Hand it to the conservatives for hypocrisy. They are proven masters of the flip-flop. Recall the Bush/Cheney blowhard punditocracy and their defamation of Obama and the Dems as "surrender monkeys" for insisting the US get out of Iraq, because the invasion was based on lies about WMD, and even bigger lies about Bush wanting to spread democracy in the Middle East.
Over the past week we have witnessed two masterful flip-flops on the question of how Bush and the US must deal with foreign affairs. First, it was appeasement of Russia: as reported by MATTHEW LEE and LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writers, on 15 Aug., Bush yielded to Russian demands and agreed to a deal on Georgia.
The new document would allow Russian peacekeepers who were in the disputed South Ossetia region before the fighting broke out a week ago to stay, and they would now be permitted to patrol in a strip up to six miles outside the area, U.S. officials said. But that allowance would be temporary, and details were still to be worked out, the officials said.
This is called appeasment, when one nation state grants a concession to an aggressive nation state, based on fear of that state's threats. Bush appeased Russia in its bid to partition Georgia and acquire Ossetia. BTW, Georgians living in Ossetia were ethnically cleansed. Not only do Russians get to own Ossetia, they get to "patrol" a buffer zone inside of Georgia.
Second, Bush turned into a surrender monkey when his government accepted a timetable for retreat of US troops from Iraq. He had been resisting this course of action for seven years. No timetables!!! No timetables!!! That would be surrender to the terrorists, under fire. Well, now Bush calls it a "time horizon". This is a classic right-wing flip-flop. I wonder what genius came up with this clever euphemism. Maitlin, Rove, Ingraham, or perhaps Rice herself?
What is so different in Iraq of now, as compared with that of say 2006? Answer, the Sunnis have been bribed into quiescence. The "surge" had nothig to do with it. It is the same type of thing the British did with tribes in Waziristan in the 19th century. If you are an imperialist and are having trouble with remote and savage tribes, just pay them off. But once you cut off the bribes, the knives will come out, as happened in 1948 and Indian independence. Muslim vs Hindu civil war.
I hope Obama skewers McShame on all of this GOP flip-flop bloody-minded hypocrisy in foreign affairs.