Citizen Journalism by Josh Mull

Popularity: 5% [?]

Under the Bush Administration, this country has pissed away all of its moral integrity and respect around the world. Thus any calls by Bush for restraint from Russia as it pummels the former Soviet province of Georgia ring rightfully hollow. As likely heirs to this smoldering empire, we in Obama’s new liberal base have an opportunity to show that we are not pragmatic usurpers capitalizing on the failure of George W Bush, but rather a base of clear moral leaders on the full spectrum of American policy. So far, this opportunity has been mostly squandered.

Iraq and a Hard Place

A lot of the conversation on the left regarding Georgia centers on the US invasion of Iraq. When Bush and McCain take the press conference stage and bitterly scold Russia for invading a sovereign country, the left sneers and, quite correctly, lambastes them for hypocrisy. What they fail to do is then pivot. First, go to one of the original and core messages of the new liberal base, that the Iraq war was a terrible mistake and should never have been attempted. Second, explain Iraq’s precise relevance to Georgia in that when we blow our military wad on ideological pipe dreams like Iraq, the US ties down one of its main tools of leverage against real threats to democracy, namely Putin’s Russia, among others. Along with the numbing loss of over 4,000 American lives and the catastrophic damage to our economy, the savage mishandling of our great military force should stand as the foundation of our opposition to the Bush and McCain policy of Middle East war mongering. Georgia is the perfect illustration of what happens when the most powerful democracy in the world misuses its military: Other democracies die. As liberals, we would never allow the US to become so distracted and negligent. This is how we must connect Georgia to Iraq.

Know Your Enemy

We all know the pitfalls of traditional media: bloviating opinionators, bite-sized information, the pervasiveness of corporate infotainment. Sometimes however, during extreme situations, such as the Burmese cyclone, election crises in Zimbabwe, we on the left forget our normal media inhibitions and go off furiously googling for any tiny source of information. The conflict in Georgia is no different. As soon as Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia, CNN instantly becomes again a credible source of news. The on-air employees with their laser-precise hair-dos and augmented breasts heaving stutter out breathless headlines about Russian aggression and almost seem to sexualize horrifying and disturbing images of burning and bloodied Georgian corpses. We liberals seem to forget that this is the same CNN that refused to show images of our soldiers in Iraq because they were “tasteless.” Next in our frantic googling we come across things like Russia Today. We echo endlessly their gracious YouTube contributions across our blogosphere, not understanding that this is the same Russian media that can be brutally gunned down in the street for daring to criticize the state. They report whatever Moscow tells them like a Russian FOX News and some on the left are completely oblivious, refusing to connect the dots. And this isn’t to say that even the media themselves are oblivious to misinformation. I saw ABC employees openly asking on the internet for any articles “around 1000 words” so they could quickly catch up on the Russia-Georgia conflict they were about to cover. This is a war between a nuclear superpower and a tiny western democracy and the good folks at ABC didn’t even know where to begin. Also you had infotainment demigod Larry King interviewing former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. As Larry flung softballs like “are you optimistic,” Gorbachev went down the line one by one listing the exact same talking points as Putin’s foreign minister. The soldiers are Russian Peacekeepers (wtf?), Georgia attacked Russia first, Georgia was involved in ethnic cleansing, and CNN ate it all up and shat it back out as “Breaking News.” This is unacceptable. Quality information and a clear understanding of the facts on the ground are absolutely crucial to making our arguments against conservatives regarding Georgia.

It’s Not All Groovy, Baby

Before President Clinton demolished the liberal base in the 1990’s, liberals were often smeared as new age hippy leftovers from the 60’s love generation. They’d say liberals have no limits, they’re for whatever feels good, man. Worse than that, they’d be painted as “Anti-War,” weaklings, afraid to use violence for fear of upsetting someone. Given that one of our core issues is opposition to the war in Iraq, and that we generally refer to any Iraq war opposition activities as “Anti-War,” we in the new liberal base are in very clear danger of falling prey to the very same political smears. The conflict in Georgia is the perfect opportunity for us to make crystal clear exactly what are limits are. We stand in opposition to distractions like Iraq, but we draw the line in the sand at dictatorships invading democracies, especially European ones. Even dense and backward newcomer democracies in the backwaters of the EU deserve the full and complete protection of the US military. While we liberals can indeed be quite open minded about things, Russians invading Europe is absolutely out of the question. This is our opportunity to make that explicitly clear.

So, what do you think? How can liberals best make their case vis a vis Russia and Georgia?

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