War in the Caucasus

Daniel Larison has gone into the war pretty exhaustively. Even at my most prolific and my fastest keyboarding speed, I cannot keep up with the man, who is most wise for one so young. I would say this about very few people.

That said, a few bullet points:

• This war is an absolute tragedy and a potential disaster. Three Orthodox Christian peoples are going at it; this war, like many, was avoidable. Patriarch Alexey has said all the right things. It's time for the bishops to be prophetic.


• The meme of poor "democratic" Georgia slammed by the Russian bear is false. Russia was encouraging the Ossetians and the Abkhaz in their separatism, much as Europe and the U.S. nurtured Kosovo. But Georgia is no more or less democratic than Putin's Russia, and for all his U.S. education, Georgia's Saakashvili is an admirer of Stalin, Beria, and Gamsakhurdia.


• The Russians were ready to respond, but Georgia started the thing by trying to take and isolate South Ossetia's capital. She failed. Stupid move. When you shoot at a king, you must kill him.


• These events are partly payback for the foolish Euro-american Kosovo adventure. What goes around, comes around. Always.
  


• The big question is whether Russia will invade Georgia proper, as opposed to just bombing it, which is bad enough. This would be foolish. Georgia is a good place for partisan warfare, and the world, which will tolerate the Ossetian and Abkhaz adventures, especially after Kosovo, will be both frightened and angered by a full-scale attack on Georgia. A limited foray makes more sense.


• The "expansionist Russia" meme is unproven and probably false. The Russian Federation is in some ways a rump state of the old Soviet Union, and has an understandable and strong interest in its "near abroad," much as the U.S. does in the Caribbean and Central America. As Russia recovers from Yeltsin and profits from costly oil, she was bound to reassert herself.


• The U.S. policy of dishonoring these Russian interests, expanding NATO, supporting "color revolutions" and the like was reckless and foolish. It antagonized Russia and is proving unsustainable. Cozying up to Georgia militarily, holding out the carrot of NATO membership, but then blinking when the Russians call our bluff, was typical of the folly of this administration.


• Obama's cautious response, calling for diplomacy and a cease-fire, was a lot more sensible than McCain's fire-breathing. McCain (aka Col. Kong) is at his worst on the Russian question. Russia has thousands of nukes. A confrontational approach to a conflict in Russia's backyard is nuts. It almost makes me want to support the inexperienced, left-liberal metrosexual for the Presidency.


• The most dangerous political tendency in this country is the neocons. They are foaming at the mouth to defend every "democracy," screaming about 1938, and invoking the evil Russian bear. Suspicion of Russia is an old story in the U.S., and one must add to the mix the anti-Orthodox and anti-Slavic prejudices of many Jews (see "Borat"). They are prolific, they are organized, they are articulate, and the other tendencies--liberal internationalism, conservative "realism," and my personal view, patriotic anti-interventionism--are much less well-organized. This crisis has made me realize again, just how dangerous these people are.

OK, coffee break's almost over. Discuss amongst yourselves, then back on your heads.

Her Energy Policy Actually Makes More Sense Than Those Other Guys'

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

From Courage to Demagogy In One Easy Lesson

I admired Barack Obama for not giving into the demagogic gimmick of a summer gas tax holiday, pandered by both Hillary and McCain.

Now he wants to tap the strategic oil reserve, when we don't have a strategic emergency, but might have soon. This proposal is stupid and demagogic, just as the speculative part of the oil price bubble is bursting.

Can you turn a tin ear into a pennywhistle, and then play it?

Touch Me

I'm Facebook "friends" with some wonderful people--Paul Jabara, a fine Canadian choral director; John Darnton, the NY times reporter and more recently, novelist (whom I went to school with half a century ago).

It's an interesting phenomenon.

Of course, my children hate the idea that I'm on Facebook and will have nothing to do with me there.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP

The Russian writer has died at 89.

Memory eternal. вечная память.

Recycled, But What the Hey

Couldn't Help This One

This is Princess Chunky, a 44-lb. house cat, and not the world record holder.

Probably not a good ratter.

Yosemite Sam Goes Jihadi

Here's Jalaluddin Haqqani, red beard and all.

Remember, the Greeks, among others, made it to Afghanistan.

Barack Attack

I've been watching the unfolding Obama campaign, and reading the constant whining from neocon-land, such as this, and combined with his undoubted eloquence and charisma, these put-downs make me want to like the guy. Plus which, as the Republican party has degenerated, in a two-party system, one tends to want to vote against the bad guys.

However, as much as I kind of like the guy, and would rather listen to his elevated platitudes than W's lateral /s/, I can't bring myself to support him.

Aside from his mechanical support for the whole social agenda and centralizing, egalitarian domestic politics of the left, his foreign policy is not the pansified surrender that the neocons suggest.

In fact, the "Citizen of the World" who wants us to be concerned with Burma, Darfur, Zimbabwe, and God knows where else, is a traditional liberal internationalist. He wants us to be concerned with the happiness and prosperity of everyone, everywhere, and to spend the money and send the military forces needed to make it happen. This view isn't very different from the militarized democratic messianism that W adopted after 9/11, except it's unmoored from realpolitik, from any sense of what the strategic interests of our country are. Iraq may have been a mistake, but at least there was a claim (partly false, of course) that it was of special concern because of oil and terrorism.

The Darfurs of the world have no such significance. Whether BHO makes any distinction between humanitarian concern and the national interest is not clear. What is clear is that he has not eschewed such quixotic nonsense as NATO expansion, the basing of troops in South Korea, and a monetary military commitment to an increasingly repulsive Israel, notwithstanding the paranoid rantings on contentions.

What Obama has on offer, then, is a more multilateral, touchy-feely version of Wilsonian interventionism. Such a policy will not spare us from more useless expenditures on foreign aid, more kowtowing to the corrupt UN, and more war.

Unless, of course, as Bush did in abandoning his aversion to "nation building," the man surprises us. I'd be the first to applaud.

Parenthetically, McCain, with his "Bomb, bomb, Iran" jokes and his anti-Russian stance, is a dangerous man. If I lived in a swing state, I might have to force myself to vote for Obama. I live in California, now a Dem. slam dunk. I can vote for Bob Barr without fear or guilt, and hope agaisnt hope that Obama is a Manchurian candidate for non-interventionism.

Kristof Bells the Cat

Nicholas Kristof is one of the better writers on the New York Times, and has not been shy in support of humanitarian causes. He's tumbled to the sordid truth about Israel, and has been on the receiving end of brickbats from Zionists--many of whom seem increasingly deranged to me. Of course, it could just be me. Here's his latest column on the subject, his blog post with comments, and his Facebook page.

Even the Gray Lady can't be all bad all the time.

Mongol

Mongol is a wonderful movie. Part of a projected trilogy directed by a Russian, it describes the early life and rise to power of Temujin, later to be known as Genghis Khan.

It has many things Mongol, from gers (yürts) fermented mare's milk to throat-singing, to stews with lots of bones in them. It also has a love story, lots of scenes of people crossing the wilderness on horseback and on foot, and lots of bloody battles.

Apparently (I'm no expert) it's fairly true to history.

If you like the exotic, or fantasy stories about strange and imaginary places, or just dramatic and unfamiliar scenery, this film is worth seeing.

Vignette

This story depicts the reality of Israeli-Palestinian relations. In this one, the Israelis are the bad guys. The converse is also true. Excerpt:

In the industrial neighborhood of Wad Al-Joz in Jerusalem, a group of Israeli Special Forces troops on motorcycles along with police and army reinforcements were stationed on the path the bus from Tiberias was taking to get its passengers, all legal residents of Israel, home. They demanded that the driver stop immediately. One of the soldiers got on the bus and said, “Anyone who moves his head, I’ll put a bullet in it.” Arab said to me, “At that moment all I could think of was Abir, who really was shot in the head by a bullet.”

The soldier continued, “We are from national security.” He then told the young men, about ten of them, to begin taking off their clothes in the bus, in front of the women and girls. Then he took them out one by one and had them lie down on the filthy street, littered with stones and pieces of glass. They began with Ahmed, who was 16 years old. Then all the young men had to strip and get out of the bus and lie on the ground. One of them was injured in the stomach by a piece of glass. Arab asked me, “How can they ask the men to undress in front of the women? They don’t have morals!”

I asked him, “Do you think they perhaps have at least some basic morals?”

His answer was definitive: “None at all.” I explained to him that humiliation by forced nakedness didn’t just happen to his friends: it is a longstanding problem in the Israeli military.

HT: Velveteen Rabbi, who struggles with these issues.