August 11, 2008

8/11: Olympic Flames

Coverage of the opening of the Olympic Games on 8/8 was largely overshadowed by the armed conflict that broke out between Georgian and Russian troops in the break-away province of South Ossetia. The following are some general reactions to that conflict:

• RedState's jonlester: "This weekend's rapidly escalating fighting in the former Soviet republic of Georgia is absolutely appalling. Saakashvili's irresponsible and disastrous offensive to retake South Ossetia has provoked a predictably heavy-handed Russian retaliation. Both sides seem to be indiscriminately shelling and bombing civilian areas for (apparently) no greater cause than ethnocentric identity. [W]e were already looking at needless antagonism of Russia, which would set back future energy supply farther than new domestic drilling could ever make up for, among other important considerations. Now Russia's hand has been forced and the whole thing is just a sorry spectacle for all."
• Pajamas Media's Roger Kimball: "What we'll think of is the country of Georgia and we'll realize that August 8 was the date when Russia began reassembling the former Soviet empire in earnest. When Russian tanks and troops poured into the separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia yesterday, it was not, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, part of a 'peacekeeping mission.' It was part of an imperialist mission whose undeclared goal is to reabsorb the whole of Georgia–West-leaning Georgia with its critical oil pipeline supplying energy to an increasingly thirsty Europe–into mother Russia. Indeed, that pipeline is the unacknowledged key to the drama–unacknowledged, anyway, by the belligerents. As an AP story notes, the 'U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.'"
• Larison: "It's not just that I find the charges of Russian imperialism a bit tired coming from people who have insisted for years that invading other countries, toppling their governments and setting up puppet states is not imperialism, but I find them very boring. I mean, how unimaginative can one be to say, 'They're bringing back the Soviet Union!'? That's the sort of thing an eccentric Bond villain would try to do. There are no more workers' councils, and there is no more USSR. In every sense of the word, the Soviets are gone and their empire is dust."

FOREIGN POLICY: Proxy War

The Georgia-Russia conflict quickly became a conflict between John McCain and Barack Obama, who each released statements reflecting their different approaches to foreign policy. Alas, A Blog's Jeff Fecke: "Both candidates for president issued a statement about the war going on in South Ossetia, and their responses to the incident pretty much sums up the difference in the two men. Obama said:"

"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

"Pretty reasonable, right in line with the realistic approach to foregn policy that Obama has embraced. We don't have a good hammer here, and frankly, our interests are best-served by this conflict coming to a swift resolution. Calling on both sides to cease hostilities and talk to each other is really the only thing a sane person could advocate, which is why John McCain is not saying it:"

"[Today, news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally-recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.] ... The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. ... Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia."

"That's great. And while we're at it, maybe we can dispatch Iron Man to blow up the Soviet tanks, and have Czechoslovakia dispatch their fleet of invisible boat-mobiles. Look, I'm all for taking this to the UN -- I mean, that's what the UN is for. But Russia has a veto on the Security Council, so any UN-backed resolution is going to need Russian approval. Putting diplomatic pressure on Russia is unlikely to accomplish much, other than angering Russia. And going to NATO to start discussing how we can get engaged in military action on the Russian border is, to put it very charitably, incredibly reckless and absolutely insane, and should disqualify McCain for president. ... We may like Georgia just fine, and hope that they get through this conflict, but let's be honest: the Russians are going to do what the Russians are going to do. We're not going to be able to bully them, and we sure as hell aren't going to be able to scare them. If we are going to get the best outcome for American interests in this conflict, the only tool that we have to use is diplomacy. It's not as fun as playing with tanks, but it's got the advantage of maybe working, and at the very least, not making things worse."

Other McCain critics agreed that he took a rash and bellicose stance:

• Think Progress's Matt Yglesias: "John McCain likes to go in for ferociously anti-Russian rhetoric and has embraced silly anti-Russian ideas, so I wasn't surprised to see that his rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia conflict involves strongly taking Tblisi's side. I am, however, a bit curious to learn that he's decided to make this a campaign issue, with national security adviser and former registered lobbyist for Georgia Randy Scheunemann condemning Barack Obama for moral equivalence."
• Doublethink's James Poulos: "McCain's men are busying themselves decrying anyone who two days ago held the majority opinion about the complexity level of the Russo-Georgian War as a useless dimwit and pinko commie symp. It's a nightmarish oversimplification of a situation that, Rose Revolution notwithstanding, will never fit cleanly into the us-versus-them dynamic which would make solidarity with Georgia such an easy reflex. ... None of which means I don't have a soft spot for Georgia, love their flag, or support the rule of law and representative government over fiat and autocracy. I do. ... Even more important, for American purposes, than determining the precise percentage by which Saakashvili is responsible for his own country's woe is making clear that the McCain campaign's attempt to cast foreign policy prudence as something only an idiot like Obama would consider is a serious blunder of epic proportions and an embarrassment to thinking people everywhere."

Pro-McCain bloggers, on the other hand, viewed Obama's response as too sympathetic to Russia, and more broadly argued that such a stance proves he's insufficiently experienced in foreign affairs:

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "On Friday the Obama campaign issued a pathetic statement 'strongly condemn[ing] the outbreak of violence in Georgia.' Strongly! Obama found no reason to distinguish between Russia and Georgia in strongly condemning the outbreak of violence. Or perhaps he found it too difficult to do so."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Instead of scolding Russians for attacking Georgia, he told Georgia to exercise restraint as Russian bombers attacked their civilians. ... Obama clearly has no idea of the issues or the consequences surrounding Putin's South Ossetia adventure. He's flailing for a policy, while McCain — who's actually been to Georgia and studied the ongoing political conflict for a decade — understood immediately what the outbreak of war means, and what its motives are."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "The situation in Georgia is serious. The U.S. and the West are being tested: will we defend an ally and check Russian ambitions in the Caucasus? On the political front, Georgia may in fact be the '3 a.m. moment.' And the candidates' reactions are telling. As Abe pointed out, McCain's reaction was swift, specific and unequivacal: the international community won't tolerate the invasion of a sovereign state. Obama's best effort is to suggest 'calm' and go on vacation. No words on the matter from His actual lips. ... It is instructive that Obama takes such a ho-hum attitude to the invasion of a U.S. ally. You don't have to be a partisan to see how serious the situation is and how inadequate Obama's response is."
• Next Right's Josh Kahn: "The Russian government's incompetent attack against John McCain has handed him a great weapon against Obama. The attack makes clear that the Kremlin wants Obama to win the election but the open support of a nation busy doing this is hardly going help a candidate who's already fighting a reputation for dictator-coddling. John McCain's statement on the crisis was excellent, but there's a lot more his campaign can do. The McCain campaign and the RNC should directly tie Obama to the Russians. The message: 'Russia wants Obama to win because they know he'll be a weak President.'
• McCain Report's Michael Goldfarb: "It's this campaign's position that every American has a 'vested interest' in the welfare of the Republic of Georgia, a key regional ally and a member of our Coalition in Iraq. Georgia is a small, democratic state which has seen its sovereignty violated by a much larger pseudo-democracy. If the position of this campaign 'mirrors' the position advocated by the Georgian government, it is because John McCain stands by our allies as Senator Obama offers only platitudes about condemning violence that mask the deeper moral equivalence of his foreign policy positions. Shouldn't it be of far greater concern to Americans that the Obama campaign is pushing an attack that is 'mirrored' by PR firms flaking for Putin's Kremlin?"

On 8/9, the Obama camp released a statement racheting up his rhetoric against Russia, moving much closer to the rhetoric initially voiced by McCain:

"Over the last two days, Russia has escalated the crisis in Georgia through it's clear and continued violation of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Friday, August 8, Russian military forces invaded Georgia. I condemn Russia's aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia."

Conservative bloggers seized on that statement as an example of Obama flip-flopping, and they accused him of naively catching up with McCain's stance. Many of them linked to a post by Politico's Jonathan Martin as evidence that McCain had possessed the foresight to predict Russia's actions. Martin: "It has been a rough few weeks for McCain on the foreign policy front — paging Dr. Maliki — but he appears to have been ahead of the curve in his assessment that Moscow was the bad actor here. McCain aides feel encouraged that their candidate appeared to get it right first, and they are now working to remind reporters that he's long been wary of Putin's Russia. Pushing the prescience line, aides are circulating a pair of YouTube clips from 1999 and 2000 that feature some tough talk from McCain about the new Kremlin regime. Speaking about Chechnya in an appearance at Arizona State University in 1999, McCain said: 'The mindless slaughter is being conducted by a Russian military that seeks to reassert itself not only in the former Soviet Union but also to extend its reach throughout what used to be the former Soviet Union in an attempt to fold back into the Russian empire those countries that have broken away from it, most notably Georgia.' And, in the memorable South Carolina primary debate in 2000, McCain offered grave skepticism about the new Russian leader, referring to Putin as an 'apparatchik.'

Politico's Ben Smith echoed his colleague's sentiments: "Russia and Georgia stayed at the top of the news today, and the McCain campaign is touting its man's 'prescience' — he's never trusted Putin or the Russians, and he, and Randy Scheunemann, were talking like they knew Thursday night's conflict would be a pretext for a wider Russian invasion before virtually any other world leader would say that publicly. ... It's a good moment for McCain."

Many bloggers, however, dismissed McCain's "prescience" as pure luck, arguing that McCain has always held a blind, blanketed antagonism towards Russia:

• American Conservative's Daniel Larison: "So now McCain is trying to claim that he foresaw what Russia is currently doing in Georgia, when the only reason McCain 'knew' what Russia would do is that he always assumes that Russians have the very worst motives and goals and then declares himself prescient when Russia does something objectionable. At least Smith's use of the word instinct is correct–McCain is viscerally opposed to Russia, and so instinctively lurches to whatever the anti-Russian position is on any given issue. The video Smith digs up includes (the videos are being circulated by McCain aides) shows how fanatically anti-Russian McCain has been for at least the last decade...."
• Lawyers, Guns, And Money's davenoon: "McCain supporters are obviously going to try and run a good distance with the argument that he was somehow 'prescient' on the question of Russian power. I'm not quite sure how to put this, but McCain's apparent inability to view Russian foreign policy as anything other than retooled Soviet ambition strikes me as unhelpfully alarmist. Let's recall that if things had gone as McCain preferred, the United States would have somehow expelled the Russians from the G-8, forced NATO to rapidly absorb Georgia and the Ukraine, unleashed the fookin' fury on Iran, and pursued any any number of other needlessly provocative (and delusional) goals."

In addition to racheting up its rhetoric against Russia, the Obama camp criticized McCain for an alleged conflict of interest involving his chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who had been a long-time lobbyist for the Georgian government until just five months ago and whose firm still lobbies for it. In response, the McCain camp suggested that the Obama camp was inappropriately aligned with the Russian government:

"The Obama campaign's attacks on Randy Scheunemann are disgraceful. Mr. Scheunemann proudly represented a small democracy that is one of our closest allies in a very dangerous region. Today, many are dead and Georgia is in crisis, yet the Obama campaign has offered nothing more than cheap and petty political attacks that are echoed only by the Kremlin. The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn't merely raise questions about Sen. Obama's judgment — it answers them."

RedState's Erick Erickson: "At the same time the Kremlin was attacking John McCain for Scheunemann's ties to Georgia . . . you guessed it . . . Barack Obama's campaign attacked McCain for Scheunemann's connection to the Republic of Georgia. ... No word on when Obama will apologize to Randy Scheunemann for joining the Russians in smearing him. It is also worth pointing out that Georgia is an American ally with whom we have military relations. Obama attacked a man who lobbies for an American ally. Not all lobbyists are bad. Obama should know given the high number of lobbyists he surrounds himself with."

Jed Report: "The McCain campaign misses the issue entirely: it's not about whether or not their position is right or wrong. It's about the fact that a top McCain campaign official has a major financial stake in taking that position. Conflicts of interest like this undermine John McCain's moral authority. If he truly supports the positions he is taking, he ought to fire advisers like Scheunemann whose recommendations are influenced by the profit motive. Would firing Scheunemann really be such a hard thing to do?"

New Republic's Josh Patashnik: "It also seems like the Obama campaign swung and missed when it tried to highlight McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann's lobbying for Georgia. Yes, McCain's campaign is basically run by lobbyists (and, in many cases, lobbyists for foreign governments), but when Russia marches into Georgian territory it hardly seems like the right time to raise the issue. If McCain's initial statement was too aggressively pro-Georgian, then it should be criticized on those grounds, not because of Scheunemann's ties to Tbilisi."

EDWARDS: I Did Not Have Sexual Procreation With That Woman, Miss Hunter

On 8/8, John Edwards finally confirmed what the National Enquirer has trumpeted since last fall: he did have an extra-marital affair with Rielle Hunter (though denied being the father of her baby). Edwards:

"In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough."

Reason's Michael Moynihan: "John Edwards picked a pretty good day to admit his caddishness. Not only is it a Friday—the preferred day for dropping ugly and/or embarrassing stories—and the start of the Beijing Olympics, but Vladimir Putin, errr, Dmitri Medvedev sent Russian troops into the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia."

Slate's E.J. Graff: "I am incredibly annoyed that we have to waste any air, print, or pixel time on this. Why do I care about some dude's marriage and marital problems -- unless he did something that in any way abuses public power? ... I just don't care what politicians do with their zippers, so long as their policies and votes are in order. ... But private dalliances, seductions, and oversize sexual appetites? Eh. Not my problem. Leave the poor family alone."

In response to Graff, New Republic's Eve Fairbanks: "Couldn't disagree more here. I do care! But it isn't that I'm all exercised about 'some dude's marriage and marital problems'--after all, Edwards said on Nightline that his and Elizabeth's marriage was stronger after this happened. It's that Edwards did abuse his power, as much power as anybody who's not in office has. Let's review Edwards's mistakes--I'm not even including the affair itself here:"

• He used campaign donations to pay his mistress $114,000 for web videos that were hardly ever used.
• He lied repeatedly about the affair to the public.
• He showed zero concern for the Democratic Party by trying to sell himself as its commander while he knew he was secretly holding a live grenade.
• He made his closest political ally--Elizabeth--complicit in his lies and muddied her reputation.
• He--to use a very generous interpretation of events--showed zero curiosity about some very curious things intimately related to his life, namely, why his campaign finance chief paid his mistress $15,000 a month and why a top campaign aide fathered his own ex-mistress's child.
• He gave a bizarre, creepy, lawyerly response to the straightforward question of whether a National Enquirer photograph showed him holding his ex-mistress's baby.
• And he went on TV and tried to make his own personal mess into a teachable moment for America, launching into a treacly morality tale about how fame turned the head of a Small Town Boy and insisting that people would forgive him because he's "imperfect"--a sanctimonious, unapologetic word that implies that those who hoped for anything different from him were asking for the impossible, perfection.

"Given that this is the first and, I hope, last thing I write on this, I don't feel too bad about wasting precious pixels. ... If this story tells us anything about Edwards, it's that he is, along with many other, probably nice things, also a brazen liar and cover-up artist who doesn't consider (and then incompetently handles) the irreversible consequences birthed by his actions. That's enough for me to want his hands away from any reins, big or not so big. To put one last way: I don't care whether a politician lets his zipper down, either, but character is what you do after the zipper comes back up."

Blogging at the Daily Kos, Elizabeth Edwards wrote: "Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. ... This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. ... John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one's mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. ... I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John's conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time."

In response, Slate's Hanna Rosin: "I find this Elizabeth Edwards post on Daily Kos excruciating. We are supposed to ride with this couple through her cancer diagnosis and relapse, through their son's death, their fertility treatments, and the rededication of their marriage, but then we are supposed to butt the hell out when the story line veers from the tragedy and heroics. If you believe in a system, you have to live and die by it. Elizabeth Edwards buys into the culture of overconfession. She is an obsessive blogger, for God's sake. You can't just get suddenly pissed off because the confessional culture came back to bite you."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bush Whacked Again

American Prospect's Dylan Matthews: "It's hard to overstate what a catastrophe this conflict has been for the Bush administration. The sight of Russia destroying one of the poster nations of the democratization agenda is bad enough, but there are a whole host of other setbacks. As the above article illustrates, the war's brought to the surface existing antipathy among Russians and Ossetians, and provoked a new "stab in the back" narrative among Georgians. It's provided an opportunity for Russia to turn the Kosovo independence precedent against us with regard to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It's disrupted the American NATO expansion strategy, not to mention the administration's missile defense plans. Hell, it promises to reduce the troop presence in Iraq, if only by a percentage point or two. If there's a more humiliating way for the Bush foreign policy record to end, I can't think of it."

LEST WE FORGET: "Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet"

The Onion: "In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website. Mylenek, a moron, prepares to publicly address the 'dumbest shiz [he's] evr seen!!!1!' 'Later this evening, I intend to watch the video in question, click the 'reply' link above the box reserved for user comments, and draft a response, being careful to put as little thought into it as possible, while making sure to use all capital letters and incorrect punctuation," Mylenek said. ... Mylenek, who rarely in his life has been capable of formulating an idea or opinion worth the amount of oxygen required to express it, went on to guarantee that the text of his comment would be misspelled to the point of incomprehension, that it would defy the laws of both logic and grammar, and that it would allege that several elements of the video are homosexual in nature."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at August 11, 2008 01:00 PM