Georgia on Our Minds

"My God, the Russkies are in Atlanta! Make sure Chipper Jones is safe!"

by David Faris

It seems like a really long time ago, back in the olden-timey days of the turn of the century, when the Bush administration was eager to start a strategic crisis with the Chinese. Names like Wang Wei bring back comforting, pre-9/11 images of a world in which conservatives sat around the fireplaces of their McMansions scaring their children with readings from The Coming Conflict with China instead of Evil Islamic Muslim Terrorist Jihads and the Islamic Muslim Terrorists Who Jihad Them.

Now however, the Chinese could sacrifice a Tibetan Monk during the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and they would hardly get a rise out of the White House. The Olympics are being held in a country with one of the worst human-rights records in modern history, and American athletes are being denied visas for the crime of being against genocide, but the only thing you will ever hear from the U.S. about this is the sound of credit cards being swiped.

Instead, our ruling elites have decided to re-fight the Cold War with Russia, peppering the last seven years with an endless series of stupid provocations that included talk of deploying a missile defense system in the Ukraine and pushing Georgia toward membership in NATO. Putin and his blue-eyed soul reacted the way you might expect the U.S. to act if Russia were to, for example, offer membership in a renewed Warsaw Pact to Canada or put some missiles in Cuba. I think there was once a crisis about that or something?

You can only imagine Bush's reaction to the news — almost certainly read to him from a briefing the size of an index card — that Russia had invaded Georgia. Visions of Red Dawn and Dolph Lundgren dancing in his few remaining brain cells, you can picture him crying, "My God, the Russkies are in Atlanta! Make sure Chipper Jones is safe!" And then he has the gall to lecture another country about damaging its standing in the world.

You can't really blame the Russians for being jittery. The U.S. has been telling Russia for years that their creeping encirclement by our peace-loving military alliance is not aimed at them. This is akin to a bank robber cocking his weapon and yelling, "Don't worry everybody — no one's gonna get hurt!" Russia is cowering underneath the quick-deposit counter wondering why we're waving a gun around.

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This is not to defend the Russians, whose response to every territorial crisis seems to be sending in strategic bombers and blowing the smithereens out of people, as the charred crater formerly known as Grozny can attest. Wherever could they have gotten that idea? As the whiny, drug-addled teenager from that wonderful Reagan-era anti-drug commercial argued, "I learned it by watching you, OK? I learned it by watching you!" Superpowers who abuse international law have adversaries who abuse international law.

While it's easy to imagine Dick Cheney in a fluorescent-lit basement in his secret compound drawing up blueprints for a new Doomsday Machine, this isn't 1979 and Georgia isn't Afghanistan. Russia can do more or less whatever it likes to Georgia, and the U.S. won't be sending planeloads of Stinger missiles to blow helicopters out of the sky.

We could, however, use the help of some Russian troops in Afghanistan. Do I smell a compromise?

David Faris is a frequent Slant contributor. To reply to his Slant, or submit one of your own, e-mail your 650-word submission to Brian Howard (bhoward@citypaper.net).