When Georgia sent forces into South Ossetia and Russia invaded in response, John McCain cast the conflict in stark terms calling on the nation to “reverse the perilous course it has chosen.” Ben Smith, who described the conflict as a “3 A.M.” moment, quoted McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann and former employee of the Georgian government being critical of Obama for not being harder on Russia:
He also criticized Obama for calling on both sides to show “restraint,” and suggested the Democrat was putting too much blame on the conflict’s clear victim.
“That’s kind of like saying after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, that Kuwait and Iraq need to show restraint, or like saying in 1968 [when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia] … that the Czechoslovaks should show restraint,” he said.
Of course after staking out a loud and belligerent position against Russia and accusing Obama of being “naiive” for not doing so, today McCain says he “doesn’t know” who’s really at fault.
We, we will decide in subsequent days as whether degree of provocation and whe– who was right and who was wrong.
Does that make us all “Russians” too?
I think it would be good if we had a president who can remember what his position is a few days after that 3 A.M. call, or at least won’t stake out an instinctively combative position before he even knows what he’s talking about. Of course, in the mainstream media, that’s referred to as foreign policy “expertise.”
— A. Serwer