Richard Spencer

August 16, 2008

The War Nerd recently observed, “The quickest way to see who?s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire.” The quickest way to tell that a conflict has nothing whatsoever to do with our national interest is when the leader of the losing side urges us to get involved in order to defend “an idea.” Take, for instance, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s recent Post Op-ed: “Russia’s invasion of Georgia strikes at the heart of Western values… Russia intends to destroy not just a country but an idea.”
 
Later in the essay, the prez mentions, “For years, Georgia has been proposing 21st-century, European solutions for South Ossetia, including full autonomy guaranteed by the international community.” Does Saakashvili actually think we’re all so enraptured by the idea of Georgian democracy that we’ll just overlook the fact that he ordered a military invasion of South Ossetia a week ago? This guy isn’t lacking in any chutzpa.