The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

The Russians have Georgia on their minds and are showint it by reenacting Sherman’s March to the Sea. In one way, it’s nothing more than a regional tiff - the kind that happens much too often. In another, it puts former Cold Warriors toe to toe and demonstrates the Cold War isn’t dead, it’s just hibernating like an grouchy bear for the winter.

It appears the CIA didn’t have much intelligence about the dust-up beforehand. That’s troubling since the Georgians are our new BFF and charter members in the Coalition of the Inept. You’d think we’d have overheard a little pillow talk, but we were probably out buying a pack of smokes when they whispered to us. It has echoes of 41’s CIA sleeping at the switch before the first Gulf War. Not knowing what the hell is going on is a genetic thing among Bushes.

The US hasn’t been as quick as an Olympic runner in dealing with the mess either. George fired a few broadsides at the man whose soul he supposedly knows like the back of his hand, but they didn’t do much except annoy Rootie Tuttie the Potootie. And, Bush himself undermined the warnings by staying at the Olympics to brush sand off a volleyball player’s ass. It’s hard to take warnings seriously when the President is watching basketball instead of the store. For her part, Condi just stayed on vacation and said she was sure the whole thing would work itself out.

Laissez Faire Diplomacy
In all fairness, there wasn’t much the US could do after the situation flared. That’s The problem. Dumbya the Diplomat has been practicing laissez faire diplomacy for the past eight years and now it’s come back to bite the Georgians. He’s hamhandedly lobbied NATO to add Georgia, despite their having little militarily to add to the military alliance. He downplayed the destabilization he caused by cozying up to a former Soviet Republic that was already at loggerheads with Putinistan. Soulman Putin lobbed a few warning wifflebombs over George’s bows too, but he was too busy watching the Olympic Crappie Fishing matches to notice.

It may have been fun to poke the Russian bear in the eye with a stick during the Cold War, but today, not so much.

Forty-three also ripped a page from 41’s Remedial Statecraft 101 book. As 43 did to the Iraqi Kurds after Gulf War I, Lil’ George implied the Georgians were the bee’s knees and Uncle Sam would watch their back. Flush with the courage a geek gets when his older brother shows up to kick the school bully’s ass, the Georgians poked the Russian bear in the other eye with a stick. It was not a happy day for bears or Georgians. George then frosted this stinky pastiche by flying the Georgian army home from Iraq so they could join the fight.

If the Russian bear had a third eye, George would have blinded it.

I Miss My Country
There was a time when the US was a trusted and prestigious enough country to broker peace. No more. The rest of the world wouldn’t trust us to run a bingo game at the local fundamentalist church - and for good reason.

In the end, it didn’t really matter that George and Pickles stayed in Beijing. Sensing George was reluctant to end his vacation for something as trivial as a war (or hurricane), France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy stepped in with a peace plan that stopped hostilities.

This is the sort of thing that makes me miss my old country. I miss having the rest of the world look up to us with admiration. I miss the feeling that we actually helped people in between covert overthrows and the like. There just doesn’t seem to be the same satisfaction in feeding the hungry maws of the Haliburtons and Blackwaters of the world and only finding ourselves deeper in the muck than we were yesterday.

I miss my country, I really do.

The Poobah is a featured contributor at Bring It On!

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