Unfortunately there is just too much money to be made by engaging in wars. That money temptation will seemingly continue to drive much of our foreign policy. I hope Obama can see through it, and resist it, and articles like this can only help him to do that.

I am very encouraged by reading that the Obama transition team is working on shutting down GITMO. That suggests that they understand that the whole war apparatus in our country has to be greatly diminished. My fingers are crossed.

My favorite teacher; I am so pleased you are here!

Indeed, O will be tested on so many levels. Do you have thoughts on how the public could be supportive? Or is this the kind of lonely choice all Presidents must make with advisors alone?

(From a former Santa Monica College student.)

To paraphrase Hamlet: "What is Georgia to Him, or He to Georgia, that He should weep for her?"

As a native born American, I gotta ask, why was I born to be cannon fodder?

I mean, if the Russkies parachute into Kansas, I will be among the very first to grab my gun.

Until then, why do I have to die on foreign soil?

Why do my tax dollars have to be wasted on foreign soil? Isn't there some way I can have my tax dollars destined for Georgia go to pay for some poor American kid to get his teeth fixed or his appendix removed, instead? How come we gotta borrow money from the Chinese to give to the Georgians? What makes these politicians so Damn noble when it comes to handing out borrowed Chinese money to foreigners?

I have faith in the new president, but it is up to all of us to make sure this gets investigated. I was always suspicious of why this happened, reading between the lines it made no sense.

It was a serous mistake to train and encourage Saakashvilli to start that bloody full-scale attack on South Ossetia. McCain played his big role prior, during and after that conflict, but unfortunately Obama will be not willing to bring up this dirty business out of respect for the Arizona senator.

Tom, thanks for n oting the "complete acquiesence" of Dems, including Obama advisors, on this issue.

That, in turn goes back to Obama himself, as well as Biden, supporting "NATO observer" status at the minimum, if not a NATO-lite membership, for Georgia.

And, yes, oil is at the bottom of this.

It's a bit hypocritical for Obama to oppose one oil war and support another potential one.

Good piece, Tom. Shout it from the rooftops!

Agreed. Obama needs to stand apart from his National security advisers. He needs to rmember he won by huge margins and should not worry about "appearances" as much as doing what he "believes" is right.

That was one of the few times I was disappointed in Obama's reactions to events...siding with war monger McCain who would rather start a war than lose an election. How many times did I have to bite my lip when he'd claim "I know how to win wars" when his experience got him captured. He was a POW...that's not how you win wars. Geez.

Caution and deliberation are crucial when war is near. Hopefully this story will continue to unfold because many of us believe this was engineered by the McCain campaign's adviser and was first put into play by Karl Rove's visit 3wks prior to the invasion.

McCain was so quick to want to jump into hostilities with Russia and the neocons have shown they would like nothing more than to start another cold war with Russia (all the profits to be made by weapons build up etc.)

Obama needs to select advisers who are not so quick to jump to conclusions and consider alternatives to their pre-ordained opinions. He also needs some insiders in the security offices which have been dominated by right wingers for years. Those are hard to come by and Susan Rice is not one of them. Maybe he should call back some of those officers forced into retirement for speaking out. It will take years to de-nazify the government but he needs protectors immediately. Maybe get his own team of dedicated people to be his insiders.

Susan Rice forgets that the second terrorist attack (anthrax) came from inside the government and it's perpetrators are still at large.

btw...just a thought...but what has worked for these neocons and repukes in the past no longer works as proven by the election. The voting public is sick of their tactics...just look at McCain's Oct. surprise...didn't work for him...and quietly we pretend it never happened. "We are all Georgian's now???"... What a joke.

Or was a political decision made that Obama could not afford to appear weaker than McCain on Russia?

That seems likely, akin to his FISA reversal.

There is a parallel with the early days of the John Kennedy presidency, when the national security establishment presented [to him] a plan for invading Cuba...

There's a big difference between then and now.  The current national-security crowd has been thoroughly discredited.  Their opinions are now widely taken with huge grains of salt.  That was not nearly as much the case with the Eisenhower NS establishment that JFK inherited.

They could destroy an Obama presidency by demanding expenditures for multiple wars which America cannot win and cannot afford, or alternatively accusing him of weakening America in the world.

An exaggerated fear, IMO.  Their demands will not go unskeptically met, and their accusations will not carry much weight.

At the time of this incident it seemed clear that it was staged. This needs to be further investigated along with the inciting to violence done by the McCain/Palin racism mongering. McCain should not just be treated with kid gloves & given a position within the O administration as a gesture of bipartisanship. They would have done anything to maintain power, including getting Obama assassinated.

Three days after the election, when it can no longer negatively impact John McCain's chances, the New York Times goes public with confirmation of facts that have been known by those in the diplomatic world -- including the U.S. State Department -- since August.
This story took more than a couple of days to research, so it's clear the NYT sat on it until now. Not wanting to appear biased, I guess.
Are Georgia's claims even slightly credible?
Deputy assistant secretary of state Matthew Bryza, the U.S. point man on Georgia, virtually concedes they aren't:
“I wasn’t there,” he said, referring to the battle. “We didn’t have people there. But the O.S.C.E. really has been our benchmark on many things over the years.”
After provoking the Russians, Saakashvili seemed shocked that the U.S. did not come to his aid militarily. Who told him that it would?
I find it hard to believe Scheunemann didn't pass on such assurances from high in the administration.
They didn't come from Condi Rice, so the natural suspect is uber-hawk Dick Cheney.
Whoever it was, the new administration needs to conduct a thorough investigation.
Conspiring to trick your own country into wars of aggression sounds to me like the highest of high crimes.

Tom Hayden said;

Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, at first called for greater diplomacy, but quickly fell in line with a bipartisan consensus of national security advisers and the mainstream media. Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, openly applauded the White House for its rapid response, including support for NATO's inclusion of Georgia and the Ukraine and a one billion dollar emergency appropriation.

Was Susan Rice looking toward the election with her actions or is she a hawk?

Correct, Obama's initial call for more diplomacy was correct, but he caved, just like he caved on FISA.

I like Obama, I supported him and voted for him, and was elated when he won the election; I just hope is isn't going to be more of the same thing.

Whatever the facts, McCain did his campaign no advantage in seeming so eager to take on Russia. The baby boomers have not forgotten the fear of growing up during the Cold War, and the importance of a president with a cool head and diplomacy became paramount. As usual, McCain overplayed his hand.

Mr. Hayden,

I am not at all indisposed to believe your hypothesis. It fits comfortably within by worldview that Scheunemann and other neoconservatives might have engineered the Georgian war for McCain's benefit.

But did that really happen? So far the evidence just isn't there. It is entirely possible that Saakashvili simply calculated that August in the midst of a US presidential election was an opportune time for his long-planned move on South Ossetia, and acted without any planning or prodding from the McCain camp.

He calculated incorrectly. He correctly assumed that both US parties would rush to his rhetorical defense. But he incorrectly assumed that we would actually help Georgia in some material way.

There was lot of the bluster, from both parties. But the bluster was mainly designed to compensate for the embarrassing fact that we were not going to come to the aid of the Georgians, and that our previous egging them on, and our promises and hoo-hahs and cheerleading, were just a show for political benefit.

You are right, though, to warn of the possibility of the national security establishment working to intimidate Obama into some Bay of Pigs adventure. All we can do is try to stay on top of global affairs, so that when the dirty information war comes, we have the tools to fight back.

In the sense that Georgia's ploy was incompetently planned and executed, it was clearly a neo-con hatchling. Shashkianidiot is a neo-con as it is.

The guy tried to stooge us, and should be vilified.

I don't think this is a well-researched or particularly revealing article, as it leaves too many loose threads.

I reported pretty extensively on the Rose Revolution in Georgia on my blog, and one thing that was very clear to me from everything I heard was that there were two big sources of funding for Saakashvili's supporters:

1 > George Soros
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Revolution

2> USAID, both from the Republicans and Democrats, with the goal of promoting democracy.

This isn't to say that Republicans couldn't be involved in some sort of dirty tricks regarding this matter, but the big issue to ask is to what extent does the Republican agenda differ from Democrats on this issue?

George Soros, as you all might be aware, is a major Democratic fundraiser. He put up a lot of the money for sites like MoveOn.org, for instance. Does that mean that there is a branch of the Democratic Party that supported the conflict too? If so, why? After all, it was ill-timed and ill-concieved, and *STILL* endangers the flow of oil to our western allies through Georgia's pipeline infrastructure. Where's the victory in that?!

I don't ask these questions as a way of dismissing the idea offhand, but really... Republicans *controlled* the attacks? Why would Georgia happily get themselves into a military conflict that they could not clearly win? Why did Georgia attack while their best troops were in Iraq? What about the verified phone intercepts that came out indicating that Russian forces were moving armed vehicles into S. Ossetia before the conflict started? What about the general lack of widespread civilian casualties that the Russians were reporting initially as their rationale for a full-scale invasion? They literally claimed mere hours after the invasion that there were thousands of dead civilians... ones that they never verified at night, before they gave the order to send their troops in the following morning! Where are the bodies?!

I don't deny that the Bush administration gave Georgia a lot of support and encouragement, like it does all its satellites... and we *KNOW* that Georgia was getting special treatment in exchange for being one of the few remaining coalition partners in Iraq. Obviously, the payoff was supposed to be connected to U.S. approval for their NATO bid. But Hayden is showing us lots of smoke and invective, but precious little fire here.

If he cares to flesh out his theories and answer these nagging questions, really... that would be helpful!

A simple yet profoundly game-changing move by President Obama would be the abolition by executive order of all "cost-plus" contracting in our military and secret military agencies.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Obama to take ANY progressive action on foreign policy. He won't even stop torture, rendition, and other overt crimes. He certainly won't restore civil liberties in the USA.

I voted for him because of the Supreme Court--with the HOPE that his appointees will amount at least to damage control . . . although we shall see.

If you think he's any different from other politicians, you've been gulled. Barack Obama is no Russell Feingold or Paul Wellstone. He had the potential, once, but has not encountered enough adversity in his political career to WANT to make any profoundly progressive changes.

Watch---he won't even lead on election reforms, so essential to curtail an orchestrated Thug resurgence accomplished by rigging elections and suppressing votes.

So much rank speculation, so little grasp of facts. Leave aside the as-yet-to-be-determined circumstances of August 7 and 8. What simple facts does Hayden get wrong?

It's the International Republican Institute, not the "Republican Democracy Institute."

Neither Ajaria nor Upper Kodori were "separatist enclaves." Ajaria is an autonomous republic within Georgia, which was run by a tinpot warlord; it had not sought to secede from Georgia. Upper Kodori was the only part of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia not under the control of the de facto authorities in Sokhumi; it was controlled by a local mini-warlord until the Georgian Government established order there.

The BTC pipeline bypasses the Russian Federation; as it traverses Azerbaijan and Georgia, it does not "bypass the former Soviet Union."

Since I left Santa Monica for Tbilisi, I was hopeful that I'd never have to hear from Tom Hayden again. It seems that there is no sanctuary from his sanctimony.

--Jonathan Kulick