Rock, meet Hard Place

I'm sympathetic to the betrayed feeling that Georgians may be feeling toward NATO. And I'm darkly amused by the way the Bush administration et al. are running to the UN and blustering about how there will be "serious consequences" and are being "very firm" with those naughty Russian leaders. And I'm not convinced by the articles coming out that say that everyone should have known this was coming.

But I'll be damned if I know what the US should do. Military response is impossible for at least 3 reasons. 1) My understanding is that we don't have troops to send. 2) Our standing in the world isn't so high, so I don't think we can get people to send troops. And, most importantly, 3) You don't mess around with a nuclear-armed country--Russia. And Russia can get away with (assuming the target of the aggression doesn't pull a Poland or Afghanistan...hey!) being bellicose as long as it has these weapons because it's not worth intervening in a fight.

A few other thoughts.

• This shows, yet again, the bankruptcy of the Bush administration. There's no morally coherent reason that we aren't intervening here, but continue to crow the benefits of democracy and seek to impose it. In fact, this is pretty damn despicable--we're unable to back up our friends. If we couldn't back them up when they're caught, should we have tightened ties so much? It's a tough question, but, regardless, we look bad.
• I loathe the McCain campaign.
  
• Pandering to Christian wackjobs who view everything as a holy war? Check: "[We should care about Georgia in part because it] is . . . one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion."
• Being hypocritical by doing what he attacked Obama for doing--trying to act "presidential"? Check: "I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision." (emphasis added).
  
• Note that in keeping with the way the McCain campaign operates, I'm ignoring the substance of what he said and, instead, taking isolated sentences and focusing entirely on surface issues.