Charles Krauthammer, in his capacity as armchair warrior, wrote another insightful analysis of international relations and conflicts.
There is only one problem: It is not clear whether the warrior is fighting the 2008 Russian full-scale invasion of independent Georgia or whether he is mulling over the U.S. response to a possible Crimea takeover by the Russians.
He derides the U.S. president saying that Putin is “on the wrong side of history,” and the Secretary of State saying the Russian president’s “really 19th-century behavior in the 21st century.”
Krauthammer digs up another quote: “That is not 21st-century, G-8, major-nation behavior.”
Krauthammer must be referring to Bush in August 2008, as Russian troops invaded the sovereign nation of Georgia, expressing his “deep concern” to the nation and saying “Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.,
Krauthammer mocks the threat to kick Russia out of the G-8.
He has to be talking about Bush debating with allies on “ways to punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia, including expelling Moscow from an exclusive club of wealthy nations…” By the way, even though Putin’s troops, tanks and aircraft entered Georgia, bombed the hell out of its cities and killed its citizens, Bush never even tried to kick Russia out of the G-8.
Krauthammer then asks whether Putin would have “lunged” for another country “if he didn’t have such a clueless adversary?” He admits that no one can say for sure, “[b]ut it certainly made Putin’s decision easier.”
It certainly did make Putin’s decision to invade Georgia in 2008 easier. Putin didn’t think twice and there was no one to stop him, including the President of the powerful United States of America.
Talking about “clueless,” Krauthammer must have forgotten President Bush’s monumentally fallacious assessment of the ex-KGB agent when Bush so fondly said of Putin, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
In a previous armchair warrior commentary, Krauthammer ridiculed the desire of the United States to stand with the international community in affirming that there would be costs for Russian military interventions. Krauthammer was “shocked” by the “weakness of the president’s statement — he found it “staggering.”
In this instance, he definitely must be talking about the 2008 Russian invasion, because president Bush at the time steadfastly wanted to stand with the international community and was engaged in urgent consultations with European and other nations, even as Russian tanks were rumbling into the city of Gori and thrusting deep into Georgian territory and even while, according to Georgian officials, “Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians.”
Krauthammer must also be referring to Bush’s anxious awaiting the results of a European Union initiative led by French President Nicholas Sarkozy while Georgia was being trampled by Russian tanks and soldiers.
The title Krauthammer chooses for his blockbuster is “The Wages of Weakness.”
Here again he must be talking about the wages resulting from Bush’s weakness when faced with Putin’s naked aggression against the independent state of Georgia.
An invasion where even a full week after the invasion, “the Bush administration appeared willing to let Russia take its time removing its forces from disputed areas inside the former Soviet republic,” according to the Washington Post.
Even Conservative Heritage Foundation’s “The Foundry” laments, in 2012, the dismal long-term consequences of “The Occupation Too Many Have Forgotten,” in other words “the wages of weakness.”
Finally, historian Charles Krauthammer concludes his piece almost wistfully as follows:
Next weekend’s Crimean referendum will ask if it should be returned to Mother Russia. Can Putin refuse? He can already see the history textbooks: Catherine the Great took Crimea, Vlad (the Great?) won it back. Not bad for a 19th-century man.
No, not bad at all for a man who took the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia so easily under Bush’s watch.
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