Missed It By That Much

The always awesome Digby weighs in on Georgia.

If Bush, Cheney and their oil buddies (they only seem to get really excited these days when there's a bunch of oil or pipelines at stake) have been making promises the US can't keep, it only serves to create a sort of martyr cause for them to use down the road. In fact, it's possible that's the whole point. Push for NATO, push for military involvement, push for permanent presence. That seems to be the neoconservative longterm energy plan ---- rule the world. Same as it ever was.

Oh, and the conservos should probably soft peddle the self-righteous screeching about how the Russians broke the law and invaded for the purpose of "regime change" and occupation. I'm pretty sure we recently trademarked that particular move.

Georgia as bait for the bear in order to push for a permanent containment presence around Russia makes a disturbing amount of sense, so much so given the previous actions of this administration that it's eerily prescient. We left them high and dry just like the Iraqi Kurds in the first Iraq War, and it became the basis of our eventual second Iraq War.

The other theory is that we gave Russia the go-ahead to jack up Georgia, but we get a country to be named later (Iran? Perhaps seems too big of a prize unless you factor in that it would make Russian oil all that more valuable to Europe, but China would certainly want a voice in that mess and it's doubtful a three-way deal like that would be reached, unless China got, say, a green light in Tibet.) Still, the Georgians honestly thought they would win in the long run. Maybe they still will, if the objective was to unite the West (and its cash inflow) against Russia, and that means propping up strongmen like Georgia's lovely example of a tactician President.

It's a good deal if you can get both the US and the EU to back your "democracy".

Either way, the whole situation stinks, and we've got to drastically update our foreign policy next administration.