Foreign Policy CS

Via Josh Marshall, Fred Kaplan takes a look at the ways the Bush clown shown precipitated the Georgian fiasco:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would...

It would be paranoid to suspect that this is a Rovian tactic to get McCain a chance to play blowhard tough guy - but the Bushies keep proving that no matter how paranoid you are, it's probably not paranoid enough. There is even more evidence for the stupidity hypothesis, of course.

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