The disasters that have been Iraq and Afghanistan had sort of silenced all the humanitarian interventionists, decent leftists, war liberals and all the other surviving members of the “let you and him fight international brigage these past two years or so, but boy did the War for South Ossetia bring them back. Suddenly they have a new purpose in life, a new spring in their step: the Russians are back and everything’s all right with the world. No longer do they have to trouble themselves with tawdry, unwinnable wars in dusty countries nobody really cares about but for the oil; the Russian Bear is back and it’s happy party time for the Cold Warriors.
And nowhere more so than at the Henry Jackson Society, where Mark Attila “it’s the Serbs! The Serbs!” Hoare has been moved to ever highers flights of fancy in his descriptions of What’s To Be Done. As Aaronovitch Watch commented: “We have occasionally described the Henry Jackson Society in the past as the “I’ve got a cardboard box on my head and I’m a tank commander” element of British Decency – the breakfast cereal must be ankle deep on the floor at Peterhouse College today”
But he got competition, from none other than Denis “failed New Labour minister McShamne”, exhorting us at Comment is Free to stand Shoulder to shoulder against Russia:
As Sir Roderick Braithwaite, the astute former ambassador in Moscow and a man sympathetic to Russians pointed out some time ago, Russia has done far more invading than it has been invaded. Napoleon and Hitler failed to conquer Moscow but Russian armies – Tsarist and Soviet – have occupied every European capital east of the Rhine.
[…]
President Sarkozy’s remarks that Russia had some rights in Georgia sent a chill down the spine of Baltic states which have Russian speaking citizens, installed after Stalin’s invasion of these small countries in 1940. Finland, which fought a war with Russia in 1940, shivers at what the new Putin doctrine might mean.
[…]
Putin may have thought that sweeping the Georgian pawn off the board was the end of the game. Alas, it is is only the beginning, and Britain cannot betray Poland and its fellow EU and Nato allies as Chamberlain did in the 1930s.
McShane does seem to have a talent for distilling all the cliches uttered about Russia’s “aggression” in Georgia to the purest grade of wingnuttery, doesn’t he, with his talk about not betraying Poland “as Chamberlain did in the 1930s.” It’s great stuff, but to me Marko still has the edge, as he wouldn’t make such schoolboy errors in his rants.