Clarion Content

We will have peace for all, or we will have no peace at all.---Mikhail Gorbachev

In a globalized world, Mr. Gorbachev's words of warning have never seemed truer. The idea that one war, or one assault can justify another has never been used (abused) more broadly.

The example tormenting the Clarion this week is the Russian invasion of Georgia. In Georgia, a newly democratic government, is under assault from its much bigger neighbor, who has irredentist designs on the breakaway statelet of South Ossetia.

America has lost its moral high ground. George Bush the II railed at this unpremeditated assault on a sovereign state, but the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, merely laughed him off.

Bush II has no clue and no credibility, having unilaterally invaded an Iraq that had no weapons of mass destruction, harbored no Al-Queda representatives and posed no threat to United States sovereignty. In fact, Mr. Putin sees his country's invasion as analogous to America's invasion of Iraq. In Putin and Russia's view a strategic imperative in a region that is important to the state cropped up, and needs to be addressed. Massive modern military force will allow he and the Russians to wipe out resistance of a pathetic third world army in mere days, while the world protests but takes no action.

Blowback---the unintended consequences of diplomatic, military or espionage operations.

If George the II had to come to power via the same Machiavellian route as Vladimir Putin, he wouldn't have had the fortitude to make it to Mayoralty of Crawford, Texas.

Labels: Politics, Sayings