White House response to the Georgia/Russia conflict

Note: this is the first political/opinion thing I have ever written, so it might be a little rough around the edges.

Bush and Cheney never cease to amaze me. In responding to Russia’s preemptive strikes on its tiny neighbor Georgia, Bush said Sunday that he "was firm with Vladimir Putin" and that "this violence is unacceptable."

Vice President Dick Cheney said aggression against Georgia "must not go unanswered."

Bush’s noble crusade of quotes against unnecessary war continued in interviews with Bob Costas.

"My administration has been engaged with both sides of this trying to get a ceasefire," Bush told Costas in an interview in Beijing, China, where the president has attended Olympic events.

Now with only months left in his term, Bush is suddenly a great diplomat, a man who puts petty squabbles aside and tries to see things from all perspectives, avoiding war at all costs.

That Bush even believes he has the credibility to criticize any other country’s foreign policy is laughable. The Bush White House lost its credibility and right to tell other countries how to behave when it invaded Iraq under the skinniest of pretenses (most of which have either proven to be wrong or flat out lies). That is the most harmful thing of all about our involvement in Iraq. Our immense military and persuasive power could be put to use to stop conflicts like the one in Georgia, but how are we to expect anyone to take our words seriously when we gave up on the power of diplomacy so quickly.

I don’t support Russia’s aggression. I didn’t support our invasion of Iraq and I’m not trying to directly compare our motives with Russia’s. The problem is when we preemptively invaded Iraq it set a new example for the world to follow – no sovereign nation is safe from preemptive war if the aggressor is powerful enough and shoots out enough propaganda asserting legitimate reasons for invasion.

Here is cnn.com’s outline of the conflict:

------Violence has continued to rage between Russia and the western ally since Thursday, when Georgia launched an operation to crack down on separatists in South Ossetia (a region within Georgia) territory. Russia said it wanted to protect its peacekeepers already in South Ossetia following ceasefires in years past. But Georgia called it a full-on invasion.

And while Russia has accused Georgia of a genocidal plot to cleanse the region of ethnic Ossetians loyal to Russia, Georgia accuses Russia of executing a long-planned war with the aim of taking control of the region -- including a key pipeline that carries Asian oil to Black Sea ports.--------

If nothing in the above paragraphs rings any bells, I’m done anyway.


picture courtesy of nytimes.com