Cogitationes, 8-12-2008

• Our nation has a tendency to blame elected officials whenever something goes wrong, the implication being that these problems could have been prevented or solved with relative ease.  The news media provides an army of experts and pundits who reinforce this belief, since there is no shortage of people who have never had to make a more serious decision than what hair growth product to purchase who, if something does go wrong, know exactly what should have been done.  Democracies are uniquely intolerant of viewpoints that don't reflect the ideas of at least a large minority, and so no one goes on television to say that a certain problem is or was unavoidable, unforeseeable, or insoluble.  Well, I may not have a big audience, but I'll say it.  There is no real solution to the conflict in Georgia.  And, for all practical purposes, there never was.
• All that said, there are lessons to be drawn from this.  One is the sad fact that military strength and the expectation of its employment is the only real way to stop vile people from acting vilely.  Goodwill only goes so far, and only with others with a modicum of goodwill; brute force is sometimes needed, because sometimes there are brutes.  Another lesson can be drawn about the importance of energy-producing nations.  Russia will never face resistance from France and Germany, because that nation has become almost the sole supplier of energy to Europe.  If Russia completes their de facto conquest of Georgia, they will acquire as well the only pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe that had been independent of them:  that running from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey at Ceyhan.  The United States, and our European allies, need to have a rational strategy for energy independence, including both transitioning to alternative sources of energy and to domestic oil production.  We need it, not because of the phantasm of global warming, but to counter rising threats from hostile and aggressive petro-empires.
• This lesson, however, deserves its own bullet point.  Its own cogitatio, if you will.  This will seem an unfair point, but I assure you, gentle reader, that it is only that:  a seeming.  The Guardian is Britain's premier left-wing publication, and a reliable standard for leftism around the world.  Resultantly, there is hardly a publication that can be more reliably counted upon to condemn America and its allies and justify its enemies.  Jonathan Steele delivers the predictable rebuttal against the community of common sense here.  It is a masterpiece of what amounts to moral equivalence, a charming renewal of the Western Left's long tradition of useful idiocy, once employed in the aid of international socialism, now in the aid of nationalist neo-tsarism.
• Speaking of the media!  Some will remember that last year there were rumors that several news organizations, notably the Los Angeles Times, had information about a presidential candidate's illicit affair.  Citing ethical reasons, all declined to publish that news--and, if I may say, it would have been admirable if those were truly the reasons.  Although personal integrity and strength of character are important qualities for a leader, there is still something grotesque about the gleeful publication of their various personal misdeeds.  (Readers will remember, or at least be informed, that President Clinton abused his power to get a job for his mistress, then obstructed justice and lied about it under oath.  These are not personal issues; these are felonies.)  Now, to put it frankly, there is no way in hell that ethics played a role in the decision not to publish this news.  After all, we are speaking of the news media here.  I therefore noted to friends at the time that the candidate was likely a Democrat; after all, if it were a Republican, the news would have been published before even being edited.  My liberal friends scoffed; some months later, the New York Times published a front-page spread about John McCain's possibly having had an affair with a female lobbyist nine years earlier, based solely on the testimony of two disgruntled former staffers.  During the last week, we discovered that, in fact, the LA Times's adulterous politician was a Democrat.  Jennifer Rubin discusses this "embarrasment" here.  My guess is that it's less "embarrassment," and more "wishing they hadn't been caught."