More on Obama's Triangulating on Russia Georgia Conflict [Surpise Surprise]

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Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/08/obama-turns-mor.html

[Obama's] statement [go to link above to see the actual statement referred to] contains more condemnation of Russian aggression against Georgia, and its trespassing on Georgian sovereignty, than Obama's first well-balanced statement. It's playing right into McCain's camp, as Obama is obviously moving towards the hawkish anti-Russian rhetoric emanating from there.

There's no apparent mention of Georgia actually, you know, starting the thing by sending its entire army into an unstable area which doesn't want to be Georgian sovereign territory in the first place and in which Russia had an internationally-recognised and CIS-mandated duty as a protector of the local's lives and liberty. No mention that Georgia, a CIS member, violated its own obligations to the CIS brokered deal over South Ossetia. But at least Obama's correct that Russia can no longer continue that role. It's just not a neutral enough actor and never was - which didn't stop anyone approving said role before now.

No mention either that a senior State Dept. official was in Georgia just last week or that the US actually has a small permanent military base in Georgia - a tripwire pretty much guaranteed to ensure that Russia doesn't try to annex georgia proper, even if it really wanted to - and so the Bush administration must have known which way Saakashvili intended to jump and seems to have done diddly-squat to dissuade him.

It looks, at first glance, like Obama's been listening too hard to old Cold Warriors like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wants to compare Putin to Stalin and Hitler. (Is it required by American hawks that any foreign leader they don't like be compared to Stalin and Hitler?) Brzezinski also backed McCain's call to throw Russia out of the G8, saying the G8 Group is "an impotent fiction anyway", and included a call to add Georgia to the NATO membership action plan forthwith - so that the West is obligated to get militarily involved next time out too!

Yet another disappointing move by triangulating Obama. "Change you can believe in" shouldn't include swapping the last set of hawks for the previous ones, but apparently it does - and it also includes playing to decades old American fear of the Soviet/Russian "menace". I can console myself with the thought that Clinton would have been even more hawkish and McCain is dreadfully warlike in comparison still, but it doesn't really give me a warm-fuzzy about the elections.