Battle Plan

Michael Moore is making sense. The only reason this thing is running so close is because the Dems have typically conceded the national security issue with their ham-fisted tactics. It does no good to complain about Republican failures, differentiating themselves from incompetence, and then turn around and embrace belligerent policies on Iran and Israel, as Obama as done in an attempt to tack "center". It merely, as Moore points out by way of Harry Truman, blurs the distinction between the fake Republican and the real one, and we know who usually wins that one.

The current Russian invasion of Georgia is a perfect example of this syndrome. (Chris Floyd has been exhaustive in his analysis on the subject, light-years ahead of practically every MSM take.) Here is a textbook example of the administration's manifest failures, wrapped up in a nice neat package. Bush's failure to recognize Putin as the crafty restorationist he has turned out to be is paramount in all of this. Conventional wisdom has had it that Iran is the chief regional beneficiary of the Iraq War, but what about Russia? Who has profited more in terms of a pure money-to-power ratio, in converting ramped-up oil profits to leverage and influence? Iran has a weak sister next door to it, but Russia has Europe under its thumb now.

Georgia was the ideal wedge for Putin to drive between us and the Euros, and Bush and McCain gave him the perfect provocations to do so, in making hollow promises to Saakashvili, in encouraging NATO expansion into the Caucasus(!), in thinking that encircling the Russians was a viable option at this point. This is the Great Game at its highest level, and the Bushies have failed spectacularly, as has McCain, whose lobbyist advisors have got him balls-deep in this pooch.

These people seriously have no clue what they're doing, and all Obama needs is a way to distill that to a bite-size phrase, since the average 'murkin has trouble finding the American state of Georgia on a map. Sending Joe Biden over as a counter-move to McCain's overt interference (talk about presumptuous) is a start, but only if Biden can return with ideas that draw a stark contrast to the Fiery Wreck that defines the decision-making processes of the administration and its potential extensions. They cannot keep me-tooing their way through things in misplaced efforts to look tough.

Handled wisely, the Georgia issue is one that can and should be made to blow up in Straight Talk's face, emblematic of all the wretched incompetence of his buddies. But as Moore points out, there has to be a willingness to engage McCain proactively on these issues, and draw tangible distinctions. This chickenshit "my opponent's a good man, we just disagree on specifics" boilerplate -- who needs it? It serves no purpose; it merely glosses over important differences in how serious events could be handled or even prevented. Georgia was highly preventable, but hell, what's to stop Ukraine's restive Transnistria province from giving a resurgent bear sufficient pretext to slap down another, larger former province from getting too many bright ideas about westernizing.

Saakashvili is on record as saying that Putin deliberately and repeatedly told Georgia to stick its resolutions and promises up its ass, and no doubt Putin's just itching to tell Yulia Tymoshenko that he's got an Orange Revolution in his pants. (I know I am.) Whatever else the guy is, there's no mistaking where he stands. It's just mind-boggling that an amateur like Bush seriously thought he had a handle on this guy. Putin's a fucking KGB colonel who's an expert in judo and chess, while Bush has yet to provide convincing evidence of a single skill or talent, marketable or otherwise. Playing dress-up doesn't count, unless you're five years old.

The armchair warriors of the cryptofascist right level their vicious threats and lies without hesitation, most of them idle, some of them not, more of them undoubtedly to come. There is no counterpart to them, political or otherwise, as the fellow travelers of "the left" were long ago co-opted, to the point where their putative political avatars still have trouble breaking out of their bad habits. Even if they are able to break those habits sufficiently to win the election, they must understand that they still have to deal with a halfwitted, easily bamboozled corporate media, and an increasingly ridiculous population that (as even the populist Moore points out) would rather slave away for peanuts, get drunk and watch Deal or No Deal, then vote out of spite and ignorance rather than simply pay attention to who's condemning them to such a life.

But then, as we all know, since both candidates are bankrolled by many of the same entities, maybe there's more of a motive to the Democrats' measured diffidence than anyone wants to acknowledge. After all, if Obama loses, he goes back to his lifetime peerage in the Senate, along with all the other contestants in this year's dog show. It's the widening bottom of the economic pyramid that bears the actual consequences.