The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Russian tanks are rolling again and Russian planes are dropping bombs again, bringing death and destruction to innocent people again, this time in their former vassal state of Georgia. Many people in Russia have never accepted the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and they long for the day when they were a major world power. Vladimir Putin, the old KGB man described it as a tragic event. In an effort to regain their status of being feared again, they have launched an illegal war of agression against an independent (and pro-Western, pro-American) country. This is a blatant violation of international law. But as Churchill observed, international law is that which the righteous cannot enforce and which the wicked ignore.

Of course while this is going on, President Bush is sitting next to the architect of Russia's murderous assault, Vladimir Putin, at the Olympic Games. (Where America shouldn't be in the first place.) Maybe it's time Bush quit looking into Putin's eyes and started weighing his actions instead. The United States should be standing up to this agression. If we don't, it won't stop with Georgia. Putin wants peace--a piece of Georgia, a piece of Ukraine, a piece of Latvia, a piece of Germany...and he'll take it unless the one country in the world capable of standing up to him does. Sadly, I think we're going to sit this one out.

The Olympics are being held in a murderous dictatorship, just as they were in 1936. Apparently giving the games to this kind of country isn't the only lesson we've failed to learn from the past.