http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13623In the midst of a softball interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon hurls this zinger:
"For all your lofty talk about democracy, last November you shut down the opposition television station in Tbilisi."
To the oily Saakashvili, however, this is water off a duck's back:
"The interference with Imedi TV was an exception, not a rule. This action was taken during mass riots when Imedi TV started to incite overthrow of the democratically elected government. It should be noted that the government did pay damages."
Do you suppose it would be okay if the FBI barged into the offices of, say, MSNBC, wrecked the place, hauled Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow out of the studio bodily, and shut down the station – as long as "damages" were paid? The station, by the way, which was the only televised platform for the Georgian opposition, has since been handed over to a regime-friendly front man, who just happens to be an American citizen. Damages were paid, indeed…
This is the regime defended by Barack Obama, as Solomon points out, as well as (unsurprisingly) John McCain, and that's hardly the only case of bipartisan fealty to a U.S.-supported dictatorship. There's Afghanistan, for example, where a young aspiring journalist has just been spared the death penalty for circulating an article about women's rights, and given 20 years in prison instead. This is the government Obama wants to strengthen and sacrifice more American lives for. From the Los Angeles Times piece on the trial and conviction by Laura King:
"In a case that has illustrated this country's drift toward a more radically conservative brand of Islam as well as the fragility of its legal system, an appeals court today overturned a death sentence for a student convicted of blasphemy but sentenced him instead to 20 years in prison."
So at a time when the U.S.-supported government is moving rapidly toward a Taliban-type theocracy – even as that government moves toward some type of accommodation with the radical Islamic former rulers of the country – Obama is telling us we must pour more troops, more money, and more of our hopes into the Afghan front, which has supposedly been "neglected" by the Bushies.
No wonder he's been endorsed by none other than Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman, and given support (albeit indirectly) by any number of neocons, such as Charles Krauthammer – who, after pummeling Obama for weeks, has suddenly discovered the Democratic candidate is possessed of a "first-class intellect and a first-class temperament," which "will likely be enough to make him president." And what more proof does anyone need that Obama is a disaster in the making other than that Andrew Sullivan, the former warlord of the blogosphere, has not only endorsed him, but fallen head over heels? Ken Silverstein – Harper's columnist and author of a new book that looks to be hilariously informative – is scared:
"McCain's foreign policy crew has quite a few cranks (William Kristol, to state the most obvious) and his policies are generally scarier than Obama's. Agreed. But having Powell and Adelman sign up with the Obama movement is about as uplifting as when Obama endorsed ballistic missile defense (the scaled down version of Star Wars) during the second debate. It's conservatives who should be cheering." To which Sullivan adds: "Yes. And we are."
...
"For all your lofty talk about democracy, last November you shut down the opposition television station in Tbilisi."
To the oily Saakashvili, however, this is water off a duck's back:
"The interference with Imedi TV was an exception, not a rule. This action was taken during mass riots when Imedi TV started to incite overthrow of the democratically elected government. It should be noted that the government did pay damages."
Do you suppose it would be okay if the FBI barged into the offices of, say, MSNBC, wrecked the place, hauled Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow out of the studio bodily, and shut down the station – as long as "damages" were paid? The station, by the way, which was the only televised platform for the Georgian opposition, has since been handed over to a regime-friendly front man, who just happens to be an American citizen. Damages were paid, indeed…
This is the regime defended by Barack Obama, as Solomon points out, as well as (unsurprisingly) John McCain, and that's hardly the only case of bipartisan fealty to a U.S.-supported dictatorship. There's Afghanistan, for example, where a young aspiring journalist has just been spared the death penalty for circulating an article about women's rights, and given 20 years in prison instead. This is the government Obama wants to strengthen and sacrifice more American lives for. From the Los Angeles Times piece on the trial and conviction by Laura King:
"In a case that has illustrated this country's drift toward a more radically conservative brand of Islam as well as the fragility of its legal system, an appeals court today overturned a death sentence for a student convicted of blasphemy but sentenced him instead to 20 years in prison."
So at a time when the U.S.-supported government is moving rapidly toward a Taliban-type theocracy – even as that government moves toward some type of accommodation with the radical Islamic former rulers of the country – Obama is telling us we must pour more troops, more money, and more of our hopes into the Afghan front, which has supposedly been "neglected" by the Bushies.
No wonder he's been endorsed by none other than Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman, and given support (albeit indirectly) by any number of neocons, such as Charles Krauthammer – who, after pummeling Obama for weeks, has suddenly discovered the Democratic candidate is possessed of a "first-class intellect and a first-class temperament," which "will likely be enough to make him president." And what more proof does anyone need that Obama is a disaster in the making other than that Andrew Sullivan, the former warlord of the blogosphere, has not only endorsed him, but fallen head over heels? Ken Silverstein – Harper's columnist and author of a new book that looks to be hilariously informative – is scared:
"McCain's foreign policy crew has quite a few cranks (William Kristol, to state the most obvious) and his policies are generally scarier than Obama's. Agreed. But having Powell and Adelman sign up with the Obama movement is about as uplifting as when Obama endorsed ballistic missile defense (the scaled down version of Star Wars) during the second debate. It's conservatives who should be cheering." To which Sullivan adds: "Yes. And we are."
...
Obama wants to invade Pakistan and flood Afghanistan with yet more U.S. troops, and he will likely let two spies who funneled top secret intelligence to Israel off scot-free. Why wouldn't the War Party be perfectly satisfied with the election? After all, they're done with Iraq, anyway. We're about to be invited to leave. And he's good – from their perspective – on the Russian question, which promises to be the key area of future neocon mischief-making.
Our war-birds are naturally migratory creatures, effortlessly moving from branch to branch, and party to party, with no compunction whatsoever about changing either their nesting habits or the color of their feathers, so long as their ultimate goal – promoting conflict, in whatever form – is achieved. Republicans, Democrats, independents, or whatever: it's the same program, with the same result – an America perpetually at war, defending and extending the frontiers of its empire, without regard for the costs, either financial or purely human.
Our war-birds are naturally migratory creatures, effortlessly moving from branch to branch, and party to party, with no compunction whatsoever about changing either their nesting habits or the color of their feathers, so long as their ultimate goal – promoting conflict, in whatever form – is achieved. Republicans, Democrats, independents, or whatever: it's the same program, with the same result – an America perpetually at war, defending and extending the frontiers of its empire, without regard for the costs, either financial or purely human.
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