Surreal Politik

Yesterday Russian Prime Minister/Dictatorial Overlord Vladimir Putin stated that the Ossetian conflict was started by the US in order to boost the chances of an unnamed presidential candidate being elected.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/28/europe/EU-Georgia-Russia-Putin.php

This, of course, is an outrageous allegation from a deeply evil person. However, being a deeply evil person doesn't mean that you aren't telling the truth. One of the most interesting things for me out of the whole lead-up to the Iraq war is that the person who was telling the truth the whole time was Saddam Hussein. He consistently stated that they had destroyed the weapons of mass destruction and that the UN inspectors were spying for the USA. Well, there were no WMD because they had been destroyed, and US officials admitted in 1999 that they had precisely spied on Iraq under cover of the UN. Given the news that the US bugged UN Security Council offices leading up the war it seems more than reasonable to think Saddam was right on this second point. Given the further information of the 935 false statements used to start an unnecessary war used by the Bush administration with Iraq ( http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/?gclid=COXYntnCs5UCFSAUagodfR5sQQ ) we know that not only will the Bush administration start an unnecessary war, but it will lie in order to do so, and that the reasons for such a war do not need to go much beyond access to oil.

Then we just need to look at the dates of the war, and the polling results in the US election to see if the assertion makes any sense. Georgia (armed and trained by the USA) invaded a province under the protection of a treaty and peacekeepers on 8/8/08. In the week leading up to that date Obama was ahead of McCain in every national poll, ranging between a 3 and 7% margin. 7% is a landslide victory, 3% is the margin by which Bush beat Kerry in 2004. The week after the invasion McCain lead in half of the polls, and was no worse than 5% behind in any of the polls, so essentialy something like a 5% swing in the polls, more than enough to change the outcome of an election. Since then the polls have swung somewhat back to Obama, but not fully to the extent they were before the invasion.

So, we know that being evil doesn't mean you lie. We know that Bush et al will lie and will start unnecessary wars. We know that Bush wants McCain to win. We know that the Bush administration (and the Clinton one before that) will use violence for political reasons. We know that McCain got a bump from this conflict. We know that the US has enormous military influence in Georgia. We know that the georgians initiated the conflict. I can't see any reason why the Georgians would otherwise invade a place under the protection of Russia, a country that could extinguish Georgia if it wanted to.

But what I want to get across is the surreal ridiculousness whereby it is entirely reasonable to think that sovereign nations can be ordered to fight wars IN WHICH PEOPLE DIE in order to boost poll ratings. Even more ridiculous is that this is commonplace, usual, in US politics. Clinton bombed Iraq whenever US domestic politics became unpleasant. Bush the First gave Saddam Hussein permission to attack Kuwait, before he then became outraged and staged a war that briefly boosted his popularity. There was no depth in foreign policy that Reagan wouldn't stoop to. The Gulf of Tomkin incident is notorious. Basically this outrageous accusation by Putin is simply stating something that has been standard policy for US presidents (with notable exceptions) for decades. Until killing people for political reasons becomes more news-worthy and less morally acceptable than cheating on your wife, this sort of surreal politik will surely continue. I wouldn't necessarily put this sort of stuff beyond Barak Obama either, but at least we don't know for certain that he would do such disgustingly evil things.