I like this analogy, however US tacit approval of the Georgian military "provocation" meant the US has some reason to allow the attack. I don't know if we can assume that the US directed the Georgian's efforts; to the contrary I've read that the Georgians were warned not to attack. It is possible that the neo-cons may have encouraged the attack as they've been known to operate a parallel shadow government to pursue their secretive goals.
Bush has said the Cold War has ended, and that nations no longer have spheres of influence. Yet Bush is not the primary actor in foreign policy decisions, Cheney is. In contending for Bush's ear, Cheney won over the more moderate (which is true of anyone compared to Cheney) Rice side. Cheney's rise to power has brought neo-con foreign policy principles into vogue. Scheunemann, now McCain's foreign policy advisor, scolded Rice for not responding more vigorously to the Russian actions against Georgia a few years previous. In that schism, Sheunemann ended up leaving the White House just as neo-con influence appeared to be waning. He's apparently found an eager ear in McCain, who would love to show off his foreign policy credentials by trash-talking the Ruskies.
The surge has helped to bring neo-cons back into Bush's favor. The surge's "success" could probably be more attributable to the Shia takeover, not to the US decision to increase force levels in 2006. In delivering on domestic political expectations, the surge was timed perfectly with the general drop in violence in Iraq. (Reports of a reduction in violence in Iraq appear to be somewhat exaggerated in American media. Iraq is still very unstable, with thousands dying from military actions, bombings, and the like.)
Wars create their own momentum, and being inherently bloody affairs, wars generate their own violence and dispense it with wanton and random cruelty. In Islamic lands, the religious orientation of the infidel occupiers differs and entices the faithful to jihad, or religious war.
By aligning itself with Christian nations, and occupying Islamic lands, the US generated its polar opposite: galvanizing Muslims against it. A pan-Islamic alliance lacks much of a direct threat to the US--or Israel--in terms of conventional military power. With the exception of Iran and Syria, no state powers can directly threaten Israel's hegemony, which is of course the reason for keeping the Muslim world divided, as in Iraq, between Shia and Sunni.
Neo-cons have sought to divide Israel's enemies, and make them fight each other, an ideal end in itself for Cheney and the neo-cons' Clean Break.
Understrength, the US military occupation is largely blamed for being the product of incompetence and poor pre-war planning. This is a lot like believing that the pre-war intelligence that got us into the war is seen as an honest mistake, rather than a willful misleading of the American public, which is under international law clearly a war crime. Very few Americans know that the lead-up to Iraq falls under this determination.
The topic of pre-war intelligence won't die and thereby poses an ongoing threat to expose neo-con players within the administration for their actions. Recently Ron Suskind's book explained the White House Iraq Group (Cheney, Scooter Libby, etc.) had ordered that an Iraqi double-agent write a letter explaining how Mohammed Atta had trained in Iraq. The letter had been written before the invasion but after 9/11, and pre-dated before the strikes in which Atta had lost his life.
For those of you who've followed this blog, you'd know that the Office of Special Plans, a group of contractors under the leadership of Douglas Feith working in the Pentagon, was tasked to find any shred of information which could build 1) the case for WMD or 2), a connection between terror and Iraq.
Meanwhile, the White House Iraq Group with Cheney at its head worked their contacts in the press like Judy Miller and Bob Novak, who's been diagnosed with brain cancer. WHIG pressured the CIA to find intelligence to fit their Iraq policy--that Iraq was a threat and must go. These same characters fed through their close contacts in the media Valerie Plame's identity. Attack dog for the Republicans, Novak took the Wilson story and ran with it after meeting with Richard Armitage, who led Novak to believe Wilson had been sent on a junket by his wife's handlers at CIA.
This same group shapes American foreign policy at the present, despite their track record in Iraq and lack of results in the terror war, an outcome I attribute to the exaggeration of the largely illusory terror threat, which was a political creation meant to support Israel's control over the Mideast.
If the best this multi-billion dollar war can achieve is a five and one-half month sentence for Osama bin Laden's limo driver, something is most assuredly wrong not only with its execution, but its premise as well: that nineteen hijackers were, through their efforts alone, able to bring down the towers and WTC 7. It's on this premise that the US has launched two wars which can only be defined as wars of aggression and endless occupation. Without the premise, and the provocation, US troops would have stayed out of the Mideast. Still, the neo-cons would have been unable to test their belief in the invulnerability of the US military and primacy of the US at the top of the New World Order. This most recent teasing of the Russian bear may be the neo-cons best last-chance effort to assert American global dominance.
The well of military strength by which neo-cons' have drawn on, in their dogged determination to help Israel and spur the price of oil, is running low. The US is unable to back up any of the neo-cons' illusions of grandeur. Steeped so much in the undisputed strength of our military, the hard power-bound neo-cons face an increasingly hard battle in convicning the rest of the world that the US has in fact created a new unipolar world order. Instead, if anything US military aggression in the Mideast and Central Asia (perhaps an even greater prize in the Great Game of imperialism) has led to a stronger alignment of anti-American forces, which are waiting to seize global political authority and eventually economic dominance as the American lead falters. Neo-cons bear responsibility for the overarching of empire, a topic found in the excellent trilogy on American imperialism by Chalmers Johnson. See his 2007 interview on DemocracyNow.
Perhaps not coincidentally, US interventions in the Middle East have boosted the price of oil to the point it was once again profitable in West Texas. Domestic results include a weaker dollar, higher federal deficits and more debt. With energy, there is a zero sum game being played--every extra dollar the US sends to oil-producing nations is one not spent or invested here. As the world's #2 oil producer, Russia now holds an impressive budget surplus. With its gigantic reserves of natural gas, the nation is perfectly positioned to profit from rising commodity prices, which is a product of a weaker dollar.
Additional Sources
"US, Poland OK missile defense base, riling Moscow," by Vanessa Gera and Monika Scislowska, AP.
Stephen Zunes, "U.S. Role in Georgia Crisis" at Foreign Policy in Focus.
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