Georgia On My Mind...

Greetings from Colorado Springs, Colorado. The weather is beautiful, the mountains are beautiful, the people are friendly, and my grouchy, elderly laptop petulantly refuses to connect to the Blogger system, so I am making use of the business center at the hotel to get this post out. The business center, unlike my room, does not have a window offering a view of Pike's Peak and the Front Range of the Rockies, so I am also grouchy.

Not that you care, of course.

As long as I'm feeling grouchy, let's talk about Georgia. No, not the one in the southern US, I mean the one the Russians have been beating up on for the last week or so.

I hope the next time Mr Bush has the opportunity to look into the soul of some other world leader, he'll do a better job of soul-reading than he did with Mr Putin of Russia. I also hope he recognizes that his arrogant and stupid foreign policies have - in my humble opinion - helped bring us to the point that an ally - Georgia - which is the third largest contributor of troops to the "coalition" in Iraq after the US and Britain, can be attacked with impunity by a Russia which is making a point about its treatment by the US government.

Don't get me wrong...I don't think there's any justification for what the Russians are doing in Georgia...it's just pure great-power bullying. But I think it's perfectly clear that they are sending a message about how they have been pushed aside and their perceived security interests ignored by an American administration bent on flexing its muscles and doing exactly what it wants. They are using the same language and the same justifications for their actions that Mr Bush used in going to war in Iraq. They are putting us on notice that they are still a world power to be reckoned with, if only because they have nukes and lots of oil (which are two good reasons, anyhow).

The chickens are coming home to roost, the next president will have to clean out the coop, and I just don't think either Mr McCain or Mr Obama are up to it.

Good luck, Georgia.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo