Getting their war on

Looks like the tensions between Georgia and Russia have erupted into armed conflict. This situation needs to be cooled off quickly before we see an escalation into full scale war. As Georgia is a staunch American ally (they even have boots on the ground in Iraq), the US is in the very uncomfortable position of once against staring down a territorially ambitious Russia. Not to put too fine a point on it but given the foreign policy disaster that the Bush Administration has been, it is not out of the realm of possibility that he could bequeath his successor a new Cold War with the Russians. And while I don’t think Bush is directly responsible for this mess (there is little question that Russia is funding and arming the separatist movement), his choices regarding Iraq, NATO expansion, and his embrace of Putin have certainly limited the range of responses we have now. But the US can ill afford to stand by and watch friendly democratic government get crushed by an ever more authoritarian Moscow.