This wasn’t quite what I was looking for as I sought artwork to go on the op-ed page Sunday, but it certainly caught my eye. Here’s the AP caption:
Ossetian protesters demonstrate outside NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday Aug. 19, 2008. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her NATO counterparts are reviewing relations with Moscow and are expected to curtail high level meetings and military cooperation with Russia if it does not abandon crucial positions across Georgia. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
So not only do the Russians have the advantage in tanks and missiles, they’ve also got somebody who’s real mean hand with PhotoShop.
Which reminds me — aren’t we way overdue for a Conan sequel? And don’t try to tell me Ah-nold’s got better things to do…
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Important Clarification: Please note the flag in the background. These protestors are South Ossetians NOT Russians as Brad suggests. That’s a very important distinction. I’m sure if you look hard enough you can find an anecdotal story just as poigniant as the one posted in the WSJ and re-printed by Brad that supports the dire plight of some South Ossetian who was displaced by the dispicable and diabolical American puppet tyrant Mikheil Saakashvili.
Ummm… did ya READ the caption I provided, bud? It said they were Ossetians.
Sheesh. Some people, you can’t even show them a funny picture.
Of course, I’m probably the one missing the joke. bud’s GOT to be pulling my leg with that "dispicable and diabolical American puppet tyrant" stuff.
And with the aforementioned anecdote — did anybody get the point of it? If you thought I was tugging at your heartstrings, you missed it. The point, of course, was that TO THE RUSSIANS, the Georgian side is "the American side." They see that clearly. Do we?
Speaking of the background, that “Saakashvili equals Hitler” poster is a real prize-winner too, ain’t it?
bud – “dispicable and diabolical American puppet tyrant Mikheil Saakashvili”? I thought you’d given up the Kool-Aid.
Saakashvili may still be a bit wet behind the ears, but he’s certainly brave and patriotic, and a pretty good President of Georgia. Have you forgotten about the Rose Revolution he led that ousted the corrupt government of Eduard Shevardnadze?
He’s brought real change to a country in a pretty rough part of the world and seems by all accounts to be an honorable fellow. We in the US don’t often see folks of his caliber running for office.
I don’t know where you’re getting your info, but please leave it there.
So not only do the Russians have the advantage in tanks and missiles, they’ve also got somebody who’s real mean hand with PhotoShop.
-Brad
So you equate the SOs to the RUSSIANS and then deny it? Good grief man how on earth did you ever graduate from journalism school.
To many in South Ossetia Saakashvili IS a villian. That’s what I take from this photo. Yet Brad spins this around to give it an entirely different meaning. Did the U.S. attempt to reign in Saakashivili when he was bombing the hell out of SO? You folks really need to make at least a half-hearted attempt to try and see things through the eyes of others rather than constantly seeing only the U.S. perspective. There are generally two sides to every issue.
I think I speak for all the chauvinists and right-wing haters who comment here that we truly treasure bud’s efforts in continually advocating for the non-US view and congratulate him for admitting it without hint of embarrassment, chagrin, or irony.
There’s plenty of Kool-Aid out there, bud, drink ‘er down!
It make make some people uncomfortable to suggest the U.S. is not always right. So be it. I believe the truth, the whole truth, serves the best interests of the U.S. To ignore all the facts plays into the interests of the military industrial complex, an entity that benefits from war and conflict. Until something else happens I stand committed to a neutral position in Georgia. Our motivation should be peace, not side-taking.
The person could have “Photoshopped” the picture to make it more anatomically correct…
You know, bud, I read and read and read what you post, and over and over and over again it comes to me that you want to dismantle the one of the most important things America is best at.
Some things we used to be the best at we aren’t any more. But we still have the best military, something I think is incredibly important in sustaining our way of life. For some reason, though, you want to disable our military, and you don’t see that doing that would put our system of government, which is also the best in the world, in jeopardy.
Strength is our best bet to deter aggression against us. What’s the point of making ourselves weak? Turning the other cheek is one thing personally, but doing it as a nation would be suicide.
Not dismantle, just reduce to the appropriate size necessary to defend ourselves from foreign invasion. Instead of a military as large as the next 20 combined how about as large as the next 5. Isn’t it obvious that the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because of the huge burden they absorbed to support the military?
Actually, I didn’t go to “journalism school;” I went to university, as the Brits would say it. Double major, journalism and history. The history major was a last-minute, undeclared thing. I was a semester or so away from graduating and noticed that I’d taken so many history (and, to a lesser extent, poli sci) courses that I was within 6 hours of a history major. So I took two more courses. I was far more interested in the history and poli sci courses than the journalism, which, let’s face it, isn’t actually an academic subject. Work hard on a good student newspaper and you’ll learn what you need to in terms of the pure trade part.
Changing the subject slightly, bud — do you really define our national defense needs as no more than “defend ourselves from foreign invasion?” Think about it. Our needs have been greater than that since Thomas Jefferson’s day. Jefferson really wanted to preserve the fantasy that we could be an island unto ourselves and not worry about such things as “projecting power,” but he learned himself in the first year of his administration how unrealistic that was. Challenged immediately upon taking office, he had to send the U.S. Navy to deal with the Barbary Pirates in order to make the seas safe for U.S. shipping. It was, by the way, an undeclared war (most unJeffersonian) — the president simply sent our frigates against those north African states in his capacity as commander in chief.
My point is that, even when we were a new and weak nation (compared to Britain and France), and even under our prototypically libertarian, small-gummint president, it was understood that the United States would have to project naval power in remote corners of the world.
Has that changed? Is the U.S. now LESS interconnected? Does it have fewer obligations or vulnerabilities abroad? One would think so, by the wording you chose.
Jefferson had to send the US Marine Corps to the shores of Tripoli, Lybia, to clean out hijackers.
Sounds familiar. Same people, new generation, getting another cleaning out by President G.W. Bush.