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| Someone is going to have to explain to me the rage of the commentariat and the McCain campaign's rhetoric about Georgia. Will they please tell me how the American invasion of Iraq is different from the Russian invasion of Georgia? Both invaded countries are small and powerless against a giant. Both invasions violate the boundaries of a sovereign nation. Both attacking powers claim that they are trying to protect the lives of their own citizens. Both have little international support for their actions. Neither war measures in on international norms for a just war. Both have imposed death and destruction on the inferior country. Both focus on oil-rich regions of the world. Most of the world sees reckless imperialism at work. When phony arguments about weapons of mass destruction are abandoned, both Russia and the United States take over smaller and defenseless countries because they can do it. Both probably presage sustained guerrilla wars and ethnic cleansing. The United States is hung up in another Vietnam, Russia in another Chechnya. | ||||
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The columnists and editorial writers who endorsed the invasion of Iraq refuse to see the similarity. One Chicago columnist, for example, urges that the United States has the right to retaliate for the annexation of Georgia by taking over Cuba. Now is the time to undo the mistake, this gentleman seems to be saying, to undo the Kennedy clan's appeasement of Russia a quarter-century ago. One wonders if he is taking his meds. Where is the United States going to find an army to invade Cuba, for example? What if the Russians send their troops back to Cuba? |
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Sen. McCain, delighted to pursue the title of
commander in chief in a possible reigniting of the Cold War, satisfies the
demands of his fellow blusterers by having suggested that Russia be thrown
out of the G-8, the leaders of the major industrial nations, unless it
withdraws from Georgia. Where is he going to get the votes for such an
expulsion? What if they won't go quietly into that good night? The senator
might well argue that John Kennedy was too young and untested a commander in
chief to do the right thing on those seven days in May? What would a
President McCain do? Follow the lead of earlier blusterers and nuke Russia?
A Russian-hating militarist, one fears, he might have done just that! And large numbers of Americans would be dead! And Russians, too! Am I suggesting that the United States should abandon Georgia to its fate? No, I am suggesting that the United States is living in a glass house and ought to exercise caution about throwing bricks. I am also suggesting that, even if a return to the Cold War might be good campaign strategy, it would be profoundly immoral. Sen. McCain is scary. We might need a military draft, he admitted the other day. He is a warrior -- or at least he pictures himself as one and talks like one. Before the Bush administration accepted an Iraqi demand for a time table to withdraw American troops, the senator was talking tough to Russia and Iran. Since the United States does not have an adequate army now for Iraq, it will need more young bodies to take on those two enemies and anyone else who would stir up Sen. McCain's ire. A draft has always meant a big war in the past. The senator is clearly thinking about more big wars -- or more blustering and bluffing which could easily lead to big wars. When will Americans learn that it is folly to give the government control of the life and death of our young so we can more effectively bluster? |
 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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