America Against The World, Ctd.

Poulos recommends keeping everything in perspective:

...notice how Graham and Lieberman are talking quite specifically about Ukraine, and larding that single point with a lot of distracting flourishes. No serious analysts of Europe, Russia, and American foreign policy are concerned that Putin and Medvedev are going to invade the Baltic States, full-fledged members of NATO as they are. Ditto Poland. Messing with Georgia, whose northern borders have been a mess since its birth in wake of the Soviet Union, is one thing. Launching tank columns into NATO countries especially Poland, first victim of the Second World War is another. It is a red line that not even an idiot would cross, much less consummate machinators like those in the Kremlin. Graham and Lieberman want us to think otherwise, but it’s a bottom line fact of international relations that Ukraine is in a far different strategic and historical situation than Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are in. To pretend otherwise to declare otherwise is rank, and intellectually irresponsible, scaremongering. Instead of helping the US prepare for another Cold War not of our choosing, it contributes to the manufacture of overblown conflict and unnecessary tension.

The trouble is: overblown conflict and unnecessary tension have become part of the GOP electoral model. And what we're seeing is that McCain, far from challenging that for a more rational discourse, is free-basing on Rove tactics and Cheney foreign policy.