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t is, in the end, all Bush’s fault.

Isn’t it always? 9/11, Iraq, gas prices, and now the Russian invasion of Georgia, to the Bush-hating left, there is a common cause for all this, and its middle initial is W. Here’s the position, as espoused by Fred Kaplan in Slate:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

As always, there’s no effort to look at the other side. What would have happened if we hadn’t been friendly to Georgia? If we hadn’t offered military training and accepted their involvement in Iraq? If we hadn’t pushed to expand NATO to the former Russian republics slave states? My hunch: Putin’s KGB-based Russia would have attacked Georgia one way or the other.

But to the Left, the position is to see a crisis, dredge up a one-dimensional recitation of Bush policies and blame all the evil on Bush. And from that base assumption, everything the Bush administration does must be just as evil. More Kaplan:

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly called Saakashvili on Sunday to assure him that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” We should all be interested to know what answer he is preparing or whether he was just dangling the Georgians on another few inches of string. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council, “This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line.” Talk like that demands action. What’s the plan, and how does he hope to get the Security Council—on which Russia has veto power—to approve it?

Again, what is the alternative? Would Kaplan prefer Cheney call Saakashvili and tell him, “Tough luck. We’re OK with Putin sending tanks into free democracies?” Is Khalilzad supposed to tell the UN no line was crossed when Russian troops poured over the borderline? That lifts appeasement to the level of acceptance and support and no American president, not even Jimmy Carter, has ever taken such a position.

Of course Russia must answer for its aggression because of course they crossed the line. Kaplan is right that there is no military solution; heck, the military options (short of nuclear holocaust) were gone as soon as Russian air strikes started because getting a military force into Georgia is a logistical nightmare – but not as bad as the idea of fighting Russian troops on the edge of the Russian nation.

Like many of us, when it comes to Georgia, I’ve gone a vaguely supportive, lightly educated follower of Saakashvili’s democratic revolution to a fairly well read interested party, but I’m hardly a policy wonk on the issues. With that introduction, here’s what I think:

We’re on the right side. Standing up for democracies is something we just have to do, even if they’re poorly functioning. We never supported Georgia to goad Russia; we did it to encourage more democracy in the region, including in Russia.

We should continue to push for NATO expansion. Kaplan says that if Georgia were in NATO, we’d be in a shooting war with Russia now, but that’s ridiculous. If Georgia were in NATO it’s much more likely Russian troops would not be in Georgia now. So, with the knowledge that we no longer need to or should support Europe with the sort of military actions that were anticipated when NATO was formed following WWII, we should continue expansive military alliances there, just as we promote economic alliances.

We should make Russia pay, literally, for rebuilding. They’ve got the money and if we force the issue at the U.N., they’re likely to be in the unfortunate position of having to veto the action, which would be a PR disaster for them.

We should work with nations dependent on energy from the trans-Georgia pipelines to secure broad legal protections for Georgia’s control over them, not Russia’s.

We should look to the other former Soviet vassal states and see what sort of support we can give them. Some are feeling very vulnerable today, and the creation of a united front of indignant outrage that includes these states and many, many others will send a message even to Russia.

We should not spill any blood over Georgia. Our support should be broad and deep but there’s no point in sending troops into anywhere we can’t sustain them.

Russia should be dis-invited from the G8 until they learn how to behave like a civilized nation.

We should pass quite a lot of anti-Russian legislation at the federal and state level. Public portfolios should be cleansed of any Russian filth. The Air Force tanker contract should to to Boeing because it’s the only bidder that doesn’t have partial Russian ownership. No banking or trade favors allowed.

And we should pass a law that no American president can ever again look a Russian president in the eye, see his soul and deem him trustworthy. That was, in fact, a very big mistake by George W. Bush

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hat’s at stake in Georgia today, as Russia seeks to secure its military advances? Let’s ask the country’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Most obviously, the future of my country is at stake. The people of Georgia have spoken with a loud and clear voice: They see their future in Europe. Georgia is an ancient European nation, tied to Europe by culture, civilization and values. In January, three in four Georgians voted in a referendum to support membership in NATO. These aims are not negotiable; now, we are paying the price for our democratic ambitions.

Second, Russia’s future is at stake. Can a Russia that wages aggressive war on its neighbors be a partner for Europe? It is clear that Russia’s current leadership is bent on restoring a neocolonial form of control over the entire space once governed by Moscow.

Saakashvili paints a story in his WSJ op/ed today of a compromise-seeking Georgia, an aggressively expansive Russia and a Europe that cried for negotiations and diplomacy, but took no overt action. Sound familiar?

Saakashvili was kind to us because he was writing in the WSJ to American opinion leaders, but he could have included us with the Europeans. President Bush has visited Georgia and praised it as a showcase of how democracy can bloom where totalitarianism once reigned. (Of course, that vision was tainted by Saakashvili’s heavy-handed treatment of opposition in Georgia’s last election.) We’ve cast our lot with Georgia, encouraged its participation in NATO, and stood by its president. Now Georgia is turning to us … and not finding much beyond words at this early hour.

The NYT’s focus this a.m., natch, was on the sort of criticism of America Saakashvili avoided.

Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly. They were beginning to feel betrayed.

“Tell your government,” said a man named Truber, fresh from the side of the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. “If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this.”

He had not slept for three days, and he was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. “If you want to help, you have to help the end,” he said.

What can we do? What should we do? It’s a question that will play itself out in our election. Today, both candidates have pretty much the same position (after Obama ratcheted up his rhetoric from his early bland mumble-mouth position – see Gateway Pundit for more).

If we take this back to the Cold War, where we fought Soviet expansionism through proxies, which candidate would be more likely to provide Georgia with arms and training? McCain, of course. If it’s to be a diplomatic war, which candidate would be more likely to be able to put together an international condemnation of Russia with sufficient teeth to influence Moscow?

Good question. Obama is the international darling so the answer should clearly be him. But would his appointments be the ones that could carry out such a task? So far, it looks like Obama foreign policy will be that of Madeline Albright, which doesn’t bode well. McCain has the pugnaciousness to bare some teeth and has been drawing on a kitchen cabinet of foreign policy pros from Kissinger to Kristol that in my opinion are much better suited for this sort of affair.

Lots of questions … but one’s already being answered: The American left is going to duck the issue. Tigerhawk did the digging:

Well, as of this morning, you can find no mention of the war on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s home page. The group is addressing many other pressing matters, but apparently not the unremitting attack on Georgia. Code Pink? Nyet. Democracy Now!, which is a left-wing media group, has lots of news about American wars on its web page but nothing about Russia or Georgia. Nothing from the comrades at Peace Action. Stop the War Coalition? What war? You can search the home pages of left-wing groups until the cows come home and not find anything on the Russo-Georgia war.

For its part, Daily Kos poses a survey question this morning. No, not about Russia and Georgia, but about how the summer weather’s been this year.

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nce you get past the shock of this bit of news, it’s not hard to get to what’s up:

Russian bombers have stepped up provocative flight exercises off the Alaskan coast, reminiscent of Cold War incursions designed to rattle U.S. air defenses.

U.S. Northern Command, which protects North American airspace, told The Washington Times that TU-95 Bear bombers on 18 occasions the past year have skirted a 12-mile air defense identification zone that protects Alaska. The incursions prompted F-15s and F-22 Raptor fighters to scramble from Elmendorf Air Force Base and intercept the warplanes. The last incident happened in May. (Wash Times)

The story explains that the aerial roughhousing began when Vladamir Putin has president and continues under Dmitry Medvedev. No surprise about that; we all saw through that charade a long, long time ago.

Although Gen. Renuart downplayed the incursions, other air-power authorities said Vladimir Putin, as Russian president, began flexing his military’s muscle last year as a message to Washington.

“Putin is trying to get the military rejuvenated and trying to show they are a military power,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, who commanded NORAD’s Alaska region. “He’s doing it for a whole host of things. It’s really muscle-flexing.”

Notice the present tense references to Putin.

So what’s the bottom line?

Oil.

The Russians are loaded with it and once again have money to spend on their military thanks to soaring demand and prices. All the more reason to try to get oil prices down.

And now Obama, besides being just plain obtuse on energy policy, has a policy that plays into the hands of the Russians. His focus on alternative energy has a good shot of dropping oil prices significantly … by about 2060. An awakening Ivan the Bear adds a bit more incentive for faster solutions.

hat-tip: Jim

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Every time some attention-starved “artist” who is too afraid to confront the woman-stoners of Islam decides instead to blaspheme Jesus, I wish the blasphemer and the museums who abet them could be made to disappear.

But, hey, we don’t live in Russia.

Museum Director on Trial for Blasphemy

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russian prosecutors on Tuesday charged Yuri Samodurov, head of the Moscow museum, with “inciting hatred” and “offending human dignity” in the March 2007 exhibition “Forbidden Art,” his lawyer said.

The exhibition drew complaints from members of the Orthodox Church.

It comprised works judged by other museum directors as too shocking for display, such as one juxtaposing swear words with Christ’s crucifixion and a biblical scene where Christ’s head is replaced by that of Mickey Mouse.

The works were viewable only through small holes in a partition.

A lot of cognitive dissonance with this one. Russia is totalitarian, so why not shut a museum? But Russia is atheist, so why bother?

One last thing. The story quotes a “former dissident,” Ludmilka Alexeyeva accusing the Ruskies with state persecution of the museum,. Sounds like Ms. Human Rights-nik is not exactly “former.”

Never could understand those Ruskies.

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Vladamir Putin is still the president of Russia, and Russia remains the world’s biggest bully:

Russia warned Kosovo’s leaders Wednesday that if they declare independence the territory will never become a member of the United Nations or other international political institutions.

Kosovo, which is run by the UN (what a nightmare that must be!), is hoping to declare its independence from Serbia in February — but Russia intends to veto such a move. America and England support Kosovo’s independence, of course, but it really gets Moscow’s goat:

“Going down the way of unilateral moves, Kosovo is not going to join the ranks of fully recognized members of the international community,” [Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin] said. “It may get some recognitions, regrettably … but it’s not going to come to this building as full-fledged member of the international community. It’s not going to be able to join other political international institutions.”

Maybe this photo of Kosovo students demonstrating for independence has something to do with Russia’s pro-Serbia, anti-freedom stand:

Could it be that Russia is afraid of too much independence in the Balkan states?

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Coming back from his heavy-fisted crushing of popular demonstrations last August, Mikhail Saakashvili apparently has won at least a run-off spot, if not a second term as president of Georgia. Reuters:

Georgians began voting in an election on Saturday that President Mikhail Saakashvili is likely to win but surveys differ on whether his victory will be big enough to avoid a second round.

Saakashvili, who swept to power in a peaceful revolution in 2003, needs to prove his commitment to democracy after shocking Western allies by violently crushing anti-government street protests in November. The West will watch the vote for fairness.

Saakashvili have been making conciliatory noises and talking the populist talk after the Georgian economy faltered. Promises of better financial times paid off for him in this election … now, if he does indeed become president, he’s going to have to deliver.

Georgia, stuck in the middle of a triange formed by an increasingly consternating Russia, all the nastiness that is Iran, and Turkey is about as strategically located as a country can be, so having an ally, a member of NATO, there would be a foreign policy coup. It all looked to be on track until Saakashvili, who swept into power as a reformer following an anti-Soviet revolution, started behaving like a little Putin.

Perhaps he’s truly humbled and ready to embrace free markets and freedoms. Perhaps he’ll end up losing to the next guy in the reformer line, Levan Gachechiladze, will end up with the win.

Or perhaps it will all crumble into a messy heap, like so many of our hopes for the post-Soviet era.

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In the end, it all boiled down to two men. Putin would endorse one, and the one he endorsed could become Russia’s next president.

Contender number one was Sergei Ivanov, a first deputy premier who, says WSJ, “built up a stern and hawkish reputation while defense minister.”

The other, “a business-friendly lawyer and board chairman of state natural-gas giant Gazprom,” was another first deputy primier, Dmitry Medvedev.

Let’s look at the two as Putin would:

• Ivanov is a tough guy, much like Putin. He’s built a core of support in the military as defense minister and in a Russia hungry for rekindled prominence on the world stage, could easily enough build his military support into public support.

• Medvedev is an inside player, a safe bet for the economy, and more likely to support Putin’s wishes than his own.

No contest, eh? In fact, if Putin decided in a couple years that he’s had enough time without the reins of power firmly in his grip, he could ask Medvedev to step down, and the lawyer would most likely do so, opening the door for a new Putin Era.

So who is the incoming president of Russia? Look behind the veil and you’ll see it’s the outgoing president of Russia.

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Putin wins big … but Russian Democracy loses.

Western media are being pretty straightforward with reporting the corruption that’s wildly evident in Putin’s victory, as evidenced by this AP‘s coverage:

It was “not a fair election,” said Goran Lennmarker, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The election monitoring arm of the OSCE — regarded in the West as the most authoritative election monitor — did not send observers, saying Russia delayed granting visas for so long that the organization would have been unable to meaningfully assess election preparations.

Luc van den Brande, who headed the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said Russian authorities exerted the “overwhelming influence of the president’s office and the president” on the campaign, skewing its outcome.

In Berlin, government spokesman Thomas Steg said Germany considered Russia’s vote neither fair nor free, adding that the country could not be considered a democracy.

The NYT was in considerable denial however, burying a few short critical paragraphs in a story that otherwise trumpeted Putin’s “triumph” and went on to answer “what next?” quesitons. Granted, whether the election was corrupt or not probably won’t matter much to history, and Putin’s decisions about his future — and the Russians’ willingness to accept his wishes — matters more.

But what is with Putin? How megalomiacal is he, anyway? It’s clear that a strong Russian majority is behind him, content with economic progress and not too culturally abhorrent of government heavy-handedness. Yet his drive for an overwhelming mandate left him with questions that, to the Democratic West and Russian opposition at least, leave him no mandate at all.

It was the kind of election only Jimmy Carter could call fair … and an election that is the sign not of a savvy politican but of a very troubled mind.

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With an election coming up, Vladamir Putin wants to make sure his United Russia party makes a good showing; anything less would be embarrassing and detrimental to his daydream of re-establishing the old Soviet-style government. So …

MOSCOW (AP) – With the Kremlin determined to see a high turnout in Sunday’s election, many Russians say they are being pressured to vote at work under the watchful eyes of their bosses or risk losing their jobs.

They say they also are being told to provide lists of relatives and friends who will vote for United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin.

United Russia is expected to win handily. But Putin has turned the parliamentary elections into a plebiscite on his rule, and the Kremlin appears to be pushing for nothing short of a landslide. …

“The plebiscite will become a mockery if only slightly more than half of the people vote and if only 60 percent of those vote for United Russia,” as the latest opinion polls predict, political analyst Alexei Makarkin said.

In one example cited in the article, a school teacher says her school’s administration got absentee ballots for the entire staff, and they will meet on Sunday to cast them together, under the watchful, totalitarian gaze of their union boss. And that’s not all, by a long shot:

Similar accounts have been given by teachers, doctors, factory workers and others around the country. Some have said they were warned they would lose their jobs if they did not comply.

Hundreds of people have called an election hot line to complain about the use of absentee ballots, the Central Elections Commission said in a summary of the complaints posted on its Web site.

Some complaints came from hospital patients, who said they had been threatened with early discharge if they did not produce absentee ballots.

Election officials have promised to investigate … as soon as they mark their absentee ballots while their bosses look on.

Next up: Military hardware on display in Red Square next May 1?

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Kurt Vonnegut wrote gleefully of granfalloons, a wonderful construct we’ve all observed in our lives. His prime example was Hoosiers — not just people from Indiana, but people from Indiana who, as Hoosiers, felt themselves part of something bigger … a false community they believed to be real. Sure, there are people from Indiana, but there is no cosmic fellowship involved; it’s just geographic coincidence.

Vladimir Putin is doing a big of granfallooning of his own, saying in Iran yesterday that no Caspian Sea nation should allow its lands to be used for attacks against other Caspian sea nations. He was obviously wagging a finger at Azerbaijan, warning its leadership not to allow the US to use bases there to attack Iran.

His Kaspian Konstruct also works well for him not just on global policy issues, but also on economic ones, since it allows him to attack any effort by other Caspian nations to better themselves without Moscow breathing heavily down their necks, sour vodka smell and all.

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.

Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow’s strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.

It’s an interesting theory that doesn’t play too well on a world stage. Imagine Egypt telling Spain it can’t undertake some project because there wasn’t unanimity among Mediterranean nations. What could be his justification? Oh — it’s One Earth drivel!

“Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations,” he said.

That’s got to be the Laugher of the Week, given Russia’s long history of environmental destruction on the Caspian Sea, the desires of other Caspian nations be damned.

Back in 2003, the UN set up yet another useless task force, this one to help improve the environment of the Caspian, and in announcing the effort, it laid out what Caspian nations (with the exception of Iran, all former Soviet states) had done to their common sea:

The Caspian Sea is under severe stress from industrial pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, agricultural run-off, sewage, and leaks from oil extraction and refining.

Other threats include uncontrolled fishing of caviar-producing sturgeon, the overexploitation of other marine resources, and the destruction of the region’s biological diversity, which includes some 400 species unique to the Caspian. On top of this, water levels are currently rising, threatening coastal communities and ecosystems.

Now suddenly the leader of the world’s greatest polluter wants veto authority over any project — even one designed by Americans with environmental protections incorporated that the Soviets would never have dreamed of — that steps foot in the polluted Caspian environment. Once the laughter dies down, the Caspian states should tell him they don’t care one bit if their oil resources get sold on the world market without Moscow’s meddling.

In these statements, Putin shows himself to be a member of something that is decidedly not a granfalloon: that large pack of self-aggrandizing world leaders who put rhetoric far ahead of reason or truth.

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