Common Sense About Georgia

Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Andrew Bacevich offers an even-handed analysis of the Russian intervention in Georgia that puts the action squarely in the context of the last sixteen years of US-Russia relations. Since the end of the Cold War, Bacevich notes, the US has pushed its advantage against a weakened Russia to drive the NATO alliance straight to Russia's western border. Last week, Russia announced, quite dramatically, that the game had changed.

Today Russia is no longer weak. In the age of Vladimir Putin – still the prime mover as prime minister under President Dmitri Medvedev – it is no longer willing to play the patsy. Through its incursion into Georgia, a US friend that has eagerly sought to become NATO's newest member, the Kremlin sends a signal to the West: This far and no further. Russia will not tolerate any more Western intrusions into what it considers its rightful sphere of influence.

After a long run of losing hands, Russia will likely take this trick. The West, especially Europe, needs Russian oil and gas and is no position to impose sanctions that have any bite. Furthermore, even if NATO were inclined to ride to Georgia's rescue, it lacks the ability to do so. Paradoxically, as the alliance expanded geographically and went out of area, it also shed military capacity. NATO forces already have their hands full, fighting Taliban guerrillas in faraway Afghanistan. The once-formidable alliance is tapped out: there's nothing left to divert to the Caucasus, or anywhere else for that matter.

As the old saying goes: The sky grows dark with chickens coming home to roost. Russia's brutal treatment of Georgia is payback for the West's disdainful treatment of Russia back when it was prostrate. Western weakness in responding to this challenge reflects the folly of allowing NATO to lose sight of its core mission, which is to protect Europe, not pacify Central Asia. Meanwhile, the Bush administration, despite America's vaunted military power, can do little more than protest, remonstrate, and offer Georgia symbolic assistance. Still trying to extricate itself from the quagmire of Iraq, the US already has more than enough military commitments to keep itself busy.

Bacevich's point about NATO should not go unnoticed. NATO is, fundamentally, a much weaker organization than it was during the Cold War. The European nations that comprise NATO have slowly eviscerated the militaries to such a point that few if any of them are capable of even self defense. Even Britain and France have so shrunk their ground and naval forces as to be barely able to project any power at all. Europe has been able to adopt this lax defense posture because of American military guarantees, which have allowed European governments to pass off their defense costs to the US taxpayer. There is no NATO alliance as such, there is only US military guarantees spread across a growing number of defenseless nations. Given that US military forces have also contracted in number, and are currently deployed elsewhere, the truth is that the US would be unable to properly defend most of NATO in the face of a substantial conventional attack. Only the promise of nuclear retaliation gives the "alliance" any credibility.

This is a perilous situation, both for the US, which is entangled by an unwieldy alliance to nations otherwise incapable of assisting the US in any meaningful way, and to Europe, which like a trust-fund child that doesn't have to work for its survival is free to engage in all sorts of unproductive nonsense at home. NATO places the US in grave danger of getting sucked into a way that isn't in its interest, while helping to further weaken European nations through the poison of dependency. This is why Europe has some of the shrillest anti-American voices; dependency breeds resentment.

President Bush has unfortunately responded to the Georgia "crisis" by intervening, rhetorically and otherwise into a situation that holds no interest for the US. More provocatively, he has signed a completely unnecessary anti-missile deal with Poland that puts US missile defense technology directly no Russia's borders, something the Russians view as a profoundly hostile act (as we would if they did the same in, say, Cuba).

Bacevich concludes his article with a dose of common sense sadly missing from the facile pronouncements of President Bush, Condi Rice and John McCain.

Russia is not our friend, but it need not be our enemy. The Kremlin's ambitions are not ideological but imperial. Putin is not a totalitarian; he is a nationalist, intent on ensuring that Russia be treated with respect and, within the area defining its "near abroad," even deference. Yet beyond its immediate neighborhood the danger posed by a resurgent Russia is a limited one, in no way comparable to the threat once posed by the Soviet Union. When it comes to projecting power, today's Russian Army is a shadow of yesterday's Red Army.

The chief lesson of the Georgian crisis is this: The post-cold war holiday from history during which Europe took its security for granted has now ended. NATO's eastward march at Russia's expense has reached its limits. Enlarging the alliance further by incorporating Georgia or even Ukraine as member states will entail costs likely to be prohibitive.

The priority facing the West – and especially the major European powers – is to get serious about repairing its defenses. That means reorienting and rebuilding NATO. An alliance able to defend its frontiers and manifestly intent on doing so will have little to fear from Putin's Russia. The West's response to a Russia that has flexed its muscles in Georgia needs to be unambiguous: This far and no further.

The Georgian Trap

One cannot turn on the TV but to catch a glimpse of John McCain bleating in almost child-like rage over Russia's military intervention in Georgia, which, like everything else, has caught the US intelligence services and the Pentagon off guard. One wonders exactly what the Pentagon and the sundry American intelligence services use all those billion-dollar spy satellites to watch.

One adamantly hopes that McCain is merely using the Georgian "crisis" (read: tempest in a Slavic teapot) as a talking point to get himself into the press and doesn't actually mean what he says. Mouthing off bellicosely will probably boost his poll numbers since a) harsh talk makes him look as if he knows what he is talking about and, b) most Americans don't know what's going on over there anyway, but are reassured by a strident tone. Barack Obama will have to butch up his statements on the issue (which being only press statement sat this point look lame anyway - his vacation turns out to have been poorly timed) or risk looking like a true foreign policy neophyte. In this respect, Putin has given McCain quite a gift. But if McCain actually believes his increasingly confrontational rhetoric, then he is demonstrating a dangerously skewed understanding of American geopolitical interests and is unfit for office.

Let us be clear, the events in Georgia are of no particular interest to the US. Georgia is a tiny country on Russia's border. It has no strategic value to the US whatsoever. Russia has spent a thousand years playing bully to its nearest neighbors, and is now simply returning to form after a brief respite. No amount diplomatic tantrums by Western capitals is going to change Moscow's belief that it has the right to slap around little nations on its borders. This incident - Russia snapping back at Western pressure on its borders - has been building for more than a decade. Both Bill Clinton George W. Bush and have encouraged a foolish expansion of NATO (itself, a dangerously hollow alliance) right up to Russia's western border (a move that ever-paranoid Moscow surely views as provocation) and then compounded that by bombing Serbia (Russia's ally) in order to hand Kosovo over to the Albanian Muslims - who now use it as a base to run drugs and weapons throughout Europe and the Caucuses. The Kosovo incident was particularly infuriating to Russia, and helped cause a huge rise in anti-Western opinion among the Russian public, which aided Putin's political ascent in Moscow. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine should be considered for NATO membership - both because NATO is already hopelessly over-stretched, and because of the signal their memberships send to the Russians: Western military encirclement. Consider how the US would react if Russia tried to form a military alliance with Mexico. The Russians have been signaling their displeasure for years, but no one in Washington gave a damn.

As usual, the predictable chorus at National Review, Commentary and the Weekly Standard are chiming in to the declare this 1938 all over again. But when isn't it 1938 with these people?

The neocon thrust is that because Georgia is a democracy, and Russia is an authoritarian state, we MUST defend Georgia, even to the point of risking a major war with Russia. This is sheer lunacy. But it is the logical outcome of the neocons' uber egalitarian, global democracy crusade, in which the US exists only as a means of bringing forth a worldwide democratic utopia. In neocon eyes, that is the only foreign policy goal, and the only real interest the US has. Everything, including US sovereignty, wealth and blood, is to be sacrificed toward that unobtainable dream.

Unfortunately, Bush, ever eager to please the neocon chorus, and frightened that he might not appear as Churchill-like as he likes to fancy himself, has now outdone McCain and committed US military forces to provide "humanitarian aid." The danger here is that US-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili may again overestimate the strength of his perilous position and exacerbate the conflict with US personnel in the theater. That could make a bad situation a lot worse, for everyone.

American should not risk any blood or treasure to save the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

If they really wanted to restrain Russian ambitions, the administration could work seriously to shore up the dollar, which would lower the price of oil. That would quickly cool Moscow's taste for adventure, since Russia is paying for its minor military buildup with a lot of surplus cash amassed over the past three years almost entirely because of oil revenue (just as the Soviets did in the 1970's). Unfortunately, fiscal responsibility isn't as sexy as chest thumping.

Russia remains an incredibly weak country, even with pockets temporarily overflowing with oil dollars. Putin's bluster aside, this is no second coming of the Cold War (contrary to what some pundits are asserting). After four decades of Cold War machinations, there is an almost reflexive tendency to view any Russia military action as inherently evil and threatening, and to sympathize with whoever is on the receiving end. But the Caucuses are a seething caldron of ancient and recent ethnic and religious hatreds, territorial disputes and endless blood feuds. Untangling the facts on the ground is a tedious and complicated business, and none of the players wears a snow-white hat. America has no strategic interest at risk in the Georgia, save for potentially ruining relations with Moscow, which would harm US global interests (by further pushing Russia toward China). Plainly put, Russian cooperation with the US in many areas abroad is more valuable to the US than whether the president of Georgia can thumb his nose at Moscow with impunity. Unfortunately, this is lost on President Bush, who has demonstrated a total lack of understanding of America's actual national interests and who prefers utopian visions to reality.

Another Immigration Success Story!

Last week, dozens of passengers on a Greyhound bus traveling across Manitoba, Canada, fled their bus in terror as one passenger suddenly and without any provocation pulled out a large knife and started stabbing to death another passenger who had been sleeping next to him. The assailant ultimately cut off the victims head, brandished it threateningly toward the other passengers (who had locked him inside the bus) and began eating the victim's flesh, according to both witness accounts and the prosecutor's report to the local court. The assailant, Vince Weiguang Li, had apparently never met or spoken with the victim, Tim McLean, 22. His lawyers will doubtless claim insanity as there doesn't appear to be any comprehensible motive for the attack. However, there is one little wonderful fact that has emerged:

Mr Li, who immigrated to Canada from China four years ago, is being kept in custody in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.

Church pastor Tom Castor, who helped hire Mr Li after he immigrated, told the AP news agency that the suspect never showed any sign of anger or emotional problems.

"He seemed like a person who was happy to have a job, was committed to doing it well and didn't stand out in any way (in terms of) having anger issues or having any other issues," Castor was quoted as saying.

Mr Li was also vetted by church officials and his references were checked. He did not have a criminal record and there did not appear to be any other signs of problematic or troubled past.

Now, of course, very, very few immigrants are murderous lunatics, but the fact remains that had Canada not adopted the politically-correct policy that permitted mass, Third World immigration into Canada, Mr. Li would likely not have been on that bus, and thus Mr. McLean would still be alive.

Talking Sanity About International Aid

Almost two weeks ago, Kevin Myers, a columnist for the Irish newspaper, The Independent, penned an astonishing column calling for an end to Western economic aid to Ethiopia. Myers cut through the usual hand-wringing about the horrible conditions facing Ethiopians by pointing out two salient facts. First, that since the Western world rallied to fight the ravages of the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980's, the population of the country has almost tripled (for starving people, they seem to reproduce awfully quickly). And, second, that the Ethiopians themselves - through constant warfare and barbaric social practices - are responsible for the famine and extreme poverty that haunts their desolate nation. Western aid, Myers pointed out, actually makes it possible for the squabbling Ethiopians to continue the very behaviors that impoverish them, while setting themselves up for a real demographic disaster by producing a population far in excess of what they can sustain.

Worse, the malignant effect of well-intentioned Western aid, were not limited to the Ethiopian cesspool, but were metastasizing all over the African continent, producing a collection of dependent, barbarian kingdoms whose only industrial output is hungry children.

Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness. Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.

Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.

This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or commonsense. Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the next president of South Africa being a firm believer in the efficacy of a little tap water on the post-coital penis as a sure preventative against infection. Needless to say, poverty, hunger and societal meltdown have not prevented idiotic wars involving Tigre, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea etcetera.

This, Myers foresees, can only lead, inevitably, to disaster in the long run - both for Africa and the West:

It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates' programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.

If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what? I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that's an idea.

Indeed, many Africans are already immigrating to the West. The larger their impoverished populations get, the greater the pressure there will be to flee the collapsing countries. And the leftists in the West will be only too happy to welcome millions of Africans to Western shores, hoping that they will finally extinguish the Western way of life for good.

Myers knew his opinions fell far outside the boundaries of permitted thought (especially in uber-politically correct Ireland), and predicted there would be a backlash against him.

It will win no friends, and will provoke the self-righteous wrath of, well, the self-righteous, letter-writing wrathful, a species which never fails to contaminate almost every debate in Irish life with its sneers and its moral superiority. It will also probably enrage some of the finest men in Irish life, like John O'Shea, of Goal; and the Finucane brothers, men whom I admire enormously. So be it.

Naturally, he was correct. The usual suspects immediately descended on him and - as leftists always do - are trying to silence using the force of law. Denise Charlton of the Immigrant Council of Ireland filed a formal charge against Mr. Myers with the Irish police accusing him of inciting racial hatred with his column - an offense for which he could be imprisoned.

Fortunately, Mr. Myers has decided not to be intimidated. His column in the week's Independent returns to the Ethiopian aid argument and pulls few punches.

We did more in Ethiopia a quarter of a century ago than just rescue children from terrible death through starvation: we also saved an evil, misogynistic and dysfunctional social system. Presuming that half the existing population (say, 17 million) of the mid 1980s is now dead through non-famine causes, the total added population from that time is some 60 million, around half of them female.

Myers notes that he is partially to blame for what has happened, because as a journalist in Ethiopia in the past, he ignored what he saw in order to promote a version of reality that would placate his editors and readers:

I am not innocent in all this. The people of Ireland remained in ignorance of the reality of Africa because of cowardly journalists like me. When I went to Ethiopia just over 20 years ago, I saw many things I never reported -- such as the menacing effect of gangs of young men with Kalashnikovs everywhere, while women did all the work. In the very middle of starvation and death, men spent their time drinking the local hooch in the boonabate shebeens. Alongside the boonabates were shanty-brothels, to which drinkers would casually repair, to briefly relieve themselves in the scarred orifice of some wretched prostitute (whom God preserve and protect). I saw all this and did not report it, nor the anger of the Irish aid workers at the sexual incontinence and fecklessness of Ethiopian men. Why? Because I wanted to write much-acclaimed, tear-jerkingly purple prose about wide-eyed, fly-infested children -- not cold, unpopular and even "racist" accusations about African male culpability.

And there we hit the center of the argument. Had Myers voiced a negative opinion about a Western nation, run by white men, he wouldn't be under threat of imprisonment.

And the feminists of the west would never have allowed such unconditional aid to be given to such a wicked and brutal society if it had been run by white men.

But, instead, the state was run by black males, for whom a special race-and-gender dispensation apparently applies: thus the two most politically incorrect sins of our age -- sexism and racism -- by some mysterious moral process, akin to the mathematics of the double-negative, annul one another, and produce an unquestioned positive virtue, called Ethiopia.

The same double standard has been erected as law in many part of the Western world, and enforced as de facto editorial policy among many media outlets even in the U.S.: non-whites may not be criticized in any way, but especially when they really deserve it.

Unfortunately, Myers doesn't take the logical step and call for the end of economic aid to Ethiopia, which is again facing a crisis of famine. He knows that will lead to many deaths. But he also knows that sending more aid will only perpetuate the conditions and lead to a worse death toll later on. He is "lost in awe at the dreadful options open to us." But he shouldn't be. It is immoral to encourage dependancy. It is immoral to support barbarism. It is immoral to set up conditions that will lead to much worse conditions in the future. The only moral choice for the West is to stop funding Ethiopian bad behavior and leave the people of that bleak land - and all of Africa - to solve their problems on their own. That is the only policy that will benefit the people of Africa, and the people of the West.

More PC than Britain? Apparently, It Is Possible...

Just when one thought that the British were on the fast-track toward being crowned the most politically-correct people in the world, along comes Sweden to give the UK a serious run for its money:

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.

The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.

"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.

"No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way, it's like taking someone's post," he added.

A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.

This is another one of those news stories one reads and immediately suspects is satire. It couldn't be true; not in any sane version of reality. But apparently, it is.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Officials at a school in Sweden have confiscated birthday invitations handed out in class by an eight-year-old boy.

The reason: they see it as a matter of discrimination.

A Swedish newspaper says the school in Lund, southern Sweden, seized the invitations because the boy failed to invite two boys because they were not his friends.

The newspaper Sydsvenskan quotes officials as saying they had a duty to prevent discrimination.

Some will argue that this is silly, but, in fact, it is merely political correctness and radical egalitarianism taken to their logical conclusion by government bureaucrats (who can always be trusted to take anything straight into absurdity).

Then They Came for the Puppies...

In the farcical land still, nostalgically, called the British Isles, the world continues to function upside down.

A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.

Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

The choice of image on the Tayside Police cards - a black dog sitting in a police officer's hat - has now been raised with Chief Constable John Vine.

he advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: 'My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

'It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities.

'They (the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part, and that if they'd seen it was going to cause upset they wouldn't have done it.'

Councillor Asif, who is a member of the Tayside Joint Police Board, said that the force had a diversity adviser and was generally very aware of such issues.

He raised the matter with Mr Vine at a meeting of the board.

So the same Muslims who throw hissy fits at cartoons and murder filmmakers, now want to chase a puppy off police advertisements. The proper response, from Chief Vine on down, should be: "Sod off! This is Britain. Dogs are part of British culture. We like them. You chose to immigrate. Get used to it or leave."

But, of course, Chief Constable Vine will not say that, or anything like it. Nor will any British government official say a word to defend British culture (or Britons themselves) from Muslim childishness and aggression.

A spokesman for Tayside Police said: 'Trainee police dog Rebel has proved extremely popular with children and adults since being introduced to the public, aged six weeks old, as Tayside Police's newest canine recruit.

'His incredible world-wide popularity - he has attracted record visitor numbers to our website - led us to believe Rebel could play a starring role in the promotion of our non-emergency number.

'We did not seek advice from the force's diversity adviser prior to publishing and distributing the postcards. That was an oversight and we apologise for any offence caused.'

Ah, yes. The police should have to apologize for the "offense" of putting a puppy in a general advertisement. In Scotland. That's the meaning of multiculturalism.

The Cost of Distraction

After wasting hundreds of billions of dollars (and thousands of lives) in the sands of Iraq, the US military has now concluded that the war in Afghanistan - the one being waged against the enemy that actually attacked the US on September 11 - is failing.

The Taliban will likely try to boost its presence in new areas of Afghanistan while continuing to fight in its south and eastern strongholds, the Pentagon warned Friday in its first report on security in the country.

"The Taliban will challenge the control of the Afghan government in rural areas, especially in the south and east. The Taliban will also probably attempt to increase its presence in the west and north," the report to Congress said.

The hardline Islamic militia, which was routed from power in Afghanistan by a US-led coalition in 2001, has regrouped since then and "coalesced into a resilient insurgency."

The Taliban has continued to grow in strength, and Afghanistan suffered its worst violence in some years in 2007, when some 6,500 people died in suicide attacks, roadside bombings and other violence.

The insurgency has been fiercest in the Taliban strongholds of southern Afghanistan and to the east, bordering Pakistan.
The Pentagon report, which recorded events up to April, acknowledged that international forces had "caused setbacks to the Afghan insurgency, including leadership losses and the loss of some key safe-havens in Afghanistan.

"Despite these setbacks, the Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008."

Perhaps had the US not diverted its attention and resources from the fight against bin Laden and his Taliban allies to attack a country that had not attacked the US, and was little more than a feeble, tottering shell of a dictatorship, bin Laden might actually be dead and the Taliban nothing more than an especially unpleasant memory in an generally unpleasant part of the world. Instead, the US chose "democratization" and "nation-building" over simple, brutal, lethal retaliation and extermination and then decided to launch an invasion thousands of miles away that has sapped its attention and resources ever since.

Meanwhile, Harmid Karzai's sham of a "democratic" government controls nothing outside of Kabul, and not even all of that. And the Taliban is mounting a "surge" of its own, back by sympathetic Pakistanis.

The "Report on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan" is the first such report to Congress, and a similar accounting will be now made every six months in the same way that the Pentagon tracks the war in Iraq.

On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates lashed out at Pakistan's failure to put pressure on Taliban forces on the country's border with Afghanistan saying it had fueled a rise in violence.

A 40 percent spike in attacks in east Afghanistan in the first five months of 2008 "is a matter of concern, of real concern, and I think that one of the reasons that we're seeing the increase ... is more people coming across the border from the frontier area," Gates told a news conference.

In short, the Bush administration has managed Afghanistan every bit as well as it has managed Iraq - or, for the matter, the US economy.