It is sad that the administration still seems so convinced that France, which has been a Russian ally much more than a US ally for decades, is a truly neutral player here.

On the positive side, it appears that Poland has no such illusions any more. Yeah, Sarkozy’s better than Chirac. Gonnorhea is better than herpes, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to have it.

It’s also pretty clear that McCain has a clearer image of Russia and France than Bush and Rice do…and that’s a strong point in his favor. Obama still wonders where the pictures of Russian tanks storming the CNN studios are.

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:10 PM

“The Turks haven’t been helpful,” said a State Department official. “They are being sluggish and unresponsive.”

Shocka! eyeroll. Jeez, I’m a housewife and I could have told them that the Turks would be less than helpful. shakes head…just when it looks like the 7 years of on the job training had finally paid off for Bush, we have his administration still confused about France and Turkey.

That may be the strongest argument against Obama, actually. Can we really afford to elect another unexperienced, unprepared guy to POTUS? Two in a row? shudder

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:14 PM

How could the leader of Georgia done something so reckless, and frankly foolish? He doesn’t sound like such a peach of a guy. This article from the Weekly Standard back in 2004 is an excellent read.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/004/104ygtvi.asp?pg=1

I was in Georgia last month, and it is still colorful and still difficult, a poor country, poorer even than Haiti, with a new president but the same culture–one that cultivates a swaggering, prideful masculinity in its leaders who, since the fall of the Soviet Union, have been lionized by the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the Western press but who just as quickly seem to morph from lion to demon.

A case in point is Eduard Shevardnadze, once the Soviet foreign minister, who was for more than a dozen years invariably described in the West as a stalwart friend of democracy and a liberal, honest fellow. Six months ago, he was ousted as the president of Georgia in a coup led by his young protégé, Mikhail Saakashvili, who is glorying in the same lavish treatment from the State Department and the media. They now paint him as honest, liberal, and democratic, while Shevardnadze is Bronx-cheered as corrupt and murderous, a brute who was forced from office by what Saakashvili (with an unerring eye for the sixties-sentimentality of the Western media) dubs “The Rose Revolution.”

Late last fall, Saakashvili led thousands of “spontaneous” demonstrators, bused in from around Tbilisi, brandishing flowers as they invaded the president’s palace. This was during the freezing Georgian winter when any roses not black and brittle had to be flown or trucked in, courtesy of the same bankroll that funded the fleet of rented buses for demonstrators: that of George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire and egotist. A former member of the Georgian Parliament said that in the three months before the “Rose Revolution,” “from August through October, Soros spent $42 million ramping-up for the overthrow of Shevardnadze.”

Soros has publicly committed himself to funding the “democratic” presidency of Mikhail Saakashvili, just as he has publicly committed himself and his money to the destruction of the presidency of George W. Bush, whom he has compared to Yasser Arafat and Hitler. Soros and the United Nations are paying the wages of all of Saakashvili’s top government officials–ministers, deputies, the road police, and others–on the grounds that this will keep them from stealing. As if bribery and corruption were simply a problem of immediate financial need, not greed.

perhaps Soros would deserve some credit–except for the undeniable fact that, ever since his anointing in a crooked election in January, Saakashvili has sounded more like a raging nationalist and authoritarian thug than a democrat strewing rose petals.

“It is democracy in a china shop,” the New York Times reported on March 28. “A growing number of critics, though, say that the new president is exploiting his popularity to cut legal corners, violate human rights and silence opposition views.” “Saakashvili’s all-powerful party is getting into the habit of ignoring the law, or changing it, when it does not suit their purpose,” reported Agence France-Presse.

Saakashvili, now 36, was an only child with an absent father. He was raised by a divorced, domineering, and ambitious mother, and his tough-talking Dutch-born wife, Sandra Roelof, appears to follow in that tradition. (Saakashvili married her in lower Manhattan in 1993 while he was attending Columbia for a year on a U.S. taxpayer-funded scholarship.) In February, Roelof gave an interview to a Dutch magazine for a breathless Vanity Fair-like profile headlined “Sandra Roelof’s Fairy Tale: From a Zeeuws Girl to First Lady of Georgia.” Roelof seems to have taken to Georgian politics:

Georgia has produced strong leaders. Stalin, Beria, Gamsakhurdia. Even Shevardnadze, before he got addicted to power. They looked beyond Georgia. My husband does the same; he fits in the tradition. This country needs a strong hand. It is incredibly important that respect for authority returns. That laws are less frequently broken, that people simply pay their bills for once. There is hardly a sense of responsibility here. . . . I think my husband is the right person to frighten people. That is not to say it is immediately fascism or something. Should he develop extremist traits he will be alerted to that. All eyes are looking at us now.

What a roll call! Stalin’s birthplace in Gori, Georgia, close to the Saakashvilis’ home in Tbilisi, is still maintained as a public museum, though the crimes of the man against his own people, particularly native Georgians, are beyond repeating, and Sandra Roelof’s citation appears demented. One would think Stalin’s house would have been burned down long ago, the ashes scattered to the cold Caucasus winds–and I’m not speaking just metaphorically. If Saakashvili wants to really make some democratic bones, he might drive to Gori and light the ceremonial match.

The second man to whom Sandra Roelof compares her husband is Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s secret police czar and the Georgian-born father of the Soviet Gulag. Beria, a notorious pedophile, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. He was executed on Khrushchev’s order after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Next on Roelof’s list is Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first elected president of Georgia, a rabid nationalist completely intolerant of any opposition. He was deposed in a coup in the early ’90s and later shot himself in the head (or was murdered). Two weeks ago Saakashvili announced that 2004 would be “the year of Gamsakhurdia,” whatever that is intended to mean.

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:23 PM

Saakashvili also reminds me a lot of Bolton.

ah, no

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:24 PM

Its ironic indeed, that, as noted above in Hot Air’s headlines, at a moment of such intense History, that FUKUYAMA of all people, would come out with his, “I Told

You So ” editorial on the Iraq war.” Poor man, his signature work shall forever symbolize the hubris of the 90s, shall for ever be used as fodder at such moments such as this, almost a joke, as in McCain’s comments a day or so ago, opening with the obvious statement, that no, “History did not end in 1990.”

Nyog_of_the_Bog on August 15, 2008 at 2:30 PM

Yep. Fuk looks like a total maroon right now. The “end of history” crap was what supposedly justified slashing our military throughout the 90s. Clinton balanced the budget by doing that….and Bush didn’t work to increase active duty troop levels until after the GOP lost congress in 2006. It’s one reason I like Rudy G so much. His commencement address at The Citadel is just a must read. I’ve put the link in lots of posts lately as an attempt to explain to folks why we simply don’t have our cold war force structure, and therefore can’t just go storming in to Georgia, or twist Turkey’s arm, or many other things.

http://externalaffairs.citadel.edu/giuliani_commencementaddress07

It’s kinda long, but you can listen to the audio if you don’t want to read it all.

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:39 PM

short snip of the Rudy speech:

At one time, there was a romantic thought that America could be isolated. Isolation is no longer an option in the age of globalization. Isolation is no longer an option when there are people in various parts of the world planning to harm you. Conditions for our fighting men and women have improved in recent years. President Bush has increased our military strength and further increases are planned. But we need to do more, much more. We need a force that can both deter aggression and meet many challenges that might come our way. America must increase the size of our armed forces. In particular we have to start with the Army which has been cut the most and is under the greatest stress. I believe America needs at least 10 new combat brigades above the additions that are already proposed by President Bush and are already in the budget. This commitment would offer reinforcements where they’re needed most—deter others from calculation that America may be stretched too thin. It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to calculate that, but let’s make sure they don’t by increasing the size of our force and allow the United States greater flexibility to win the wider war of the terrorists against us.

In the past when America’s population was ten of millions smaller than we are now, we easily maintained a larger Army and a larger armed forces than we have right now. A volunteer professional army of citizens is our greatest source of strength. And I believe that the 9-11 generation just like you have will step forward to meet this challenge. We must also look at the level of expansion that’s necessary for our Navy, for our Marines, for our Coast Guard, and for our Air Force. They have to have the support, and they have to be at the levels necessary to deal with the challenges that we have today, and they need to be modernized, and they need training to accept our new responsibilities while we increase the size of our armed forces.

Rudy really, really gets it. He’d be a great sec def or sec state. At this point, I think he’d be wasted at attorney general.

funky chicken on August 15, 2008 at 2:47 PM