Update II: POT. KETTLE. BLACK.

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Russia

Easily one of the most mind-boggling spectacles in the Georgia/Russia conflict is that of Bush accusing Russia of “bullying and intimidation”; of Bush admonishing Russia about its unacceptable “way of conducting foreign policy in the 21st Century”; of Bush expressing “grave concern” about Russia’s “disproportionate response”; and of Bush condemning the violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation.

Bush may be describing Russia but he is also describing what he did to Iraq. Another of Bush’s Freudian projections and hypocrisies all rolled into one is to charge Russia with pursuing “a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”

Since the war in Georgia is one neocons and neoliberals can get behind, both factions–and most mindless media–have chosen to ignore this Bush burlesque.

Update I (August 16): More “pot-kettle-black” Bushisms, delivered to Russia:

“The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us.”

What’s Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Some of the reasons given by American policy wonks for the U.S.’s lingering in these blighted spots are the fear of other players getting the upper hand in these regions.

What is that if not “sphere-of-influence” plotting and planning?

Perhaps I just don’t have the necessary partisan gene, or blind sport, required to ignore these pious, specious homilies.

Update II (August 20): Americans fall for these easy storylines politicians and pundits spin, rather than look at how we conduct ourselves in the world and the repercussions this has.
Why is it that the US can increase its spheres of influence with attendant invasions and military presence in countries across the word, yet when another super power acts comparably, our “analysts” apply different yardsticks to its conduct?

In the context of the Georgia/Russia conflict, who among big-time pundits is able to consider America’s national interests? Who is able to offer a perspective that doesn’t, atavistically, galvanize American opinion around imagined enemies, but rather, looks at the crisis from a bilateral perspective?

None other than Pat Buchanan. This from Buchanan’s latest, “Who Started Cold War II?”:

“Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship?”

Read the entire column.

***

(August 15): “Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them,” writes Pat Buchanan in a sharp analysis of the conflict in Georgia, among which are some pesky facts mass media has concealed:

“Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.”

Neocons Resurrecting The Cold War

Bush, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

My colleague Vox Day has a perspicacious post about Russia’s assistance to the South Ossetian and neighboring Abkhazian separatists:

“This battle for Georgia – not South Ossetia – is a long time in coming. Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for it by altering the rules of the game in Serbia, in which it was made clear that a major power had the right to intervene on behalf of a breakaway republic if it cried “help, help, I’m being repressed” by the sovereign territory owner. The Russians rightly feel that they’re playing by our rules and they have every reason to believe they’re going to get away with it since there is zero sympathy for the anti-Russian US position in Europe. The European position, quite reasonably, is to shrug and assume that it’s just like Kosovo, except that they also don’t want to upset their Russian fuel supplies.

At this point, the Georgian attack on South Ossetia appears to have been a terrible miscalculation by the Georgians and their US and Israeli advisors, who have been trying to solidify control over the oil pipeline in recent months.”

Myself, I warned against recognizing Kosovo some time back: Here and here.

The neocons are getting hot for war. These warmed-over Trotskyites yearn to resuscitate the Cold War. Andrew Sullivan, once a neocon, really seems to have repented—turned away from neoconery. He dishes it out:

“Krauthammer this morning goes into raptures about the possibility of reliving the 1970s and 1980s:
The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

This is a 1980s Afghanistan gambit, a de facto return to the Cold War, even though Russia is not a global expansionist power any more, and even though it is no longer communist. No thought given, apparently, to the chance that this could backfire on a power now occupying two countries rather closer to Russia than Georgia is to the US. Oh, well. They’ll figure that out later. There’s Russians to fight! One thing that baffles me: why does the US need a legal basis for anything in Krauthammer’s view?”

All that from a man who used to be a neocon of the deepest dye. Andrew may yet redeem himself.

Updated: Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individual Rights, The State

“Baron ‘Scooter’ Pikes had been confined, cuffed, and was nonconfrontational. There was no need to kill him. Nevertheless, Scott Nugent, a Louisiana police officer, stunned Pikes repeatedly with a Taser. The man was dead ‘before the last two 50,000-volt shocks were delivered,’ surmised CNN. An autopsy revealed no evidence of drug use in Pikes’ system—he had been detained for possession. Nugent was indicted this month on a charge of manslaughter.”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro,” where I point out that “The Taser X26 has become a fixture in the increasingly fractious interactions between the police and the people.” And that, “Something has gotten into the country’s lymphatic system—and the infection becomes most apparent in these street-level scuffles between the State and its subjects.”

You can read the complete column, “Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro,” on WorldNetDaily.com.

Updated (August 18): This story about a couple tasered on their wedding day was sent by Sam Karnick, with the following fine comment:

“Note that the article does NOT say, nor do the police say, what the real or implied contract was between the couple and the art gallery owner. It seems the couple did nothing illegal but the owner called the cops on them because he was afraid they might break something, which is not a valid use of the police nor an excuse for their use of force.”

Update IV: The Olympians: Fabulous Phelps, China & The Rest

Africa, America, Bush, China, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Sport

Four years ago, I wrote the following in a column about Athens titled “Compete, Don’t Kill”:

“The Olympics is the kind of event that looms sufficiently large – for two weeks every two years – to shunt the kleptocracy to the sidelines, revealing it as the freak show it truly is.

The eager young faces, the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory (even the Canadians, well-indoctrinated about the evils of competitiveness, couldn’t suppress cries of “merde” and “crap” when they lost a swimming relay), the brutal regimen required to become the best, the irrepressible spirit that compels athletes to submit to the grueling grind. It is all so very exhilarating – no “shock and awe,” just awe. Some cheat to achieve an unnatural advantage over their adversaries, but for the most part, the Olympics are an expression of unadulterated merit – a concept that has been degraded beyond rehabilitation in almost all other human endeavor.

The acme of athletic achievement, expressed in the immutable truths of speed, strength and skill, is uncontested. The charmed men and women gracing the podiums of modern Olympia are there for no other reason than that they are the finest in their fields. What greater contrast can there be between the Olympian, who powers himself to the pinnacle, and the politician, who drapes himself in the noble toga of idealism, in the famous words of Aldous Huxley, so as to conceal his will to power.”

“It was as though the state and its hobgoblins – meant to keep everyone scared and subservient – had drowned in the swimming pool of Athens.”

Cut to Beijing, 2008: The fabulous Michael Phelps is once again forging ahead undisturbed–the greatest swimmer ever. He won the “400m IM in 4 minutes, 3.84 seconds, shattering his own world record in the process.” Ryan Lochte was resplendent in third place.

The rosy, sweet-smiling face of the American fencers said it all: the three, well-spoken, impressive young ladies secured gold, silver and bronze in the women’s sabre fencing event.

In 2004, we witnessed the come back of the legendary Martina Navratilova at age 47. The same spirit of sportsmanship and skill saw Dara Torres, 41, power the American team into second place in the 4x100m freestyle relay. Her time was “second-fastest in the morning final.”

No superlatives do justice to our gymnasts.

I hope the U.S. men’s basketball team doesn’t repeat its shameful Athens antics. I repeat my sentiments of four years back: “I only hope that our sprinters handle themselves with dignity during the high point of the competition: the American-dominated, testosterone-fueled, always magnificent, 100-meter men’s dash (forget it ladies: You are not in this league).”

So far, American athletes lead with 8 medals; China is second with 4: “America is in [China] to do what it does best – compete, not kill.”

Update I (August 11): So the French swimming team promised to “smash” the Americans in the men’s 4 x 100 freestyle. Who’s talking now, “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”?
Jason Lezak swam like a demon, winning by a fraction of a second. The American team was terribly gracious—to the French. Nice young men. (Ours, not theirs) (Check out this atrocious writing, jam-packed with breathy superlatives. CNBC’s writer doesn’t even cite the French’s time.)

Swimming for Zimbabwe (WHY?), Kirsty Coventry is an interesting—and great—swimmer to watch. She has already set a record in the women’s 100m backstroke. The Zimbabwe government, and most all people in that country, put aside their animosity toward whites, dubbing her their “Golden Girl.” Zimbabweans realize that she is their only Olympic hope. With such talent, she lives and trains in the US, although her family struggles on in Zimbabwe.

For similar reasons, Jean Basson of South Africa is someone to watch—and someone I will root for silently. He swam splendidly in the 200m freestyle heats. (Except that you never know whether he’s using all he has and Phelps is just cruising.) Maybe an Olympic victory will win him a reprieve with his ANC overlords back home.

What a treat it all is

Update II: On American political posturing vis-à-vis China: I am so tired of it–of American meddling. I am sure most Chinese are too. Let them deal with their problems; stay out. Western media get it wrong on most issue. Iraqis had problems; but did they need America in their backyard? Far from it. Back off already. We have problems in the US! Severe infractions of liberty occur here daily, including death by police, and evictions and property seizures for nefarious reasons (with reference to the reader’s hereunder comment). Fight battles on American soil.

Our reader mentions the “surrounding [Chinese] authority,” which everywhere oppresses him. I see a magnificent event conducted with great decorum and pride and despite a lot of pious puling from Americans. To see “authority” in action in American cities, wait for the Demopublican conventions to roll into town. Puleez. What is it about Americans who insist that other people have nothing to be proud of, and only America has it right? You know what? The Chinese don’t pay the kind of taxes we in the US are subjected to. I’d like the Chinese government to intervene on my behalf in this matter.

In “Classical Liberalisms and State Schemes” I made the case that with our pathological need to rescue others we disable them. It’s worth a read.

Update III: Too many Americans, our reader hereunder included, seem incapable of seeing things from the perspective of the Chinese, most of whom are exceedingly proud of their country right now. The “boycott China” sentiment appears sanctimonious, voiced, it would seem, to show how fair the person expressing it is. Why doesn’t the “boycott China” claque “crumble” equally over homegrown injustice? Why not refuse to enjoy our sportsmen and women because of our government’s evils? Why not cry croc over the crimes this government, with the acquiescence of most of its people, committed in Iraq. The Chinese have not come close to that feat, not of late.

Update IV (August 12): Phelps swam a riveting 400m IM race yesterday. What power, what grace. He smashed the world record and led by a good second or two, winning another gold medal

Another cool cucumber is Aaron Peirsol who scooped the gold for an event that has been his for some years: 100-meter backstroke. Matt Grevers won silver. Both struck me as delightful (and gorgeous) young men. I have no doubt that watching a lot of news as I do on TV exposes me to the worst of humanity—the anchors and the Demopublican strategist duos. Among the Olympians one sees the best of humanity. To push the body and the mind to the limits takes a special human being.

The Chinese men’s gymnastics team took gold and was indeed superhuman. I’m a little sad that difficulty has replaced the artistic element that used to be part of the floor routine, but the Chinese and Japanese gymnasts were simply superb. Our gymnasts were good sports—they were not the best, but displayed such exuberance and energy. That netted a bronze.

I must say, I have no idea what the grumbling is about on this blog with respect to the “commercialization” of the events. Myself, I am more concerned with the introduction of dubious sports into the event in recent years—half-nude beach volleyball, for example. I fully appreciate that one can become skilled in this “game,” as Kerri Walsh has, but so what? Just so long as they don’t cancel the traditional Olympian draws: track-and-field, swimming, gymnastics.

To those of you who’re daintily about the gaudy, vulgar, capitalistic aspects of the Olympics—fine. Make a Naomi-Klein statement. But then concede that none of the taint sticks to the Olympians themselves, who embody physical purity. What an individualist one must be to achieve what these men and women drive themselves to achieve. There is no getting away from that.

Decades ago, I used to sprint competitively. Long jump was also a passion. A confluence of circumstances combined to cut my track-and-field endeavors short. I still run, if only to feel something of that feeling that comes with propelling the (aging) physical frame forward.

Update V (August 14): “Splash & Dash; that’s the men’s 50m freestyle. The South African champion Roland Schoeman, who trains in the US (but whose family no doubt is not permitted to emigrate here, because white), is a wonderful swimmer. He has qualified for the finals.

As a kid, I had watched Mark Spitz in 1972; Phelps is the most exciting athlete since.