I'm puzzled about everyone's reaction to the Russian / Georgian crisis. Not because of whatever the sovereignty issues are - those are serious and interesting but not the point for the moment - but because I don't understand the general tone of expectations about what the U.S. should do about it. I hear and read the U.S. government being chastised for not sending troops nor being publicly tough or loud about reprimanding Russia.

Is the real point simply that George Bush is always wrong? Betsy, with whom I often agree, wrote about Bush's "initially weak response to the Russian invasion of Georgia." He did criticize Russia's actions immediately in both a news conference and several interviews (I heard him). Can you imagine the outcry if Bush had sent troops immediately? And there wouldn't have been any point in sending humanitarian aid (which we are now sending) before knowing what's needed.

Betsy and others criticized also Bush for "enjoying some Olympics fun while Russian tanks rolled through Georgia" which seems awfully unfair. Everyone was yelling and screaming that he must go to the Olympics and support U.S. athletes. So I have to believe that if he'd run right out and scold the Russians with threats of troops or with actual troops, he'd have created a very distracting-from-the-Olympics incident which would have detracted very much from the athletes. Plus, it was entirely apparent he was doing diplomacy with both the Chinese and Putin, in person, since they were all there too. I'm quite sure we have no way of knowing or assessing what he was really doing or saying and to whom.

Back in the day Bush determined that Al Quaeda was being supported in Iraq and that therefore it would be possible to undermine the terrorists by sending troops and attacking them in Iraq. Only history will be able to judge that thought process and its correctness or incorrectness but many deemed it very wrong. This week Bush determined that the U.S. has no legal or moral standing to get militarily involved in a dispute between Russia and George and therefore that we had to exercise restraint and not send troops to Georgia and not even get involved immediately so they could sort it out themselves but many deemed that very wrong.

Involved then - bad . . . involved now - good. Why? It's not as if Saddam Hussein was a good guy to Putin's and Medvedev's bad guys; they're all varying degrees of totalitarians leaders of sovereign states and who the heck are we to intervene unless authoritatively requested or unless our own sovereignty is in jeopardy?

Our involvement in Iraq had at least a small - albeit very small - claim to justification by way of the explicit U.N. sanctions which Hussein flagrantly ignored. There is no such factual reason for us to become physically involved in Georgia. Wouldn't it simply be evangelism in the extreme?

Labels: places, reflections, warfare