Is that a saber in your pocket, or are you just unhappy to see me?

I'll admit a good deal of ignorance on the relationship between Russia, and the now independent states which used to be part of the Soviet Union.

But this I know, a country which has preemptively invaded a sovereign nation has no right to criticize a country which had done the same. The US no longer has moral ground to stand upon to criticize Russia for invading Georgia, when we invaded Iraq, for reasons which now can be seen as specious, at best, and at worst, similar in justification to Russia's invasion.

Worse still, two of the prominent promoters of war in Iraq Senators Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut's own Creepy Joe™ Lieberman, are at a more severe moral ebb tide than many other Americans who protested the invasion of Iraq.

Graham and Lieberman have co-authored an editorial on the Russian invasion of Georgia in today's Washington Post. Glenn Greenwald critiques it here.

The co-authors are shocked that Russia: spent last week destroying the country's infrastructure, including roads, bridges, port and security facilities. This was more than random looting. It was a deliberate campaign to collapse the economy of Georgia, in the hope of taking the government down with it.

Sounds like the techniques the US used in Iraq, and which Graham and Lieberman supported.

The pair is also aghast at: the innocent men, women and children displaced by the fighting, some of whom we saw last week. Would that this pair of death angels felt the same about the tens of thousands of dead and wounded innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that Lieberman could find a shred of empathy for any dead or wounded Palestinian child.

It's beginning to appear that the apocalypse twins haven't found a war they don't like - Iraq, Russia, Palestine, Iran, Syria. Bring 'em on.

Many commentators are concluding that the disastrous conflict between Russia and Georgia was propelled by an incompetent foreign policy, initiated by the Bush administration, which coddled the belligerent Putin, and urged on a naive and reckless drive for democracy by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Laundromat blogging

On a rainy morning, I'm "stealing" wifi from the motel next to the laundromat I'm sitting in, on Rte. 1 in Ogunquit, ME.

The Portland Herald Press had a few interesting letters on the hypocritical response from the Bush administration to the invasion of Georgia by Russia. Both are interesting but Ursula Slavick's comparison to the Bush administration's bolstering of revolt in Haiti, is compelling. This is another object lesson in how George Bush reliably has played the wrong card in every instance of his "international diplomacy."

I guess Aristide goes in the "bad" column on Bush's dictator list.

Creepy Joe™ to Georgia

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman will travel to Georgia in a show of solidarity with the beleagured defenseless and tiny democracy. Since their expecting the US Army, Lieberman's appearance will probably be disappointing.

One can only imagine how he'll insult Barack Obama while he's there acting as Secretary Of State in Waiting.

The coalition of the wishful thinking

So, the Georgians sent troops to Iraq, and kept them there long after many members of the "coalition of the willing" withdrew. They took George Bush at his word, and like many journalists, politicians and citizens (of the U.S. and Iraq), they have come to regret it.

Like many of his "friends" Georgia has found out that Bush is as good as his word, and his word is worthless. Bush has encouraged the democratic and nationalistic tendencies of Georgian leaders, only to cave in the face of a ruthless and disastrous invasion by Mother Russia.

And for all of those who think John McCain somehow has a better grasp on international affairs than he actually does, or worse yet, a better grasp of international affairs than Barack Obama, I insist you read this chilling analysis by Gregory Djerejian.

The images of war

(Gleb Garanich- Reuters)

I caught my four year old son staring at the image on the front page of Sunday's New York Times. It was a photo of a man embracing the corpse of a relative who had been slain in the bombing of Gori, Georgia by Russia. The dead man wears vintage Adidas, khakis and a plaid shirt he could've bought at Target. Standing above the man are two soldiers. I asked my son what he saw, and he was jolted back to our comfortable living room, and he said "Nothing." I knew he saw what I saw in the photo, horrible suffering - suffering he couldn't understand. I tried, inadequately, to describe what had happened, only to have him ask me who the "bad" people were, and to ask me to reassure him that they were far away, and that this same scenario could not happen to us.

Earlier in the day, I caught myself staring at the same photograph, with tears in my eyes. The horror of the Russian-Georgian conflict is evident in dozens of photographs already published around the world. The horror of the war is magnified by the fact that these people, these bodies, look alot like many of us. The skin color, the clothing, the facial features - these could be your neighbor, your cousin, your brother. They are.

It caught me off guard. Would I feel any less horror if these victims had black skin and were dressed in tribal African garb, or if they wore headscarfs and robes over their brown skin? I'd like to think my horror would be as significant. I've found myself staring at the same kinds of photos from Darfur, and Indonesia, and feeling the same sickening hopelessness about mankind.

But I've rarely found myself staring at photos of this kind of horror from Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps, if at the outset of the American incursions into both of these countries, hundreds of photos of dead civilians had been printed in the American press, our immediate feelings about the war would have been different. Perhaps if we witnessed the daily suffering of people trying to live "normal" lives, but interrupted by the horrors of war, we, as a nation, would have done more to stop the Bush administration from exercising his destructive machismo.

The Pentagon, and the press have failed the American people by refusing to allow us to see the results of our destructive ways. Those images can be hunted down on the internet, but rarely, in the past eight years have we seen the bloody face of a dead father and never have we seen the torn body of an American service person, unless it was in the cause of raising the ire of the American populace.

Some say the Viet Nam war was finally driven to a stop because television and news photos showed us its horror.

It's a mistake to fight an visually antiseptic war. It's too easy to hide in our cocoons and hum "God Bless America."

Obama's feet of clay

Mr. Idealism today dealt a blow to his own image with his approval of the FISA "compromise" bill. Not only was he not in Washington to vote against it, he wrote a defense of the bill as passed.

Say it ain't so, Barack.

Worse still, Obama has recorded a radio spot for Georgia's U.S. Representative John Barrows, a white, bluedog Democrat who supports the war in Iraq, retroactive immunity and George Bush's tax cuts. In fact Barrows is a big Bush supporter on many fronts. He's running in a Democratic primary against Regina Thomas, a progressive African-American state senator.

What's worse, Barrows didn't endorse Obama until after the Georgia primary.

Oh, Barack. Forget about Rev. Wright. Forget about the bitter middle class. You're beginning to abandon the principles you espouse before you've been elected to uphold them.