So This is What a Pawn Feels Like?

By BJ

It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

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As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Daniel Larison has a good post up on what he calls the exploitation of "New Europe" by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War, where they dangled the promise of NATO membership and other enticements to gain those countries support for Bush's military adventure. Now that it is Georgia that needs support, they are understandably looking askance at the near lack of such aid. As one those quoted in the stories above put it, "If you want to help, you have to help the end".

While a lot of the political focus in the US has understandably been turned to the candidates' reactions to try and discern what kind of foreign policy they'd run, they aren't the ones in charge. And just what is it that still-President Bush was doing over the weekend while Georgians were being bombed and run out of South Ossetia? Oh yeah . . . cavorting with the Women's Beach Volleyball team.

Not that I don't like me some Women's Beach Vollyball, but how do you think those pictures are playing in Tbilisi? Whatever else you can say about Bush, he does manage to find photogenic ways to show just how "compassionate" a conservative he really is, and just how little the US gives a crap about Georgia.

It probably explains why its acting-President Cheney who is making the brave statements about how Russian military aggression can't go unanswered. Not like we'll be answering with any actual military force or anything, but keep up the fight Georgians! See if you can suck the Russians into another Afghanistan. Sure it will suck for you to, but we'll be right their alongside you, in spirit, cheering from the sidelines.

Fester asked earlier just how credible American and NATO security guarantees are to the three Baltic states. You can be sure they're asking themselves the very same question about now.