From the Daily Dish, "Cheney or Putin" by Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan provides a wonderful example of the moral confusion brought on by an acute case of Bush Derangement Syndrome:
A key point: Russia is not exporting a totalitarian ideology; it is flexing its military power in its backyard, as it has always done and always will. Since Cheney has exactly the same view about the use of American military power as Putin does about Russian power, I'm not sure what grounds he has to complain. Maybe we should start complaining when as many Georgians have perished as Iraqis - and when Putin throws thousands of innocent Georgians into torture chambers.
One would think that distinguishing between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and democratic Georgia wouldn't be too much of a task for someone as bright as Andrew, but there you have it.
The response of the Bush haters to the Georgia crisis has been disappointing if not surprising. Many moons ego, I blogged about a Bush-hating dinner guest who said in regards to the Iraq War, "I want this country to learn a lesson." I asked him if that meant the obvious albeit sickening conclusion - he wanted American soldiers to pay for the perceived sins of the American government with their lives. He responded with the same phrase - "I want this country to learn a lesson." At the time, such callousness was stunning.
Is it just me, or is there a rather obvious bit of Schadenfreude in Andrew Sullivan's analysis? Overcome with joy over the prospect of yet another cudgel that he can bash the Bush administration with, the morality of what's happening in Georgia has completely drifted from Andrew's radar screen. Instead, he draws a highly dubious moral equivalency argument while Russia is deliberately killing innocent people as part of its effort to strangle a democracy.
Let's grant just for the sake of argument that the Bush administration lacks the moral standing to complain about Putin's Georgia adventure. What of Andrew Sullivan? Surely as one of the administration's most fulsome critics, he retains such standing. Yet in his 712 blog posts since the Russian invasion on Friday, Andrew has yet to summon his famous moral outrage. When he has deigned to address the subject, he has offered morally muddled weak tea along the lines of, "Georgia, alas, is within Russia's traditional field of influence, and was provoking the kind of massive over-reaction they're now getting."
Earlier this morning I linked and quoted a Victor Davis Hanson piece. One of VDH's observations deserves another visit: "From what the Russians learned of the Western reaction to Iraq, they expect their best apologists will be American politicians, pundits, professors, and essayists - and once more they will not be disappointed."
