Republican presidential candidate John McCain phoned Georgia’s president Tuesday to tell him all Americans back his country’s efforts to thwart military attacks from Russia.
McCain told more than 2,000 voters in York, Pa., that he spoke Tuesday morning with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to make sure he knows “that the thoughts, prayers and support of the American people are with that great little nation as it struggles today” for independence.
“I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians,” McCain said to loud applause.
Uh…. we are?
Wasn’t Georgia’s move into South Ossetia, the one that prompted the overwhelming Russian response, designed to prevent that province from breaking away from Georgia, and back into Russian orbit? Though that might indeed compromise Georgia’s independence from its former master, to portray Georgia’s incursion into South Ossetia as a move made solely in the name of peace and freedom seems a bit of a misnomer. Thinking, it seems, that the U.S. would ride to the rescue, Georgia poked the bear with a sharp stick; the bear is now tearing Georgia apart.
Regrettable? Absolutely; both McCain and Obama had to address it and have. But the danger with McCain is that he really does plan on going beyond the rhetoric; and indeed, reading Dave Pigeon’s account of the McCain event in York, we see that McCain advocates ”sending in an international peacekeeping force in the separatist regions.”
You up for U.S. troops fighting Russians?
