Of course, it's not just McCain and Cheney who are promoting the new Cold War. The media are willing collaborators as Allen Roland pointed out in "Cheney's Dark Hand..." Their depiction of the Georgian conflict pits Evil, Greedy and Violent Russia against Suffering, Attacked, Democratic Georgia: the story is a lot more complicated.
Why do powerful interests promote a new cold war? Think of the amount of money the Pentagon spends: over $650 billion. If the Iraq war is winding down, that's a lot of business that will be lost--unless there is a new justification for even more "defense" spending (why go for the same when you can go for more?).
Georgia may not be Cheney's (or McCain's) pawn, but there really is no satisfactory explanation for the President of a state the size of Georgia attacking Russian troops unless someone encouraged him. The troops weren't in Russia, but still! They were in South Ossetia as "peacekeepers," where they had been for years. South Ossetia is territory Georgia may claim, but it hasn't controlled it since independence, because its majority people (Ossetians) rebelled against Georgia's rule and Russia "protected" them. Talk of democracy! These people (Ossetians and Abkhazians) dislike Georgians as much as the latter dislike Russians; they don't want to be controlled by them, or by Moscow; they want independent states--not that the poor bastards will get them if Russia controls the region.
In any case, you have the leader of a small, militarily weak country attacking the troops of a huge neighbor who is many times its size and has a large and revitalized military. It makes no sense, unless somebody (I nominate both Cheney and McCain) reassured Saakashvili that the US and/or NATO would support him.
What I wish Obama could do is to make public just how damaging all this international meddling has been--to US interests at home, to US interests abroad, and to countries like Georgia and Iraq, and how in this case it is the Republicans controlling the US government who are playing Russia for electoral advantage--and possibly for oil, the pipeline crossing Georgia, built to bring oil from the Caspian to the Mediterranean without crossing either Russia or Iran.
Obama should point out that the Republicans have been doing this for electoral gain over and over again, at least since Reagan made a deal with the Ayatollah, prior to his election, to settle the hostage crisis with Reagan and not with President Carter. That was treason, and this is worse, since it is backing us into a new major confrontation with an emerging super-power for pretexts invented by the US. People need to begin to talk about it.
Instigating war for political advantage is just another step down the road of Imperial adventure, so like the Roman Empire. But modern adventure costs the invader and profits international corporations, instead of the nobility and generals, as it did in Roman times. Further, the corporations are global; their profits don't accrue to the US (especially since only a minority of corporations pay any taxes), but enriches their owners and creditors, the international super-wealthy, an increasing proportion of whom are not American. So, unlike the Roman conquests, further American adventures will only bankrupt the US more.
In any case, that's the story Obama should tell, when he has maximum press exposure. I can tell it, you can tell it, and if we repeat it enough, in enough venues, perhaps sufficient people will hear it and begin to pass it on, too: people will begin to realize what's really going on. We can hope that Obama's advisors will hear it, too, and look into it and realize: It's true!
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