action these criminals put behind their words...nothing.

Shame on the NYT for keeping this war criminal on their payroll.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. I'm sure the Georgians would welcome Bill to pick up a weapon

and join them in their struggle. I think we should all take up a collection to buy Kristol's plane ticket.

[LibDemAlways]

13. Bill Kristol once appeared on early morning c-span and

a caller asked whether he had he ever served his country in the military since he was so enamored of war. He hemmed and hawed for a good thirty seconds before coming out with one of the most disingenuous, laughable lines ever. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like, "There are other ways to serve one's country. I do so as a writer and political analyst." And he said it with a straight face. Scumbag of scumbags.

[jimshoes]

5. If kristol thinks that

it's a sure bet the opposite is correct. He has yet to be right about anything.

[bushmeister0]

9. Exactly! Why does he get the time of day from the media at this point.

Everytime anything happens, NPR is always tripping over itself to get him on to ask for his expertise.

[dysfunctional press]

6. i think that we owe georgia bill kristol. send him over.

nt

[endarkenment]

7. Bill Kristol is more demented than his dad.

A land war in asia against Russia is perhaps the stupidest thing we could possibly do, short of simply launching our nukes, which is likely where it ends up anyway.

[pampango]

8. "Do we owe Georgia?" begs the question "Is there any country that we "owe"?"

Historically, we felt no debt to Poland in 1939, France, England (air attacks) and the rest of Europe in 1940 when Germany launched attacks. Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 might have expected help from the US but they didn't get it.

The only "invasion" that the US responded to was in Korea and that went through the UN thanks to a boycott by the USSR. The price we paid for that war, especially after neighboring China entered the fighting, left many here wondering if the war was "worth it".

Of course, we fought in Korea to stop the boogie man of "communism" not for the Korean people themselves. The South Korean people may be better off today than if we had chosen to just ignore the North Korean invasion and issue stern warnings, instead. While that may well be true for the people of South Korea, one may question whether our lives in the US would be appreciably different today if we had taken a pass on fighting the Korean War.

[Jim__]

10. We may well owe Georgia something.

We don't owe them military support in this idiocy. If this attack is based on any advice we gave them, we probably owe them help in repairing some of the physical damage. There's nothing we can do about the lives already lost, but we can probably help in preventing further loss of life by advising Georgia that they are incapable of fighting Russia, and advising them to try to reach agreement on a cease-fire.

[BurtWorm]

18. You're right about that.

May the day come--swiftly--when that kind of reason drives our foreign policy, rather than Kristol-Cheney-Perle-Boltonian numbskullery. It really is beyond time for the Democrats--or for someone with courage--to repudiate Republicanist foreign idiocy and make the world safe for reason again.

[treestar]

11. The surge has been successful, you see, and so we need a

new war. :sarcasm: Hopefully, it will be at crisis point by election day, so the media can claim that only Gen. Johnny McBush can save us from the Russians. :sarcasm:

[arcadian]

12. Not surprising, Bush has a "special relationship" with Georgia.

It's where his so called assassination attempt occurred. That seemed as staged as this war.

[DailyGrind51]

14. Bill Kristol didn't think we owed Louisiana a damn thing after Katrina!

So why is he concerned about Georgia?

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. the guiding principle of neocons: "What can we do that is completely crazy and will harm America's

self-interest to suicidal levels?"

I am personally completely neutral on this dispute between Russia and Georgia. But it does not take a foreign policy genius to figure out how dangerous it would be and how harmful it would be to America's own self-interest to launch ourselves into a new cold war with Russia.

[JVS]

17. We owe them a nice Hallmark sympathy card.