John Kerry contrasted John McCain's bellicose reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia with Barack Obama's "statesmanlike" response. Recall Obama's first statement about the invasion: "Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war."

As John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann aptly observed: “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".