It really isn't (on my mind) all that much, but the headline, though too obvious to be used, was still too tempting to be ignored.  Still, I think my grandmother was born there; she had no fond memories of the place and, with so many other Jewish families, got out when she could and arrived, thankfully, in Boston, around the turn of the 20th century, very young.

But the thought arises that the Bushies have decided that reviving the Cold War on the way out might be a fun thing to occupy their last few months.  I don't think so, however.

Rather the developments of the past week or so constitute one more display of their incompetence and the huge disconnect between people who have a teeny bit of historical perspective and the assholes from the back of the classroom, throwing what my ex-wife used to call "spit wads". They are being goaded into the ridiculous "this shall not stand" posture which they cannot even begin to back up, by Sen McCain's fond nostalgia for the USSR and, I guess, the Cold War.

First they goad Georgia into applying for membership in NATO (Generals Eisenhower and Washington are both in motion in their graves), then, apparently, advise Georgia not to do anything to provoke Russia into an attack.

I think Still-President Bush (John Stewart's great description) forced Secretary Gates, who knows better and is certainly arguing for a lower profile, and Secretary Rice (as lost a soul as there is on earth) to stand by him while he rattled his empty sabre case, for the same reasons as Secretary Powell made Tenet sit in back of him at the UN.  

Doesn't matter what he says, tho.  Nobody pays him any attention anymore, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and especially Russia.  As Olbermann pointed out last night, the Georgians, realizing all of this (and having one candidate virtually in their employ) made their pitch to Sen McCain who is not (nor likely will never be) in a position to do anything---unless West Wing-like, he becomes Secy of Defense in the Obama administration.

It is worth noting, as I did in response to some comments at DK, that the US is so antiwar right now that it is almost dangerously isolationist again.

 Just as every American, especially those of us who grew up in the Cold War, the idea of truly democratic republics in places which have only known dictatorship, warms my heart.  Not enough to offer them membership in NATO, however, which is way too provocative.

Our reaction to Soviet influence over Cuba, while sometimes a bit overwrought, was generally quite justifiable as President Kennedy explained in his inaugural address:

let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

That horrible night in 1962 when the President revealed that the Soviets had placed nuclear weapons in Cuba, he noted

this secret, swift, extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles -- in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy -- this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil -- is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.

He was right, of course.  But if our country feels that way, having not been invaded by any foreign country since the British almost two centuries ago, then Russia, invaded by foreign powers on a regular basis, and all but devastated the last time when the Nazis decided to do so, can be understood to be a bit peeved when we urge a nation on its doorstep to join a military alliance formed against it.

I do not know as much history of Georgia as I wish I did,  (My grandmother was extremely young when she left and her "memories" were quite sketchy.  Her "Georgia" actually sounded more like the one where Sherman's troops fought than this one, frankly) so I do not understand how these two Russian influenced provinces became part of Georgia.  If that was the subject of some arbitrary Versailles-like boundary drawing, then I wonder how important to Georgian "sovereignty" this all is.

This is certainly NOT a Sudetanland-type situation, as some try to make it out.  The context there is vastly different from what is going on now, and the world of 2008.  The parallels that come to my mind are the baseless claims that President Roosevelt sold out to the Soviets at Yalta, due to his ill health and Communists in the State Department.  The people that have thrown this around for years have been discredited time and time again, but they never go away.