Can we really be so stupid?

by Ross Nelson,
Published Sunday, August 24, 2008

Ross Nelson sorts mail at the post office. To delay total brain atrophy he writes an occasional column for the Forum. He also reads on his breaks when he's not arguing politics or epistemological first principles with his co-workers.

After examining our reaction to the brief fight between Georgia and Russia, we must calmly, rationally ask, have we lost our bleeding minds?

John McCain earlier this year promised us that we would fight many wars in the future. Judging from his take on the Georgia-Russia fracas, he wasn’t kidding. Especially if he’s elected president. His bellicose statements and calls for convening NATO to discuss actions show that his first instinct will be to fight, not defuse.

The wars won’t have to involve a vital American interest, be constitutional or in self-defense. (Quickly: when the Constitution’s preamble speaks of the “common defence” (sic), do you think it refers to Americans or to the entire world?) Like the war in Iraq, these future wars will be gratuitous exercises in slaughter and aggression at the behest of madmen in Washington who claim to fight for the world’s sake.

In a battle without angels, Georgia set out in early August to retake its breakaway province South Ossetia, which holds fewer people than Fargo. South Ossetia had declared itself free in 1991 from Georgia during the general melee of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Georgia then invaded and brutalized the province just as it did this month, but this time Russia, spoiling for a fight, quickly reversed the Georgian invasion and turned occupier.

Having learned nothing from the Iraq war, the usual quarter-wit warmongers on the right and the GOP are at it again. Rush Limbaugh scorns those who have kept Georgia from joining NATO. Understand that if one member of that military alliance is attacked, the rest have to respond to the aggressor. NATO is a tripwire. How many thousands of Americans are we willing to sacrifice in yet another forsaken backwater that has little bearing on us? Let’s not even speak of a nuclear war.

Another crank commentator suggests we send a few fighter jets over Georgia, just to let the Russians know we mean business. Great idea. A mistake on either side and the warmongers might just have enough bloodshed to slake even their infinite appetites. But at least we’ll have made a blow for “democracy,” even if we sink ourselves doing so.

American exceptionalism has been made exceptionally clear. How’s this for Himalayan hubris and hypocrisy? President Bush: “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected.” Or better yet, McCain’s “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

What exactly do we call our invasion of Iraq under cover of lies? Or, to placate the warmongers, Bush’s admission of being misled by mistaken intelligence? We are so far above the rest of the planet that we don’t even notice the sheer farce of our self-exemption from the standard we hold others to.

Somehow we can bomb Serbia when it tries to keep its own Kosovar territory and yet side with Georgia when it does the same thing. We can invade Panama to arrest its president, overthrow elected governments in Guatemala and Iran, and make unnecessary wars across the globe. And still we can keep a straight face when lecturing Russia about belligerent behavior.

We can surround Russia with countries that have joined NATO, an antagonistic military alliance, and think nothing of basing missile batteries on their territories. But imagine our reaction should Russia enlist Canada, Mexico and others around us into a Warsaw Pact replete with long-range missiles – even if they were only defensive missiles.

If you think that on the issue of aggressive war I argue moral equivalence, you are absolutely right. Moreover, Georgia is not worth the bones of a single American soldier.

Nelson, Casselton, N.D., is a Fargo postal worker and regular contributor to The Forum’s commentary page. He can be reached at r.cnelson@702com.net