Cross posted on Daily Kos
It's great to see Jim Webb, a man with a great deal more foreign policy knowledge and wisdom than John McSame, call out Hothead McSame for his bellicose comments on the Russia-Georgia situation:
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said Friday that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "overreacted" to the Russian incursion into Georgia.Webb, while visiting Harrisonburg, took exception to McCain's declaration earlier this week that "we are all Georgians." McCain was wrong, he said.
"We are all Americans," Webb said. "It's a very complicated issue to sort out."
Webb, a former Marine combat officer who served as secretary of the Navy during President Reagan's second term, advises caution in how the U.S. responds to the crisis.
Speaking of people with more foreign policy knowledge than John McCain, check out what Hisham Melhem (Washington bureau chief for Al-Arabiya TV, and Washington correspondent for "An-Nahar"), Paul Starobin (National Journal), and Karen DeYoung, (senior diplomatic correspondent, The Washington Post) had to say yesterday on the Diane Rehm show. First, Hisham Melhem:
Putin, who's the real leader of Moscow today, realizes that the West is weak, that there are problems in the transatlantic relationship...Putin understands that the Americans have 170,000 men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's no military option, there's no sanctions through the United Nations, the Europeans who depend on gas and oil from Russia are essentially hostages. The whole world is watching. This is the end of the post-Soviet era. This is the beginning of a new era that a new American president is going to inherit. It's going to be a messy world.
Now, Paul Starobin:
I think the Russians are sending a message to everyone, not just in the south Caucusus but throughout these former lands of the Soviet Union that they are back, that American commitments may be fine on paper, but the actuality is that America cannot deliver on these commitments. I think there's a certain frustration in Washington's rhetoric that is proportional to Washington's inability to deliver on its rhetoric. I mean, there's a sense, I think, particularly among the Europeans, that Saakashvili has overplayed his hand. I mean what was he thinking? You know, I mean there was every indication that the Russians would respond in force to any effort by Saakashvili to resolve South Ossetia by military means - he did rocket Tskhinvali, the capital...and that's when the Russians came in...This is now a new situation underlined by American weakness.
Last but not least, Karen DeYoung:
Well, you know, the Bush Administration has been very very supportive of Saakashvili, the president of Georgia. The so-called "Rose Revolution" has been one of its primary case studies to show how the "Democracy agenda," as the president calls it, is working. They have wanted to bring Georgia into NATO, this is something that infuriates the Russians. I think that this was the kind of disparaging remark that we've seen from the Russians all week, which is this kind of "double dare you," you say this is your country, you're going to protect it, you're not going to protect it.
With all his blustering, tough talk and "overreacting," do you think John McSame understands any of this? I seriously doubt it.
...There's a new reality in Russia, there's a new reality in the Caucusus now. Not only the former Soviet republics are watching with trepidation...but also the people who live in the south of the Caucusus - Iran, Iraq, the Middle East. This is going to embolden countries like Iran...if the Russian invasion stands...because it will be another indication of America's weakness.
...It would be fascinating to know. I was in Georgia six years ago when they were just beginning this "training and equip" program and I watched the U.S. Green Berets training these raw Georgian recruits used to wearing flip flops and tennis shoes. The Green Berets said we're going to improve these troops exponentially, which was possible to imagine because they were starting at such a low base. And you kind of wondered where this was going. I mean, at the same time I remember writing about the buildup of the Russians in the southern Caucus...Armenia and other states where they traditionally have had allies. And you could kind of see in slow motion this incipient clash.
...This is the Great Game, with all these 19th century kind of neo-imperial overtones. I mean, in the 1990s, America backed this controversial pipeline project that would send oil from the Caspian starting in Baku through Georgia as a transit country ending in the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The route was expressly constructed to avoid Russian territory. It was THE route out of the Caspian that would not involve Russia. Russia has always opposed this project, made no bones about it. They have their own ideas about how energy routes should proceed. And so, you know, in the background here, with Georgia, America has this interest in mind. It's a British Petroleum pipeline...it's an important Western asset, and that is very much influencing I think these deeper calculations about how how to proceed.