We don't see it the same
I have a Russian friend, a guy, let's call him Max. He's actually a friend of my brother's who I got to know in Ireland and is a complicated but lovely guy. Infuriating but absolutely in my heart. We fell out during the Bosnia / Herzegovina War in the mid-nineties. If my memory is correct, he supported Milosevic, and I certainly didn't. We were both so angry with each other that we didn't talk for a long time. I remember thinking that any thoughts I had of being a diplomat were shot right out the window for the fight we had. Dreadful.
Last night I got a text from him. It said, "I call it -- Operation "Georgia's Freedom." I shot him one back. "What do you really think?"
And then this, a barrage of messages arriving on my phone:
Lessons: don't overestimate ur so-called friends who put u to power (4. Georg. pres-t).
2. Good move Premier Putin
3. The bear is back.
4. Outstanding work by Russian intelligence to provoke
5. Don't get president supported by foreign govt.
6. Everything will be back to normal soon.
7. Saakashvili will not b there 4 long.
It is not that I disagree with him. On many levels I think he is right. Saakashvili is more than likely done. Everything I have read so far says that he did play in to Putin's hands, baited, provoked, (what was a Russian Peacekeeping force doing in South Ossetia anyway... craziness), and fortified by what he thought was Western support, in he goes, with disastrous consequences. And while yesterday I thought the coverage in the New York Times was totally pro-Georgia, today, the front page picture of Saakashvili cowering under his bodyguards as a fighter jet flew overhead, was a photo of a man who is finished. (Add to this the photo of Sarkozy biding him adieu that is, right now, on the New York Times website -- it's a photo, very dramatic, Sarkozy with his hand caressing Saakashvili's face and Saakashvili's face ... well, hopefully you can see the photo and describe it yourself).
But I guess that what I'm trying to say here -- stating the obvious but spurred on by Max -- is that this crisis is so nuanced and has so much history behind it -- on both sides -- that to listen to John McCain going on today about how We are all Georgians (please! don't do this to me!) and get all macho and aggressive with Russia ... well that's not going to solve any problems. It will make them worse. Whoopeedoo, isolate Russia and give them every reason to snuggle up closer and closer in the bed with Iran. Now that would be just terrific. That's a slogan to run on. Vote for me. John McCain. I'll bring Russia and Iran closer together. What a party!
Maybe another slogan should be: there is no nuance in the Republican Party. You're either with us or against us. We're fightin' 'em there so we don't have to fight 'em here, bring 'em on, axis of evil. If my foreign policy adviser is a lobbyist for your country then say no more. You are with us and we are against them.
Do we need four more years of that?