If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Where is John Bolton?

Lebanese Druze hold-out now allied with Hezballah. Repercussion of Georgia? Probably not, but certainly our weak response to Hezballah's rise and control of Lebanon was more than Jumblatt could withstand. If you can't beat 'em join 'em. (See 1 below.)

Dunn sees Obama the way I do - Wilson's "Music Man!" (See 2 below.)

Israeli politics gets personal as Barak is deemed hysterically out of control for being critical of Livni. (See 3 below.)

Tobin takes a line from a great American songwriter and cleverly says: "Georgia Should Be On Their Minds." (See 4 below.)

They are educated here so they can learn to kill us according to Pipes. (See 5 below.)

Rubin discuses our "rose colored" foreign policy. GW's diplomatic initiatives have flip flopped as much as Obama. Where is John Bolton when we need him?(See 6 below.)

Beeston writes Putin has overplayed his hand, hardened attitudes and is going to fall on his own sword. (See 7 below.)

Pearlstein and Goldman point out the obvious - Russian energy is a threat to those who connect. (See 8 below.)

Russian tanks keep "a rollin" despite truce. (See 9 below.)

What this week has revealed should be informative for those with their eyes open. Putin's Russia has laid a trap for the West. President Reagan warned the European leaders not to become dependent on Russian energy and they ignored him. Now they might begin to understand the wisdom of his words.

Rubin is right about those who see the world not as it is but as they would wish it to be. Georgia should expose the dreaminess of Obama and all those who believe talk and weakness is the way to achieve peace.

For the moment Putin has taken the West to the cleaners and he has told them drop your pants here!

Dick

1)Jumblatt deserts Lebanon’s pro-Western camp, signs pact with pro-Iranian Hizballah


The fervently pro-US, pro-Israeli Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, has decided to hold out no longer. He has thrown in his lot with the most extreme pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian, anti-Israel force in Lebanon, the Shiite Hizballah, which has gained veto power over the government in Beirut unopposed.

Middle East sources disclose over last weekend, Jumblatt quietly signed a “defense cooperation pact” with Hassan Nasrallah, affording Hizballah a strong foothold in the Lebanese Druze bastion of Mt. Chouf.

Drawing the hostile noose around northern Israel ever tighter, Lebanese president Michel Sleiman was due in Damascus Wednesday, Aug. 13, to celebrate the thaw in relations between the two countries.

Neither Israeli ministers, sunk in an acrimonious contest over the succession to Ehud Olmert, nor the United States in the dying days of the Bush presidency, have lifted a finger to arrest Lebanon’s swift slide into the Iranian-Syrian orbit.

Jumblatt, after watching pro-Western strategic positions crumble in his country, decided to join forces with Hizballah to shield his ancestral mountain domain from Syrian domination.

The Druze and Hizballah militias agreed to set up a joint commission for coordinating military operations. Hizballah is represented by its security and intelligence commander, Wafiq Shafa (who was in change of the recent prisoner swap with Israel) and the Druzes by Akram Shahaib.

The joint security patrols for the Druze communities of the Chouf, will also give Hizballah a military presence on its third strategic Lebanese peak, after Mt. Sannine and Jebel Barukh.

2) The Obama Phenomenon is Not New
By J.R. Dunn

A nation enduring hard times. A frustrating war, a doubtful president. Public turmoil, political disagreement, future prospects uncertain as best. Then a figure appears from nowhere, a secular messiah from the heartland -- unique, appealing, promising solutions that are effective, fast, and easy. He stirs up an immediate and vastly excited following across the country, though many share quiet doubts.

I'm well aware what this sounds like. But in fact the year is 1861, and we're speaking of George B. McClellan.

Barack Obama has succeeded in ducking any meaningful comparisons with historical figures. Oh, there's John F. Kennedy (and let's not forget Jesus Christ), but that's simply another aspect of PR. Comparisons to JFK are a matter of style and appearance and little else. True enough, there is a pronounced resemblance between the two -- the slimness, the good looks, and a kind of indefinable aura of the early 60s.

But there the similarities end. Kennedy had long experience in several fields prior to his presidential campaign -- lengthy terms in both the Senate and the House, along with a wartime career as a naval commander. (Granted that he lost his command under the most bizarre circumstances imaginable. His biographer Thomas Reeves pointed out that JFK was the only known torpedo boat skipper to lose his boat through collision.) Kennedy also authored well-received books -- though Profiles in Courage owed as much to the talents of Ted Sorensen as it did to Kennedy himself. (Not to mention Arthur Krock's assistance with Why England Slept.)

But apart from JFK, there has been little attempt to compare Obama to other historical figures, because, well, because it leads us directly to McClellan. (Though a recent article in AT compared him to Wendell Willkie, which, as proud owner of an original, never-worn "Win With Willkie" tiepin, grieved me deeply and endlessly.)

George McClellan appeared to have everything going for him. A West Point education, a good reputation from the Mexican War, a career as a civil engineer that, just prior to the Civil War's outbreak, led him to the presidency of a railroad. McClellan was well-liked, inspired confidence in those he worked with, and appeared to be a young man headed for the top.

As a commander of Ohio volunteers, McClellan secured the western portion of Virginia (today West Virginia) against a handful of ill-led Confederate troops. The press inflated the operation into a mammoth victory, with McClellan as a combination of Napoleon and Wellington both. So when the Union nearly lost the war in an afternoon at Bull Run (July 21, 1861) leaving almost the entire Federal command in disgrace, who was there to turn to but Little Mac? (Out west there was a drunk named Grant and a near-lunatic named Sherman, but nobody was paying any attention to them.)

McClellan did an outstanding job pulling together a demoralized Union Army. But he didn't stop there, also taking on the roles of head of the Army of the Potomac and effective overall commander of Union forces. "I can do it all," he assured a worried Lincoln.

And for a time it seemed as if he could. The public, goaded by a hysterically adulatory press, had no doubt. Little Mac was greeted as a hero wherever he set foot.

But certain disquieting signs soon appeared. A sense of vainglory, an unwillingness to listen or share his thinking with other responsible figures -- even Lincoln himself. One observer stated that McClellan seemed to be "in a morbid condition of mental exaltation". McClellan's letters to his wife revealed this to be exactly the case:

"I find myself in a new and strange position here: President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land.... All tell me that I am held responsible for the fate of the nation, and that all its resources shall be placed at my disposal."


Speaking of the public, he wrote, "It is a proud and glorious thing to see a whole people here, simple and unsophisticated, looking up to me as their deliverer from tyranny."

It goes on and on. About the only thing that McClellan didn't call himself was a "symbol of American values", though if he'd thought of it, he'd have done that too.

As the historian Bruce Catton put it:

"This man, utterly winning and modest and soft-spoken in all his personal contacts, simply could not, down inside, look long enough on the great figure he was becoming, could not get enough of the savor of admiration and love that were coming to him.... What buried sense of personal inadequacy was gnawing at this man that he had to see himself so constantly through the eyes of men and women who looked upon him as a hero out of legend and myth?"


As is often the case, the record failed to live up to the myth. After a slow and methodical buildup lasting nearly a year, McClellan at last moved against the Confederates. The strategy was brilliant -- outflanking Confederate forces by landing the army on Virginia's James Peninsula and marching up to Richmond from an unexpected direction, while a second Union force closed in from the north. It was a nicely turned plan, and in other hands it might have worked. But not in McClellan's.

McClellan's bloated self-confidence deserted him in the face of a challenge. Rather than a brisk advance to Richmond, McClellan dawdled, insisting that vast, nonexistent Confederate forces prevented him from moving. When at last he started off, it was at a slow crawl that allowed the Rebels to fortify their front and concentrate their forces. When Union troops finally reached Richmond, the Confederate commander, another untried figure named Robert E. Lee, struck a series of lightning blows in what became known as the Seven Days battles, driving McClellan relentlessly back to the river. Rather than attempt to hold his commanding position, McClellan panicked and evacuated the entire army, leaving the field to the victorious Lee.

McClellan moped, blamed everyone else but himself, and sniffed conspiracies behind every closed door. His self-regard was not diminished a single iota, nor had his talent for procrastination. Weeks passed while the troops sat idle. Already strained political relations grew worse with each passing week. During one presidential visit to the camp, McClellan, a general under a democratic government serving at the pleasure of the president, refused to see Lincoln. Already evident doubts about McClellan began to burgeon.

Then Lee turned his army north, in the wake of yet another Bull Run victory. McClellan set off in pursuit. And at last everything went his way. Union troops found the Confederate campaign plan wrapped around a bundle of cigars and immediately sent it to headquarters. McClellan could see Lee's thinking as if through clear glass. His forces were in the right place. He had the numbers on his side. Victory had been handed to him, in a manner rarely seen in history.

Victory had been handed to him, and he threw it away. First by racing around the camp waving the captured paper and shouting "I've got him..." within easy earshot of a Confederate spy who then rode off to warn Lee. Secondly by taking his time getting moving. And thirdly by mishandling his forces. He put Ambrose Burnside, a competent staff officer but no field commander, in charge of the vanguard troops. When Burnside fumbled the job, McClellan, looking on from only a few yards away, failed to replace him, instead watching though the long afternoon as 22,000 men fell at Antietam Creek in the bloodiest single day in American history.

He failed where he could not have failed. Lee fought him to a draw, and successfully withdrew the Army of Virginia to safety.

McClellan was relieved in November 1862, and told to return to his home in Trenton, N.J. to await further orders. The orders never came. Lincoln turned to Burnside and then Joe Hooker in an effort to find a winning general, until it became impossible to overlook the fact that the drunk and the crazy man had succeeded in literally splitting the Confederacy in two. Grant came east, while Sherman remained in command of the troops in the west.

McClellan did not sit still. In the 1864 presidential election, after insisting he wouldn't run, he accepted the Democratic nomination at the behest of the Copperheads, a pro-slavery and anti-war group in effective control of the party. McClellan was still immensely popular. The war bogged down during the summer as the Army of the Potomac lay siege to Richmond. Lincoln was convinced that he would lose. Under a McClellan presidency, the South would have been allowed to go its way, slavery would have prevailed for further decades, and a second civil war, perhaps fought with the techniques and pure viciousness of WW I, would have been inevitable.

But as the summer progressed, the new Union strategy, in which Grant's forces held Lee's army in place while Sherman gutted the deep South, unfolded itself. Sherman at last reached the sea, presenting Savannah -- and the election -- as a gift to Lincoln. The new strategy undercut antiwar forces in the same way as Gen. David Petraeus's surge a hundred and forty years later. Lincoln took 212 electoral votes to Mac's 21.

A reinvigorated Union increased the pressure. At last the Southern troops could take no more. It ended on a fine April day in the courthouse at Appomattox. McClellan, a forgotten man, went back to engineering. He did very well.

One of Karl Marx's least harmful sayings is that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. At best, that's only partially true. Intellectual absolutist as he was, Marx overlooked the fact that most events mingle tragedy, comedy, and every other conceivable element. There was no lack of tragedy in McClellan's wild charge across the American landscape, not the least involving the men who fell in the Seven Days and at Antietam. But there was no lack of farce either. Consider these words, spoken when Little Mac took command of his first army: "Soldiers! I have heard there was danger here, and I have come to place myself at your head and to share it with you. I fear now but one thing -- that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel."

Now consider the fact that the man who spoke them stood about 5' 4".

McClellan holds the place in American history as the figure whose initial promise was least borne out by events. The fact that Barack Obama most resembles one of this country's great clowns is his misfortune. Similar initial conditions will lead to similar results. If Obama follows the same path, the process will have its comic aspects. It already does -- recall the 57 states, the haloed iconography, the campaigning in Berlin with more intensity than in any American city. But as events play out, we will not be denied our share of tragedy.

3) Kadima officials: Barak is hysterical, verging on collapse

"[Defense Minister and Labor leader Ehud] Barak is an hysterical person on the verge of collapse," Kadima members lashed out on Wednesday in response to an Army Radio interview in which Barak called Kadima a "refugee camp."

TZIPI LIVNI. Borrowing from US campaign strategies, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday asserted that the Foreign Minister would not trust her to make decisions, "neither at three in the morning nor at three in the afternoon."


"It is obvious that at the helm of a party on the threshold of bankruptcy there is an hysterical man whose conduct in the past few days only reinforces our conviction that Barak understands Kadima is a strong party," sources in Kadima said.

Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman and Kadima MK Tzahi Hanegbi, who on Wednesday endorsed Foregn Minister Tzipi Livni in the Kadima primary race, told Army Radio he was encouraged that his political rival "is losing his temper and restraint and showing signs of distress."

Earlier, Barak launched a scathing attack on Kadima and on Livni, the party's leading candidate to win the primaries.

"Even if Tzipora Livni makes the decisions, this doesn't mean that she is fit to do so," Barak asserted in the Army Radio interview. "Her pride in UN resolution 1701 puts her judgment in question," the Labor party leader added, referring to the cease-fire agreement that effectively ended the Second Lebanon War.

Alluding to an ad Hillary Clinton's campaign ran in order to cast doubt on Barack Obama's experience, Barak continued, saying, "Livni is not necessarily qualified to provide the right solutions, neither at three in the morning nor at three in the afternoon."

The defense minister went on to call Kadima a "refugee camp," claiming that the ruling party had "brought upon Israel the repercussions of the disengagement, the Second Lebanon War and a series of embarrassing affairs."

Barak did not spare Kadima's second front-runner for the prime ministerial candidacy, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, whom he criticized for inflammatory remarks he had made regarding Iran.

Barak implied that the US was opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities but maintained that the military option "must remain on the table."

4) Georgia should be on their minds
By Jonathan Tobin



Invasion illustrates the need to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be


As the political calendar unfolded in this presidential election year, news analysts often reminded their audiences that the two weeks during August while the Olympic torch burned in Beijing would be very quiet.

The upshot was that during the Olympic fortnight the vast majority of Americans would join the rest of the world in obsessing about sports that they only pretend to care about for two weeks out of every four years. Nobody, we were told, could or should even try to make news during this time period because we would all be too busy gobbling up details about such riveting spectacles as synchronized swimming and team handball.

But apparently, Vladimir Putin didn't get that memo.

Instead of heading to a beach to chill out like Barack Obama or going to a State Fair for photo-ops with overgrown pigs like John McCain, the Russian leader apparently thought this would be an excellent time to play his country's traditional favorite sport: invading and subverting the governments of its smaller neighbors.

That was bad news for Georgia, one of the small independent republics in the Caucasus that gained its independence in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet empire. Though most Americans were, and probably still are, uncertain about the location of this country or anything about it (other, that is, than in the fact that it has the same name as an American state), the attack on pro-Western and democratic Georgia was something that they should care very much about.

IRAQ HANGOVER
It was another unwelcome reminder of something that most pundits have been working hard to obscure for most of the year -namely, that the main duty of whoever's elected president of the United States later this year is to direct the foreign policy of this country at a time when international affairs are more complicated and dangerous than ever.

Despite the evident change for the better in the Iraq war, most Americans are still too turned off by the unpopular conflict in that country to be willing to get too worked up about any other far away place. Few seem to think even the prospect of a nuclear Iran is worth fighting about. So why expect anyone here to switch away from watching swimming or fencing to a discussion of the plight of Georgians whose borders are being overrun and cities bombed?

There's no denying that it's a complicated conflict that can be reduced to a tit-for-tat exchange of accusations about whose independence is being trampled: Georgia or the breakaway republics inside its borders that the Russians have used as a pretext to squash a democratic pro-Western government?

There's more than enough hypocrisy about the principle of self-determination to go around. People here who thought NATO's war to create a Greater Albania via an independent Kosovo carved out of a beastly Serbian regime back in 1999 was a fine thing are now exercised about Putin's attempt to do the same to a far more presentable Georgian government.

Such ironies abound in international politics. Russians who care about the integrity of Abkhazia and Ossetia cheered as their army raped Chechnya. Similarly, those who think a terrorist-led Palestinian people have an inalienable right to create a 22nd Arab Islamic state at Israel's expense don't think the far more numerous Kurds are entitled to one.

But let's not kid ourselves. Putin has taken advantage of a Bush administration that was slow to see the danger from the rise of this former KGB agent whose drive to authoritarian power has been fueled by inflated oil prices. The re-emergence of an aggressive Russia is a threat not only to its independent and democratic neighbors like Ukraine and Georgia, but to the peace of Europe.

However misguided the democratic government of Georgia might have been in some respects, Bush must step up now and use what leverage we have left to make it clear to the Russians that they will pay a price for their behavior. Taking away their membership in the G8 is one possible penalty that might impress the prestige-obsessed Russians that they've made a mistake.

But as hapless as the administration's bumbling approach to this crisis might be, just as discouraging is the general indifference of the public and the chattering classes to the plight of Georgia. While Bush famously erred when he claimed to have looked into the eyes of Putin and saw his soul, Putin has made no such mistake about the current political climate in the United States. He thinks the Iraq hangover we're still reeling from means that we haven't the stomach to resist him even on a symbolic level, and he's probably right.

Indeed, the reaction of many of our so-called wise men to the invasion of Georgia was fear of being forced into a new Cold War with Russia rather than in the consequences of a revived Russian imperialism.

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
At Time magazine's blog, columnist and author Joe Klein waxed hysterical about the "overreaction" of the few Americans who bothered to notice Putin's putsch. The influential pundit has been working hard lately with other war critics to pooh-pooh concerns about Iran's drive for nuclear weapons, and burnishing the myth that the issue is a mere device created by Jewish neoconservatives who are more loyal to Israel than the United States.

So it is was not much of a surprise to find that Klein viewed concern about Russia as being nothing to get worked up over. In a bizarre twist, the fact that Georgia actually is a thriving democracy devoted to free-market principles may be helping to turn off those who have come to associate the spread of democracy with the hated neocons and see any policy associated with its defense as inherently wrong.

Others who want to ignore Georgia's plight tell us, in a strange echo of leftist Cold War polemics, that Russia's evil deeds are merely reactions to Western overreaching. But Putin's policy has nothing to do with Kosovo or NATO, and everything to do with his cherished agenda of reconstituting the empire of the tsars and the commissars.

The need to play down Georgia is similar to the impulses to return to a Sept. 10 mentality about Islamist terrorism or to brand those who urge action on Iran's apocalyptic threats of a new Holocaust as war-mongering neocon alarmists. These misguided positions all stem from a desire to see the world as we would like it to be, not as it is.

The antidote to these fallacies isn't the sort of faux "realism" that is merely a cover for appeasement of evil promoted by a failed foreign-policy establishment. Nor is it mere talk about diplomacy from those whose grasp of the issues is shaky.

As American politics reawakens later this month from its Olympic-induced slumber, it would be prudent for more of us to remember that the ability to think clearly and act decisively about this sort of a crisis is the most important thing we need in our next president, no matter what his name or party affiliation might be.

5) The West's Islamist Infiltrators
By Daniel Pipes



Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.

Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-Qaeda sympathizers or operatives have sought to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.

Such a well-placed infiltrator can wreck great damage explains a former CIA chief of counterintelligence, Michael Sulick: "In the war on terrorism, intelligence has replaced the Cold War's tanks and fighter planes as the primary weapon against an unseen enemy." Islamist moles, he argues, "could inflict far more damage to national security than Soviet spies," for the U.S. and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, whereas now, "our nation is at war."

Aafia Siddiqui is accused of working for Al-Qaeda.

Here are some American cases of attempted infiltration since 2001 that have been made public:

*

The Air Force discharged Sadeq Naji Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, when his superiors learned of his pro-Al-Qaeda statements. Ahmed subsequently became a baggage screener at Detroit's Metro Airport, which terminated him for hiding his earlier discharge from the Air Force. He was convicted of making false statements and sentenced to eighteen months in jail.
*

The Chicago Police Department fired Patricia Eng-Hussain just three days into her training on learning that her husband, Mohammad Azam Hussain, was arrested for being an active member of Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), a Pakistani terrorist group.
*

The Chicago Police Department also fired Arif Sulejmanovski, a supervising janitor at its 25th District station after it learned his name was on a federal terrorist watch list of international terrorism suspects.
*

Mohammad Alavi, an engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, was arrested as he arrived on a flight from Iran, accused of taking computer access codes and software to Iran that provide details on the plant's control rooms and plant layout. He subsequently pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property.
*

Nada Nadim Prouty pleaded guilty to multiple charges.
Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who worked for both the FBI and CIA, pleaded guilty to charges of: fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and engaging in conspiracy to defraud the United States.
*

Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist position with the Environmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and was deported. World Net Daily explains that "investigators suspect espionage is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as it relates to public water systems."
*

Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation.
*

Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origins, was charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New York State databases, including at least one person on the FBI's terrorist watch list.

Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Christian Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage screener because lyrics on his music CD, Terror Alert, applaud the 9/11 attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz "showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior," according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami Al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian immigrant, former U.S. Navy commander, and special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his outlook.

Other Western countries too - Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom - have been subject to infiltration efforts. (For details, see my weblog entry, "Islamists Penetrate Western Security.")

This record prompts one to wonder what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have banished the words "Islam" and "jihad," seriously confront their internal threat?

Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and "Kamil Pasha" who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my 2003 statement that "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

6) . . . And Foreign Policy Moves Front and Center
by Michael Rubin

As Iranian centrifuges spin and Russian tanks roll into Georgia, foreign policy has moved to the front of the presidential election debate. Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, promises change. Such rhetoric appeals to an electorate exasperated with President Bush, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and high energy prices. How ironic it is then that that by conflating change with pandering, Obama replicates Bush's mistakes.

It was neither the Iraq war nor the failure to embrace multilateralism which undercut U.S. credibility under Bush, but rather foreign policy flip-flops. On June 24, 2002, amidst a rash of Palestinian suicide attacks, Bush won the plaudits of terror victims when he declared, "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership [uncompromised by terror], so that a Palestinian state can be born." His audience applauded.

Reversal was swift. Within a year, Bush abandoned his no-terrorism red-line. Just this year, to sweeten a Palestinian audience, he promised Palestinian independence, even as Palestinian rockets fell on Israeli towns. Today, the U.S. government is the largest donor to the Palestinian territories, subsidizing food and housing, enabling Fatah and Hamas to spend more on guns and rockets.

Because of Bush, few dissidents will ever again trust Washington. At his second inauguration, Bush declared, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression." He applauded as Lebanese rose up against Syrian occupation. And yet, in her subsequent visits, Condoleezza Rice embraced the Syrian-imposed ruler.

On June 6, 2007, Bush declared himself the "Dissident President" at a conference in Prague and assigned diplomats to resolve the case of each dissident with whom he met. Bush glowed as activists gave him a standing ovation. A year later, no dissident present has heard from either White House or State Department. On Jan. 11, 2008, after his historic visit to Washington, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalqam bragged that the Bush administration had failed to demand the release of Libya's leading dissident, whom Bush had once lauded. Bush had told each audience what it wanted to hear. Affirmation and applause trumped principle and consistency.

Pandering undercuts trust in the United States. After promising Japan that Washington would "not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of [North Korea's] nuclear weapons program," Bush surprised Tokyo with a deal that let Pyongyang keep its bombs. Bush's reversal on Iranian nuclear enrichment caught both Israel and moderate Arab states flatfooted and raised the possibility of unilateral Israeli military strikes. Bush's speeches may garner allies' applause, but foreign capitals know they no longer describe policy.

Obama's willingness to promise anything replicates Bush. Speaking to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama won rapturous applause when he declared, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided." Less than three months later, he told Palestinian officials, again to applause, he welcomed Jerusalem's division.

Obama repeatedly promises a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq although, when questioned, his aides say ground conditions will determine withdrawal. To some audiences, Obama wins plaudits with declarations that he will talk anywhere, any time with Iranian leaders when, to other audiences, he qualifies this based on Iranian President Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and threats to wipe Israel off the map.

Both Bush and Obama sacrifice consistency and credibility for affirmation. The cost of establishing a legacy and political sloganeering can be high. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate suggested that Iran ceased nuclear warhead work in 2003 because Saddam's downfall showed Bush was serious about enforcing his policy. After last month's policy reversal, the Iranian assessment was different. A prominent Revolutionary Guard general called America "beaten and humiliated."

Consistency is a virtue even when politically unpopular. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, endorsed the surge long before Bush not because 30,000 troops would enable the United States to do in Iraq what it had not before, but rather because it would demonstrate resolve to militias and terrorists who -- like bin Laden before 9/11 -- preached that the United States had become a paper tiger, unable to back its words with actions. It is doubtful Russian forces would invade a U.S. ally if they believed U.S. resolve strong.

Both Bush and Obama pander for adulation. Change may be a good slogan, but restoring U.S. credibility requires not flip-flops but consistency.

7) Strutting Russia is heading for a fall
By Richard Beeston

Opinion is hardening against the Kremlin. For all its bluster, it is weak and vulnerable


Rarely have Russians had such cause to celebrate their hero. One minute Vladimir Putin was in Beijing mixing with Russian athletes on the opening day of the Olympics. Moments later he reappeared in the Caucasus, sleeves rolled up and directing a victorious counter-attack against his arch-rival Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian President. Fleeing refugees and wounded civilians were comforted. Generals saluted smartly as they were sent off to battle. No one was left in any doubt that Mr Putin, rather than the absent President Medvedev, was still firmly in charge of the country.

In the space of only five days the Russian Prime Minister succeeded not only in smashing the Georgian Army but also teaching all those in the “near abroad”, as Russia refers to its neighbours in the former Soviet empire, a painful lesson about challenging Moscow in its own backyard.

The decisive action was in sharp contrast to the response in the West. The war in Georgia exposed deep divisions in the transatlantic alliance and revealed the impotence of the Bush Administration in protecting its closest friend in the region.

Respect is something Mr Putin and many of his countrymen believe they lost when the Soviet Union broke apart 17 years ago. They may now feel that over the past few days some of that loss has been restored.
The Russia-Georgia grudge match

For Russians sunning themselves on the Mediterranean or enjoying the long summer evenings at their dachas in the countryside, this is the plausible narrative faithfully repeated by the state-controlled media.

Unfortunately, the conclusions they draw are completely wrong. Russia may have smashed its tiny neighbour but victory will come at a heavy price. The war will reduce rather than increase Russia's stature abroad, where the Kremlin faces growing isolation.

Since the emergence of the modern Russian state during the Yeltsin years in the 1990s, the country has been regarded as chaotic and corrupt but broadly peaceful and certainly no serious threat. Back in 2003 Condoleezza Rice, the Russophile US Secretary of State, famously advised President Bush to “forgive” Russia for its stand against the Iraq war, while France was punished and Germany ignored.

To judge by the language of both US presidential candidates responding to the Georgian war, forgiveness is no longer an option. Democrat or Republican will take a much harder line towards Russia over its aggressive foreign posture, its increasingly autocratic Government and the inescapable conclusion that Mr Putin is determined to remain in power indefinitely.

The Europeans may seem divided, but behind the bland statements calling on both sides to stop the recent fighting something significant has happened. Six European leaders, five of them from the former Soviet bloc, chose to stand side by side with Mr Saakashvili yesterday as he struggled to remain in power. The events in the Caucasus will only serve to harden opinion against Russia at Nato and in the EU.

The mini-war in Georgia may have surprised some Europeans, but it was expected weeks ago by British Intelligence. Thanks to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB officer who was poisoned in London by suspected Russian agents nearly two years ago, Britain has completely reassessed its relationship with Moscow. MI5, which reports that Russian agents in Britain are now back at Cold War levels, regards Russia as the third most serious threat to British security after terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Attempts to rehabilitate relations have faltered and the recent treatment of BP by its partners and the Russian authorities has only reinforced the view that Russia cannot be trusted.

Flush with billions from the sale of oil and gas, the Kremlin may calculate that it does not need allies in the West and would rather be respected and feared than befriended.

That too would be a serious mistake. For all its big-power bluster, Russia is weak and vulnerable. Russian tanks and aircraft may have smashed the fledgeling Georgian Army with ease, but most of the weaponry was Cold War-era and many of the troops conscripts. Anyone who has seen the Russian Army operating in the Caucasus knows that the military will need a generation to modernise. Meanwhile America, and its main Nato allies, are decades ahead in military technology and combat experience.

Russia is also facing a severe demographic crisis. Its population is shrinking by 700,000 people a year. The UN estimates the population will fall below 100 million by 2050, down from around 146 million today.

As for the economy, it is booming thanks to natural resources that account for 70 per cent of the country's wealth. But the oil price is in a state of flux. Russia has failed to diversify. Should energy prices fall sharply, the economy could collapse, as it did a decade ago.

Mr Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Trying to resurrect it could be the greatest folly of the 21st.

8) Russia's Strike Shows The Power Of the Pipeline
By Steven Pearlstein


It was surely not lost on Russia's bully in chief, Vladimir Putin, that the oil giant BP decided to shut down the pipeline that runs through parts of Georgia controlled by Russian troops. Indeed, that was one of the aims of the cross-border incursion.

Russia's Strike Shows The Power Of the Pipeline

Putin understands better than anyone that oil and gas are the source of Russia's resurgence as a military and economic power and his own control over the Russian government and key sectors of its economy. It is oil and gas that provide the money to maintain Russia's powerful military, along with a vast internal security apparatus and network of government-controlled enterprises that allow the president-turned-premier to maintain his iron grip on the levers of political and economic power.

A little pipeline history: It was just as Putin was coming to power in 1999 that an agreement was reached to create the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The project would allow Azerbaijan and its production partner, BP, to bypass Russia and transport their newly drilled oil instead through Georgia and Turkey to a port in the eastern Mediterranean.

Because of its control of the only pipeline system linking former Soviet republics with the West, Russia had been able to extract most of the profit from any oil and gas that these newly independent countries could produce. But with BTC, which had the active support of the U.S. and European governments, Russia would lose its monopoly chokehold, opening the way for Western oil companies to make multibillion-dollar investments in the energy-rich Caucasus states.

No sooner was BTC completed, however, than Western officials began exploring the possibility of other pipelines that could reach beyond Georgia and Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan, which was thought to have some of the world's largest gas reserves. Their interest was not only in "energy security" and the prospect of oil riches for Western energy companies, but also in promoting Western-style democracy and free-market capitalism in the former Soviet republics.

In time, much of their efforts focused on a $12 billion project known as Nabucco, named after the Verdi opera, that would take gas across the Caspian sea, through Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, finally reaching a terminal near Vienna. With Europe already dependent on Russia for a quarter of its natural gas, and that number set to rise with construction of a new northern pipeline running under the Baltic Sea to Germany, European leaders were keen to find alternative sources of natural gas. The effort took on greater urgency in winter 2006 after Russia briefly cut off supplies in its gas-pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Nabucco also became a top priority of the Bush State Department -- in particular, of Matt Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and C. Boyden Gray, a Bush family confidante who was named a special envoy for Eurasian energy, who began actively courting the leaders of Azerbaijan.

Putin, quite correctly, viewed Nabucco as part of a larger campaign by Washington to contain and isolate Russia and limit the expansion of its burgeoning energy empire. With Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, Putin launched his own competing proposal called South Stream to build a new pipeline to the Caucasus.

Suddenly the Russians were offering to pay Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan multiples of what they had previously offered to secure long-term supply deals. They penned an agreement with Italy and its oil company, Eni, to build a pipeline that would run under the Black Sea from Russia to Europe and end up at the same Austrian terminal as Nabucco. And Russian officials offered highly favorable transit agreements, ownership shares and guaranteed gas supplies to secure transit agreements from Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

To industry observers like Ed Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nabucco has always looked more like a diplomats' pipe dream than a viable economic project. Its promoters had not only failed to secure supply and transit agreements but also had yet to identify an oil company eager to champion the project and finance the pipeline. Now, with its successful military incursion, Russia has raised serious doubts in the minds of Western lenders and investors that a new pipeline through Georgia would be safe from attack or beyond control of the Kremlin.

What we've been reminded once again is that Vladimir Putin is perfectly willing to sacrifice the rule of law and the good opinion of others to protect the Russian empire and the energy monopoly that sustains it. The techniques he used to bring Georgia to heel, while more lethal and destructive, have the same thuggish quality as the techniques Putin uses to silence domestic opposition and to expropriate the energy assets of Yukos, Shell and BP.

For the United States and Europe, this ought to be sufficient warning about the folly of extending membership in NATO or the European Union to every one of Russia's neighbors, particularly when they are unwilling to back it up with military action.

But it also is a reminder of the futility of trying to co-opt Putin by offering him a seat at the G-7, membership in the World Trade Organization or the honor of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. We may not be willing to send troops to Tbilisi, but at the least we should be willing to deny Russian companies the right to raise capital on Western stock exchanges, extend their pipelines into Western markets or use their energy profits to buy up major Western companies.

Vladimir Putin thinks he has looked into the soul of the West and discovered that we need him more than he needs us. It's time to convince him otherwise.

9) Russian tanks roll deep into Georgia, break truce
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and MATTI FRIEDMAN

Russian tanks rolled into the crossroads city of Gori on Wednesday then thrust deep into Georgian territory, violating the truce designed to end the six-day war that has uprooted 100,000 people and scarred the Georgian landscape.


Georgian officials said Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians. An AP reporter later saw dozens of tanks and military vehicles leaving the city, roaring south.

Troops waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!"

To the west, Abkahzian separatist forces backed by Russian military might pushed out Georgian troops and even moved into Georgian territory, defiantly planting a flag.

"The border has been along this river for 1,000 years," separatist official Ruslan Kishmaria told AP on Wednesday. He said Georgia would have to accept the new border and taunted the retreating Georgian forces, saying they had received "American training in running away."

The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on the pro-Russian breakaway province of South Ossetia.

"There is no cease-fire," Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told CNN Wednesday. "We have a humanitarian disaster on our hands."

Saakashvili gambled on a surprise attack late Thursday to regain control over South Ossetia. Instead, Georgia suffered a punishing beating from Russian tanks and aircraft that has left the country with even less control over territory than before.

About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning, according to a top Georgian official, Alexander Lomaia. The city of 50,000 sits on Georgia's only significant east-west road about 15 miles south of South Ossetia, a separatist province where much of the fighting has taken place.

Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn insisted Wednesday that no tanks were in Gori. He said Russians went into the city to implement the truce with local Georgian officials but could not find any.

However, AP reporters and television crews saw several dozen Russian military trucks and armored vehicles driving first around in Gori, then speeding south. One reporter was told to retreat to the south because Russian shelling would soon begin.

Nogovitsyn also said sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Georgian snipers fired sporadically on Russian troops who returned fire. "We must respond to provocations," he said.

Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in the both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev insisted Tuesday they would stay.

In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia which they had controlled — a development that leaves the entire area in the hands of the Russian-backed separatists.

"This is Abkhazian land," one separatist told an AP reporter over the Inguri River, saying they were laying claim to historical Abkhazian territory and that Georgian troops left without challenging them. The fighters had moved across a thin slice of land dotted with Georgian villages.

Georgia insisted its troops were driven out by Russian forces. At first, Russia said that separatists had done the job, not Russian forces. Nogovitsyn said Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori — the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn.

The effect was clear. Abkhazia was out of Georgian hands and it would take more than an EU peace plan to get it back in.

One of two separatists areas trying to leave Georgia for Russia, Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. It's Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot for the Soviet elite, and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.

Lomaia said Russian troops also still held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi's outskirts on Wednesday.

"Russia has treacherously broken its word," Lomaia said.

The first U.N. relief flight arrived in Georgia on Tuesday to help the tens of thousands uprooted by six days of fighting. Thousands of Georgian refugees have streamed into Tbilisi, the capital, or the western Black Sea coast while thousands more South Ossetian refugees headed north to Russia. Those left behind in devastated regions of Georgia cowered in rat-infested cellars or wandered nearly deserted cities.

At a huge rally Tuesday night, Saakashvili said Russia's aim all along was not to gain control of the two disputed provinces but to "destroy" the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current U.S. ally who wants to join NATO.

"They just don't want freedom, and that's why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it," he declared to thousands at a jam-packed square in Tbilisi.

He was joined by the leaders of five former Soviet bloc states — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine — who also spoke out against Russian domination.

"Our neighbor thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no," said Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

In Brussels, Belgium, France sought support from its EU partners to deploy European peacekeeping monitors to the area. But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the move would only take place with the consent of both Russia and Georgia.

Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.

Georgia said Wednesday that 175 Georgians had died in five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins, including some killed Tuesday in a Russian bombing raid of Gori just hours before Medvedev declared fighting halted.

An AP reporter also saw heavy damage from a raid Tuesday in a Georgian village near Gori. Two men and a woman in Ruisi were killed and another five were wounded.

"I always hide in the basement," said one villager, the 70-year old Vakhtang Chkhekvadze as he pulled off a window frame blasted by an explosion. "But this time the explosion came so abruptly, I don't remember what happened afterward."

The Russia-Georgia dispute also reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued Russia for alleged ethnic cleansing. For his part, Medvedev reiterated accusations that Georgia had committed "genocide" in trying to reclaim South Ossetia.

At the Beijing Olympics, Georgian women rallied Wednesday to beat their Russian counterparts in beach volleyball, the first head-to-head clash of the two nations.

"Russia and Georgia are actually friends. People are friends," said the Georgian beach volleyball team leader, Levan Akhtulediani. "But you know, it's not, in the 21st century, to bomb a neighbor country, it's not a good idea."

"I say once again, its better to compete on the field rather than outside the field," he added.

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