Bob McCarty Writes

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton expressed a great deal of frustration in the lead paragraph of an article he wrote that was published in the UK’s Telegraph today:

Russia’s invasion across an internationally recognised border, its thrashing of the Georgian military, and its smug satisfaction in humbling one of its former fiefdoms represents only the visible damage.

In the next paragraph of the article, Ambassador Bolton said the United States “fiddled while Georgia burned” and equated the slow response by the Bush Adminstration to that of a paper tiger:

As bad as the bloodying of Georgia is, the broader consequences are worse. The United States fiddled while Georgia burned, not even reaching the right rhetorical level in its public statements until three days after the Russian invasion began, and not, at least to date, matching its rhetoric with anything even approximating decisive action. This pattern is the very definition of a paper tiger. Sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Tbilisi is touching, but hardly reassuring; dispatching humanitarian assistance is nothing more than we would have done if Georgia had been hit by a natural rather than a man-made disaster.

I’ve always appreciated Ambassador Bolton’s straightforward approach to conversation.  Sadly, I must say that I agree with his commentary today.  Thanks to Vladimir Putin and his presidential puppet Dmitry Medvedev, the sun will set on the Bush Adminstration with a cloud obscuring one’s view of the “sunshine” evidenced by victory in Iraq.

To read the entire article, click here.