Hillary Clinton's best anti-Obama ad came to be known as the "3 a.m.
phone call." It stoked voter worries that in the event of an
international crisis, the first-term junior senator from Illinois might
be out of his depth. On Aug. 8, the White House phone did ring,
alerting President Bush that the Soviet Union, um, that is, Russia, had
just sent columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers across the
internationally recognized border of Georgia (formerly the Soviet
Socialist Republic of Georgia), a tiny, democratic, America-friendly,
Western-leaning country in the Caucasus mountains.
It was a near perfect laboratory test -- the sort that real life rarely
provides until it's too late -- for how the two nominees for president
would respond to an international emergency. (It also tested the
current president -- more on that in a moment.) Sen. Obama flunked. His
first response was to urge restraint upon "both sides" -- that is upon
the rapist and the rape victim.
A couple of days later, Obama strengthened his condemnation of the
Russians (and withdrew his admonition to the Georgians), but then
betrayed the soft, weak reflexes that characterize the leftist wing of
the Democratic Party to which he belongs. The answer to this blatant
and brutal violation of Georgian sovereignty was to -- anyone? -- alert
the United Nations. "The United States, Europe and all other concerned
countries must stand united in condemning this aggression, and seeking
a peaceful resolution to this crisis," Obama said in a statement. "We
should continue to push for a United Nations Security Council
Resolution calling for an immediate end to the violence. This is a
clear violation of the sovereignty and internationally recognized
borders of Georgia -- the U.N. must stand up for the sovereignty of its
members, and peace in the world." Well, yes, and lions should lie down
with lambs, but back in the real world, the United Nations has never
been able to stop a conflict the parties did not wish to suspend. And
since Russia holds a veto, no resolution from the Security Council
would be possible. As Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies put it: "U.N. mediators can't even protect the dissident
monks of Burma or the opposition in Zimbabwe, let alone a small country
trying to fight off single-handed an invasion by the Russian army."
Sen. McCain's response was more muscular. He condemned Russia and urged
her to "immediately and unconditionally cease ... military operations
and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory ... The
consequences of Euro-Atlantic stability and security are grave." McCain
urged the U.N. Security Council to meet on the matter, but strengthened
the point by adding that the "US should immediately work with the E.U.
and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this
perilous course that it has chosen," and, "We should immediately call a
meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia's security and
review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very
dangerous situation." Later, McCain also urged that the U.S. convene
"an emergency meeting of the G-7 foreign ministers" and offered the
view that Russia was seeking more than the independence of South
Ossetia, but was instead looking to overthrow the democratically
elected government of Mikheil Saakashvili. His use of the term G-7 was
significant, since it presaged his later call to throw Russia out of
the group that has become the G-8. Noting that Georgia is home to the
only oil pipeline that feeds Caspian oil to the west outside of Russian
territory or control, he warned, "We must remind Russia's leaders that
the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world require
their respect for the values, stability and peace of that world."
President Bush was slow off the mark. The image of him chatting up
Vladimir Putin in Beijing while Russian tanks were crashing into
Georgia (population 4.5 million) was not helpful. Perhaps President
Bush has a slow fuse. It required a day or two for him to get his
footing after Sept. 11. But now, finally, he has decided to send
Condoleezza Rice to confer with Nicolas Sarkozy and then on to Tbilisi
to show the flag. The humanitarian airlift, with its clear echoes of
the Berlin airlift of 1948, is a bracing substantive and public
relations move.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Russians are permitting their
Ossetian allies to burn villages, loot, and rob. The Russian soldiers
are helping themselves as well. "The whole city is full of marauders,"
said one eyewitness who fled Gori. "Who in the world is going to help
us?" wailed one distraught woman, who then answered her own question by
sobbing, "Nobody cares."
Americans had already expressed misgivings about Barack Obama's
preparedness for the harsh world we inhabit. This laboratory test can
only increase that anxiety.
