Dr. J.'s Commentary: What's it All About, Georgia?

Consider the following. A new Mexican government decides to revisit the "Spot Resolutions" offered in 1847 by the then soon-to-be-one-term Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had challenged President James Polk's claim that Mexican troops had killed several Americans on U.S. soil, a claim Polk used to start the Mexican War. Later, historical research showed that indeed the shootings occurred on disputed territory, to which Mexico had laid a long-standing claim. And so, this new, nationalistic Mexican government decides to take military action to take back some small bits and pieces of the land that the U.S. took from it in that war, which included much of the Southwest and California. The bits and pieces include such places as Brownsville and El Paso, Texas, home to many Mexicans, significant numbers of whom are being subject to increasing harassment by forces of the U.S. "Homeland Security" Department.

Mexico figures that the U.S. will not do much in response to their action, distracted as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan and with its determined expansion in Central Asia of its military organization, NATO. Oh yes. Many people forget that NATO is not just another regional UN or some sort of European Union like organization, but is a military alliance established by the United States in 1949 specifically to confront the Soviet Union military in Europe. Indeed NATO made a point of rejecting the application of the Soviet Union to join the Alliance in 1949. And indeed one does not notice any invitations being extended to one of the Soviet Union's successor states Russia, to join it now. This is so even as an increasing number of states, Soviet successors and otherwise, bordering Russia and having not even a passing connection with the North Atlantic, such as Georgia for example, are being brought into the Alliance with the United States pushing hard to do so.

Back to Mexico. So they attack, "just to defend the lives and livelihoods of their fellow countrymen," and "to recover just tiny slivers of territory that is rightfully theirs." Two days later, the U.S. is bombing Mexico City. Russia then calls an emergency session of its recently revived Warsaw Pact, the founding members of which now include Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. (Yes, the Pact members are urgently considering a name change, since the U.S. brought Poland into NATO.) Russia, demanding an immediate cease-fire and U.S. withdrawal from both Mexican and disputed territory, is proposing to invite Mexico to join, quickly. Ah yes, alternative history can be such fun.

What's not fun is, for example, what has happened to the whole reporting of the matter of the Georgian War or whatever one proposes to call it. The Georgian Armed forces clearly crossed into parts of disputed territories in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians responded strongly, using a battle plan that seemed to have been very well worked out in advance. And why not? Russia is clearly lead by a product of the Soviet Union's intelligence community and they were pretty good at spying and such. If one thinks that the Russians have not penetrated well the government of the truly tiny Georgian country (pop. 4.6 million), one has another thing coming. Of course they had a plan to respond to an attack that they probably knew quite a bit about.

As more than one observer has noted, except for The New York Times and a few others, most American "news" sources quickly presented the whole episode as beginning with a Russian invasion. Even Daniel Schorr, who appears every Saturday morning just after 9 a.m. Eastern on NPR's "Weekend Edition," and who the Republican Scream Machine would consider an out-an-out "liberal," talked this past Saturday only about the "Russian invasion." As for the Fox "News" Channel, well.... The combination of most of the MSM and the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda was shown in all its glory changing history as it happens. Not fun.

However, there are some media sources in this country that do report accurately on the situation and there are certainly many in other countries that do so as well. Let's just focus on a few aspects of what is really going on. We know the Georgian armed forces, as much as there can be much of an armed force in a country of 4.6 million people, have been trained by U.S. advisors and have been armed with U.S. and Israeli weaponry. We know that President Saakashvili considers himself a close ally of President Bush. We can then guess that despite the fact that the public position presented by the U.S. government is that Georgia attacked on its own, that is hardly likely to have been the case. But if Georgia received an American green light, who gave it?

We come very quickly to our favorite U.S. villain, Dick Cheney. According to The New York Times article of August 18, 2008 (H. Cooper, C.J. Chivers, and C.J.; Levy, "How a Squabble Became a Showdown") Cheney is operating a virtually independent government within the Bush Administration. The State Department urges restraint and negotiation but Cheney takes the "hard line." One can just imagine what line he took in private. Oil and that Georgian pipeline are obvious motivations for him, but there are the political ones as well. The obvious ones of those related to the McCain campaign and the need to provide him with something to "stand tough" on, separate from Iraq and Afghanistan. But it would appear to go beyond that.

The Rovian dream of a Permanent Republican Majority has come to a quick end. But the Permanent Republican Presidency is still very much a possibility. It is well known that central to achieving that goal is the perpetuation of Fear as the dominant issue in American politics, at least at the national level. The Republicans have done a very good job of this, of course, since 9/11. But the strongly promoted fear of "terrorism" has begun to lose its force, especially as the American public becomes more and more fed up with the War on Iraq and doesn't know quite what to make of what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan.

The next candidate for Fear-provoker, Islamophobia, promoted so strongly by the Republican Scream Machine, seems not to have caught on very well. It's just too amorphous, especially since most of the Muslims who most Americans might know are very much like themselves. Furthermore, the Permanent War that was so obvious a BushCheney goal for Iraq is coming unraveled at the behest of both the Iraqi man-in-the-street and the men-in-government. And so, as the next candidate for Fear-provoker, why not attempt to bring back the Cold War?

Yes, oil is always there for Cheney. But his dream of a future America run by a "Unitary Executive" (read dictatorship) requires Fear, some poorly defined, most often totally fictional, but massive enemy who "threatens our shores" and requires "a government that will stand up for America." Saakashvili got his signal to "Go" from someone. Surely whoever gave that signal knew pretty well what the Russian response would be, just as the Russians knew pretty well that the attack was coming. And if that someone was indeed Cheney, he got just what he wanted. Cold War II, here we come. This too is not fun.

As for Bush, who one might think as President would be in charge and not allow two parallel conflicting policies to be undertaken at the same time, he seemed much more interested in the finer points of the U.S. Olympic women's beach volleyball team.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine TPJmagazine.us; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century.