Georgia On My Mind

Vladimir Putin is a bad dude. He is "bad" in a sense that romantacists like the Neo-Cons (stress on the "Con") cannot understand. He is bad in a way which is not necessarily good, but which is necessarily necessary. Putin is the leader of one of the world's great nations and, for better or for worse, he acts accordingly.

It has been fascinating to witness Russia's incursion into Georgia, but it has been far more interesting to study the responses from America's public "intellectuals", which have been disconcertingly colored by reductionist drivel and pedantic doggerel that would make Puff Daddy blush.

As soon as Russian tanks moved into Georgia, the critical mass of American "journalists" colored it as an act of agression, and the right-wing"intelligent"-sia couched it, of course, as pure good versus pure evil.

"Conservatives", whose current foreign policy is far more romantic and interventionist and naive that the "Liberal" foreign policy of the 1960's, have insisted on treating the equivalent of an American intervention into Nicaragua, of which there have been many, as the fodder for apocolypse, as the precursor for Armagedeon.

The recent forum with Senators McCain and Obama also illustrated this dynamic, which has paralyzed our politics for my entire adult life. There are slivers of truths to all canards, and human history itself has been shifted on its axis due to to the sliver of truth in the assertion that "Liberals" refuse to acknowledge the distinction between right and wrong.

While Liberalism can occasionally drift into the amoral morass of moral relatvisim and situational ethics, this flaw is (hopefully) more than countered by Liberalism's utility in stressing "nuance", that insidious, slightly French, slightly faggy word that separates people from primates.

And while nuance is often employed to rationalize inexcusable behavior, it also serves to avoid disproporionate escalations by mediating and tempering the communication between adversaries.

By looking at Russia's actions in Georgia as holding some great moral weight, or representing some great moral test, the "Conservatives" are tying their feeble mare to a wagon that's without wheels.

The Conservatives' cling to Manichean truths is commendable to a certain extent; a society that is incapable of making any universal moral declarations is not worth maintaining. Certain transgressions such as rape, murder, or unprovoked war must be recognized as wholly illegitmate regardless of who commits the act in question.

What Russia has done in Georgia, however, is surprisingly sober and limited by any reasonable standard. Let us consider how America would react if Russia sold sophisticated weaponry to Mexico, sent military advisors to train the Mexican army, and offered a full and formal military alliance with Mexico. What would we do?

Well, in short, we would bomb the shit out of Mexico. Georgia is not some random bystander whom Russia crushed for its own sake. It is the birthplace of Stalin, it borders present-day Russia, and it is an open military ally of Russia's primary antagonist which, sad to say, is still the royal US, the U.S.

While Conservatives rail about the assault on the "peace-loving" people of Georgia, one has occassion to wonder what makes a people "peace-loving" other than a willingness to buy American weapons.

I have written often, but I fear insufficiently eloquently, about the debt that the world owes Russia. Russia peaceably surrendered the largest land empire in history to its constitutent peoples. The United States responded by treaching this great nation, this nuclear bomb-bristling collusus, this smasher of Hitlerism, as a conquered foe.

America rapidly expanded its military alliance, NATO, to the borders of Russia. Again, would we allow ANY foreign power anything remotely comparable to this in our backyard? Much of the "moral" outrage evinced by the Conservatives hinges on the unspoken but clearly implicit assertion that the United States has the right to treat Russia like....como se va?...like its bitch.

I am not particularly enamored of Mr. Putin, but he has not done anything in Georgia that sundry American governments have not done throughout Central America and the Carribean.

The trap into which the Conservatives consistently run headlong is their obsession with their own "morality". Since they justly and rightly cling fast to the idea that there ARE moral abolutes, which I agree with entirely, they fall prey to the fallacy that every situation must therefore have two sides: pure good and pure evil.

This blanket approach is rather childish, of course, and much more insipid than the liberal lionization of "nuance", for while the Conservatives rightly acknowledge the existence of good and evil, they show no indication that they understand the NATURE of their favored rhetorical paramours.

Good and evil exists within every nation and within every heart. There were good Germans once, and there are bad Georgians now. To project universal good or evil onto individual actors is naive in the extreme. Since motives are always mixed, only actions can be purely right or wrong.

Rape is purely wrong, even if the rapist is not purely evil (which he never is). If invading sovereign nations is purely wrong, as the Conservatives now hold, how is it that my peers were sent 6,000 miles to do just that in 2003?