No Options? Nonsense. It’s ours to win.

Over and over again, in tones ranging from annoyance to paternalistic, the pundits tell us that “there is no military option” with regard to the Russian invasion of Georgia. And in case you missed the point, they will tell you that we’re not going to war with Russia over this particular crisis. Not for little Georgia, so unimportant, so far away. It’s very hard to find any of the leading commentators who thinks otherwise.

It’s an odd way to formulate the issue, since Russia has gone to war with us. Georgia is our ally. As of the time of the invasion, there were more than 150 American military men and women in Georgia, training the locals for self-defense. We are sponsoring Georgian entry into NATO, along with Ukraine. It sure looks like an attack against us. And it’s conjoined to an ultimatum from the Russian foreign minister, who said that the United States would have to choose between good relations with Russia and friendship with our “virtual ally” Georgia.

If you expand your vision of the strategic board from the Caucasus to include the Middle East, you see that the Russians are working in close tandem with other countries that are waging war on us. Syria uses Russian weapons and is installing Russian anti-aircraft systems, as is Iran. And the Iranian nuclear program, which the leaders of the West have elevated to the number one issue in the region, is essentially a Russian program, involving Russian nuclear physicists and Russian nuclear technology. But there, too, the pundits and the policy makers have concluded that there is no military option, that we’re not going to war over this particular crisis. Not to stop Iran from going nuclear. Others have the bomb, after all. And Iran is so far away.

Many others have noticed the grim similarity between such comments and Chamberlain’s historic remarks about the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. Few have quoted Churchill, whose words should be posted on every computer in the National Security Council: “(Chamberlain) had a choice between war and dishonor. He chose dishonor, and he got war.”

We’ve got war already, and it was a big war, long before the invasion of Georgia. The battlefield runs from Afghanistan into Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel, across northern Africa, and deep into Europe. The latest Russian gambit is part of that big war, as any of our friends and allies in the war zone will tell you. Insofar as America is seen as weak, our enemies will redouble their actions and our friends will hold back, fearing that association with us will not protect them, and single them out for attack. Those consequences are immediate, traveling across the airwaves of the BBC and al Jazeera and the other propaganda outlets favored by our enemies. The Chinese, who will feel free to bare their fangs after their Potemkin Olympics, may be emboldened to move against Taiwan, another small place very far away.

Once you grasp the full dimensions of the war, it becomes easier to conceive useful options, military and other. We are well placed to demonstrate that this is not a one-way street. The Russians think they have shown that it’s costly to be a friend of the United States. We need to show that there can be a high price for friendship with the bear. It is long past time for us to strike at the terrorist training camps inside those two nasty Russian allies, Syria and Iran. Moreover, we have political weapons the Russians can’t use, namely support for freedom. Their friends and allies are tyrants, and their subjects are on our side of the political divide. Support for the repressed peoples of Russia’s buddies — also long overdue — can, at a minimum, compel the tyrants to worry about their own survival rather than the destruction of our security interests. And we have every chance of success, without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The Syrian and Iranian people are a more powerful weapon than anything the Russians used against the Georgian people. I dare say that Saakashvili’s support is much greater today than it was a week ago, while the dictators in Tehran and Damascus know well that if their people had a free choice, they’d be headed for safe havens outside the Middle East.

So instead of the incantation “we won’t go to war over this,” serious people in the West must accept the fact that the war is on, and we must find ways to win it. We have enormous advantages, there’s no excuse for the years of dithering.

— Michael Ledeen is Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

It is long past time for us to strike at the terrorist training camps inside those two nasty Russian allies, Syria and Iran.

When this thing broke in Georgia I sat down dictated some musings about the implications of all this. I will set them out now to demonstrate that I agree with the author but I am adamantly opposed to the quoted portion of his article above. I cannot think of anything stupider than to engage for no definitive strategic purpose in military adventures in Syria and Iran. This would leave us utterly without support in Europe and that is the first place we must secure if we are to wage a global war which this author otherwise correctly describes.

Beware the Council of neocons who would exploit every crisis through a lens that requires America, at all costs, to act in a way that irrevocably commits it to Israel. The Stakes in this game are not Israel. We are talking about the survival of Western civilization as we know it. If Russia aligns itself with the Arab and Muslim petroleum exporting nations, and can contrive an alliance with Venezuela and the natural resource producing nations and South America which have recently gone leftist, America will be hard-pressed to rally the world.

We're on the verge now of losing Europe. Mindless attacks on Syria and Iran (unless the regime in Iran is overthrown) are almost certain to lose Europe. Any attack on Iran should be done by the Israelis. United States strategic interest is to prevent an axis between Iran and Russia. Pinpricks will only assure that axis will be built.

China's decision at that point, to go with the forces of darkness and autocracy, to remain neutral, or to throw its weight in on behalf of civilization and prosperity, can decide the affair. What will China choose if Europe has abandoned us because of mindless attacks on Syria and Iran?

Here are the musings which I post to demonstrate that I am in overall sympathy with the authors strategic conception but not in his myopic, neocon, pro-Israeli application of it:

Some implications of the Russian attack in Georgia:

An Israeli strike against Iran is now more likely. It look that the map will see that Rush is inching closer to direct geographical contact with Iran which only confirms the very dangerous trade and nuclear support that the Russians have been conducting, some of it in the dark.

Seen from the Israeli side, they can have no doubt now that Iran will soon have the bomb one way or the other, either through their own efforts or directly from Russia. The Israelis will see that Iran and Russia could well announce a mutual defense pact as a kind of a tit for tat with our installation of missiles in Poland. Once such an announcement is made, an attack by Israel against Iran becomes much more problematical. It makes it more difficult for Americans to supply, even clandestinely, the necessary logistics such as in-flight fueling needed for the Israelis to strike. So the Israelis must preempt if they are to act at all. In any event, we know that if they are going to act, they must act before George Bush leaves office, especially if Obama is elected.

A separate implication of the war in Georgia is that it might well cleave NATO. This has been a Russian/Soviet aim for at least half a century. Consider the matter from the European point of view: they are utterly dependent on oil and gas delivered via pipeline and almost all of which is controlled by Russia. My neighbors, many of them, heat with natural gas stored in a giant cavern not far from my house and Upper Bavaria which comes to them through a pipe from Russia. If the Europeans were adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq where they risked nothing and blamed America for everything, imagine their reaction to American proposals to get tough over Georgia. [Imagine their reaction to American strikes against camps in Syria and Iran!]

European pusillanimity, their leftism, will make it impossible for their politicians to do anything other than appease Russia and blame America. The Russians need only advance vaguely plausible arguments on their behalf- e. g. American meddling (read: CIA) caused the Georgians to overstep and commit aggression against the "independent" regions- which the Europeans can seize upon to save face. Couple that propaganda with reassurances that the pipelines will be kept open, and you have Chamberlain/Hitler redux.

A third implication of the Russian aggression in Georgia is that waging war with oil has now become a strategy used in a new world war which overlaps and might even embrace the world war conducted by radical Islam against civilization. In both wars oil is both a weapon and a prize. In both wars, civilization must fund its enemies with petrodollars.

Great risk here of course is that Russia will contrive a new world order of controlling nations starting with Iran and including Venezuela and whatever other.

Because of the international diplomatic disaster of our war in Iraq, even George Bush knows that he is virtually toothless in the Caucasus both militarily and diplomatically. He knows he has no backup in Europe. He himself has said that he has very few cards to play. So if Bush bows to reality and does nothing except fulminate and try to kick Russia out of the G-8, NATO will muddle on but it will be bereft of any international respect.

Should Bush pushback against the Russians too hard, McCain might do so as well if elected, that could strain NATO to the breaking point.

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