So much for light blogging.  The conflict between Russia and Georgia is a very important topic, and I want to say a few more things about it.  I have some thoughts on what Orthodox Christians here, in Europe and around the world ought to try to do to alleviate the suffering of our brethren in Ossetia, Georgia and Russia, as all of them have lost people in this conflict so far and will continue to suffer the costs of war even after an end to hostilities.  For the moment, I will say now what I should have said initially: we should pray especially for the Georgian and Ossetian peoples, who are suffering the brunt of this conflict, and ask that God spare their suffering lands from war and the invasion of enemies, and also for the God-preserved Russian land and her people.  It is tragic and deeply troubling that these three historically Orthodox peoples are shedding each other’s blood, and it is even more unfortunate that over the course of the last several centuries they have come to regard one another as enemies.  The reports of ethnic cleansing of Ossetians are disturbing, and I would like to think that they are exaggerated or false, but given the animus between Ossetians and Georgians they may prove to be true and a cause of perpetuating the conflict.  I hope that the hierarchs of all local Orthodox Churches will make unanimous appeals for peace and offer themselves as mediators as needed to aid in bringing these hostilities to a close.  Besides being dangerous for the entire region, this war is unnecessary and to the extent that it was never likely that Tbilisi could attain its objectives it is also unjust.

Concerning more immediate, practical assistance, International Orthodox Christian Charities has already posted their emergency appeal for aid regarding the conflict.  If you would like to help the relief efforts in the Caucasus, IOCC is a reliable and effective organization that will make good use of anything you are able to give.  As I find other alerts from charitable organizations and Church jurisdictions, I will include them in the updates. 

Update: Thanks to commenter ezekiel comes this item that includes Patriarch Alexy’s call for a cease-fire:

“I learned about armed clashes in Tskhinvali and its localities and I urge the opposing parties to cease fire and renew the dialogue,” Alexy II’s statement is quoted by the Moscow Patriarchate’s official website.

“Today blood is shed and people are killed in South Ossetia and my heart deeply laments over it. Orthodox Christians are among those who have raised their hands against each other. Orthodox peoples called by the Lord to live in fraternity and love confront each other,” the Church primate stresses.

Referring to the appeal of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia who urged to peace, Patriarch Alexy also turned his “ardent call” to those “who are blind with enmity”: “Stop! Don’t let more blood shed! Don’t let today’s conflict boil over! Show wisdom and courage: come to negotiating table to respect traditions, outlook and hopes of Georgian and Ossetian people.”

The Patriarch has stated the Russian Orthodox Church is ready to unite its efforts with the Georgian Church to help peace come. “May Our God, Who is “not a God of disorder but of peace,” be our Assistant in it,” Alexy II statement says.

I am very grateful for His Holiness’ appeal, and I hope that charity and Christian fraternity may prevail and bring a speedy end to this conflict.

Second Update: In Russian, here are reports on the Patriarchate’s website concerning the situation in Georgia. 

Third Update: The ICRC has made an appeal to the belligerents to facilitate humanitarian relief.

Fourth Update: I neglected to include this yesterday, but here is the statement from Catholicos Ilia II of Georgia:

Georgian authorities stand for peaceful settlement of the conflict and are ready to carry out the policy of peace. I hope the Ossetian party will not exacerbate the situation. Centuries-old friendship and family relations bond Georgian and Ossetian people and what is most important we are united with Christian faith and must live peacefully without blood.

It is particularly annoying when someone who is as knowledgeable about Russia as Anne Applebaum undoubtedly is resorts to the crudest, most inaccurate generalizations:

Russia, by contrast, is an unpredictable power, which makes a response more difficult. In fact, Russian politics have now become so utterly opaque that it is not easy to say why this particular “frozen” conflict has escalated right now.

Ah, yes, the wildly unpredictable Russians, who have so “unpredictably” responded negatively to NATO establishing missile defense sites in central Europe, NATO expansion up to their borders, open Western interference in the internal politics of their neighbors and the partition of Serbia.  Who can possibly know why they act as they do?  It can’t be as simple as looking at Russia’s interests as defined by the Russian government and recognizing that our policies conflict with those interests–Russian politics is so opaque!  When in doubt, I suppose one can always fall back on the patronizing riddle-wrapped-in-an-enigma stereotype.   

Russia has scarcely done anything in the last decade that could not have been predicted, and most of what Russia has done in response to U.S. policies in recent years was predicted by some of us in the form of warnings not to do the things Washington was doing.  For her part, Secretary Rice has often expressed puzzlement about the public statements by Putin and others critical of U.S. policy, which suggests that she knows the real reasons for the worsening relations with Moscow but prefers not to admit that Washington has contributed significantly to the decline in relations or she is genuinely clueless about the government of the one country in the world about which she is supposedly a top expert.  

The conflict escalated right now because Saakashvili followed through on his promises to establish Tbilisi’s control over South Ossetia and found that (surprise!) a contingent of armed Russians was still there, just as they have been for over a decade.  He had made feints towards South Ossetia in the past, but always drew back from the brink of sustained conflict, and believed that he had his chance while the world was preoccupied with the Beijing Games.  This is not a mystery.  The situation was made demonstrably worse earlier in the year with the recognition of independent Kosovo, which all but guaranteed that Russia would make a play to shore up the Ossetian and Abkhaz statelets.  I wish my column and posts on Kosovo recognition had been entirely wrong, but at least concerning the Georgian situation I am sorry to say that they were not.  The situation was further exacerbated by the promise of future NATO membership to Georgia, which probably encouraged Saakashvili to think that he had the West’s implicit backing for his agenda to assert control over the breakaway regions. 

Applebaum’s column is unfortunately another example in a long line of Western commentators who support all of the things that anger and provoke the Russians and then express shock and bewilderment that the Russians have become angry and lashed out in some way.  More worryingly, I fear that, in the minds of these observers, there is a complete disconnect of what is now happening in South Ossetia from NATO expansion, Kosovo independence or any of the other points of contention with Russia.  In many cases, though perhaps not in Applebaum’s, Western observers confess to not understanding why these things are happening because they are studying it as a purely isolated phenomenon in which U.S. and Western actions seem to have no part and for which none of us has any responsibility.  Unfortunately, just like Russian reactions to perceived international challenges, Western commentary on Russia is so very predictable. 

Also, it is not reassuring when Applebaum keeps referring to it as “the Caucuses.”  The people in the Caucasus aren’t in Iowa, and they’re definitely not voting. 

Update: Via James, I see that Saakashvili continues to be predictably ridiculous by issuing this declaration:

If the whole world does not stop Russia today, then Russian tanks will be able to reach any other European capital.

It would be easy to laugh this off as mere absurd posturing, except that the one who is saying it is the Georgian President and responsible for the start of a war.  The most frustrating thing about all of this is that his apologists in the West are going to ignore his role in precipitating this conflict, or absolve him of all responsibility if they do acknowledge his role, and will blame the conflict on a “lack of Western resolve” rather than the irredentist fantasies of Saakashvili.  On the radio this afternoon Medved was going on about the “threat” of Russian nationalism, which seems to be less of a threat to the people in South Ossetia than Georgian nationalism and no threat to the rest of us. 

Second Update: My Takimag colleagues Richard Spencer and Chris Roach have good posts on the conflict.

Third Update: They’re getting into the predictable warmongering spirit over at Commentary, complete with warnings of Russian expansionism that might have come from Saakashvili’s press office.

Posting will be light today, but James has updates on the very important story coming out of the Caucasus.  For as long as I can remember, I have warned that Saakashvili was reckless and dangerous, and with his bid to force re-integration of South Ossetia he provoked the inevitable Russian backlash.  You would think that someone who has been complaining for years that Russia is using the separatist states as nothing more than proxies would not then go ahead and launch an attack on one of the proxies!  But that is exactly what he did, and everyone should remember that it was Saakashvili who created the current crisis.   

To understand the Russian response, imagine how Americans would respond if Serbia launched an attack into Kosovo while our KFOR troops were still there, and then imagine how much stronger the U.S. response would be if, in the course of the attack to retake the province, our troops took casualties because of that attack.  These are the unfortunate, ruinous things that happen when state sovereignty is reduced to a meaningless phrase by past interventions and partitions, and the governments that attacked Yugoslavia over its internal affairs and partitioned Kosovo have no authority to find fault with what Russia is doing now.  McCain’s complaints about violations of Georgian sovereignty are especially rich coming from the likes of him.  Of course, these regions are part of Georgia, and ideally Georgian sovereignty should be respected, but the folly of Saakashvili has probably ensured that he will lose both South Ossetia and Abkhazia and maybe more than that before it is all over.     

P.S.  Remember, both Obama and McCain wanted Georgia to join NATO, and the Bush administration tried to have them admitted at the last meeting in Bucharest.  Had it not been for the resistance of several European governments, this small, ugly crisis could have potentially been the trigger for an international disaster that might have dragged in all of Europe and the U.S.  I assume that this does not just mean that Georgia won’t be allowed into NATO, but that it also means that eastward NATO expansion in its entirety will halt.  Of course, that would make sense.  If I know McCain and his obsessive Russophobia, he will take this episode as proof that we must make Georgia a member of NATO and must do it right now.

Update: James Joyner writes:

If the U.S. and Western Europe aren’t prepared to use force upon the invasion of Georgia by Russia, then we’ve got no business even considering inviting them to join the Alliance.

Of course, since Georgia is not in NATO, the U.S. and our European allies have no reason to be prepared to use force in this case.  We already had no business in considering inviting Georgia into NATO, and this new conflict drives home why it was always a terrible idea.  We should all be grateful that Western governments are not prepared to use force to respond to this.  The dangers from the general war that could possibly follow are almost too grave to contemplate.  If other powers work to bring the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table, rather than backing the incomparably weaker state and prolonging the conflict, we can avoid the sort of blunders that made the July crisis such a disaster in 1914.  Small regional wars become global crises only when all of the major powers feel compelled to “do something” about them.  Had proponents of expansion had their way last year or earlier, we would be on the cusp of such a crisis right now.

I should add that there might have been a different, but also very undesirable outcome if Georgia had been welcomed into NATO and Saakashvili decided recklessly, just as he has now done, to test how far the Alliance would go only to be told that he was on his own.  It would avoid a broader war, but that would have made NATO security guarantees to all recent member states worthless and confirm that NATO is truly not a defensive alliance at all.  No matter which scenario had played out following Georgian entry into NATO, this outbreak of conflict would either have led to disaster or would have revealed NATO’s promises to be empty.  As I see it, the most worrisome thing is that we have already made security guarantees to other states that border Russia, some of which have significant Russian minorities that might become the focus of irredentism or separatism in the future, and it is not clear to me that we are really any more willing to go to war to defend those states than we would have been to defend Georgia.

Second Update: Robert Farley has a good, balanced post about the conflict.

I know David Brooks can’t really be serious when he says things like this, but this is at least the second grand pronouncement this week* and it’s getting out of hand:

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed [bold mine-DL]. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.

No, human character did not change.  One thing that has been consistent and recognizable throughout every stage of competing for status and gadget-collecting is the enduring human temptation to fall prey to the latest fad.  I will agree that MySpace is rather like a leisure suit and will be regarded in a very short time to be as tacky and embarrassing as the latter has since come to be, and not just because more interesting social network tools are created, but because it will lose its allure once the novelty wears off.  At the most it will simply become a commonplace thing, no more remarkable in ten or twenty years than CD players were in the late ’90s or DVRs are today. 

The beauty of these silly fads today is that they pass so much more quickly than they once did, if only to be replaced by yet another fad.  It’s like when I was growing up and my friends and I were so enamored of Linux partly because it was experimental, open-source and new, and within a decade it had become a standard for use in major corporate operations.  One day, and it is not very far away, the iPhone will seem to us and our children to be as clunky as a rotary telephone seems now, and we will wonder what the fuss was about.  The most reassuring thing about all of this is that none of this status competition of obtaining and using gadgets really matters, and by its very transitory nature it confirms for us that it doesn’t matter.    

*The first pronouncement was “globosclerosis” (a.k.a., normality).

Remarking on recent Spanish successes in sports and elsewhere, Steven Stark adds:

Barack Obama recently returned from a celebrated international tour, where he stopped in Germany, France, and England. Alas, it was a political sightseeing trip better suited to the politics of the continent a century ago, before the outbreak of World War I. No Spain, no central Europe, not to mention no East Asia. Obama’s “New World” looked an awful lot like the old one.

Well, I suppose, but think about the foreign and domestic political implications of all this and the amount of time required to pay attention to rising countries and Asian allies.  Visiting Spain would have provoked countless attacks along the lines of “Obama visits Zapatero, who abandoned the war in Iraq and surrendered to terror…just like Obama would!”  These would be hyperbolic, absurd attacks, as the attacks on Zapatero have been, but it would not be the sort of meeting Obama wants to be seen having four months before an election.  If he went to central Europe, which countries would he visit and which ones would he end up skipping (and thus implicitly slighting) in the interests of time?  In terms of the capacity to project power, economic might and population, Britain, France and Germany remain the foremost countries in Europe and, at least in that sense, they are our most important allies in Europe.  East Asia is filled with political landmines, and going there would also draw attention to the rather glaring omission of East Asian issues from all of his relevantforeign policy statements.  If his Russia policy is scanty, his recently stated policy for China could easily be confused for what passes for McCain’s, and his policies for Korea and Japan are essentially unknown.  While it is not in East Asia, India appears nowhere in his major statements, and the extent of his campaign’s references to U.S.-Indian relations is, so far as I know, his campaign’s dismissive description of Hillary Clinton as the Senator for Punjab.  To his credit, Obama prioritized his visits with current U.S. needs and major alliances in mind, but his choice of locations is also a reminder that there are many allies in Asia, including some of our most important long-term trading partners, he has not touched on very much at all in his public remarks.

Despite being endorsed by Steve Cohen, the representative for TN-09, and despite a wave of crude attacks on Cohen from the challenger Nikki Tinker that make the anti-Obama McCain ads look like children’s programming, Obama has not endorsed Cohen, the overwhelming favorite for re-nomination in a majority black district today, on the dubious grounds that he doesn’t want to interfere in a primary.  As FirstRead’s Mark Murray points out, however, Obama was willing to do a radio spot endorsing John Barrow in Georgia (who did not endorse until after Obama won the Georgia primary), much to the consternation of progressive bloggers. 

Even though he has a vastly more progressive record than his predecessor, Harold Ford, and he is the incumbent, Cohen did not receive the backing of the candidate he endorsed on the eve of Super Tuesday.  Unlike many members of the CBC, which Cohen briefly considered joining because of the composition of his district before the Caucus leadership told him to go away, Cohen backed Obama when there was little obvious advantage in doing so.  While this move on his part may have helped him with his constituents, this seems to be another case of Obama forgetting about the people who helped propel him to where he is today.  For progressives, it is just another warning that he will not stand up for progressive candidates even when they are very popular incumbents.

Update: An angle to this story that has since occurred to me is that Obama may have refrained from endorsing Cohen because of the latter’s opposition to the Armenian genocide resolution last year.  As longtime readers will remember, I have urged the adoption of this resolution in recognition that the Armenians did suffer from a planned genocidal campaign during WWI, and I had a column making that case in TAC last November (one of my most unpopular columns so far!).  Obama was and remains a supporter of recognition, and it might be that Obama knows about the strong opposition to Cohen from Armenian-American activists that would make him wary of endorsing Cohen.  That might resolve the apparent contradiction with the Barrow endorsement, since Barrow was a co-sponsor of the resolution.  All of that must remain speculative.  In the end, Cohen threw his support to Obama early on and has not been repaid for his loyalty.

Second Update: Check in with our man in Tennessee, A.C. Kleinheider, for Tennessee primary results and commentary.  As he reports, an additional aspect of this story is that Tinker is seen as representing the Ford family rivalry with Cohen, which dates back to the Ford-Cohen face-off in 1996, and Harold Ford Jr.’s wife donated the maximum to Tinker’s campaign.  Ford has now denounced Tinker’s tactics, which Kleinheider considers a very significant move for any Memphis-based pol.

Certainly, greater religious intensity and more frequent religious practice among evangelicals may account for why they are more likely to be pro-life than Catholics, but there are probably a couple of other reasons that may be equally important.  Just as Ross has observed when discussing Obama and “the Catholic vote,” Catholics are more or less fully assimlated in American society and so an article that highlights the divided views of American Catholics on abortion is a bit like an article headlined, “Americans Disagree About Controversial Issue, May Affect Election.”  

As Kilgore suggests, Catholics are on the whole more accommodating of mainstream American culture, while evangelicals make considerable conscious effort (however unsuccessful) to belong to a counter-culture or, perhaps to be more accurate, many seek to establish political markers in lieu of a real counter-culture while creating their own versions of mainstream cultural products.  As Kilgore correctly observes, “they [evangelicals] are famously enthusiastic about adopting contemporary culture in their own liturgical and missionary practices,” but this should be understood as a case of appropriation rather than accommodation and acceptance.  At the same time, my guess is that American Catholics are relatively more pro-choice as a group than their counterparts in other industralized countries for a few reasons.  First, there is no tradition of organized political Catholicism or Christian Democracy here as there is in many European countries, and the history anti-Catholicism in U.S. politics may have discouraged the expression of political views that could be directly related to Catholic Church teaching, so there has not been a natural vehicle for mobilizing Catholic voters in the same way as in, say, Bavaria.  There is also probably a certain reluctance to breach the mythical “wall of separation” that dovetails nicely with the current Democratic platform.  Many American Catholics remain tied to the party supported by their ancestors, that party has since become adamantly pro-choice and a generation of Democratic Catholic office-holders has promoted the idea that one can support legal abortion without compromising Catholicism, which combines with the very American resistance to obeying episcopal authority in “private” matters that has grown up in the Catholic Church in the U.S. in the last few decades. 

This helps to explain why Obama’s position on abortion, as thoroughly pro-choice as it is, will not hurt him much among white Catholic voters, whose support for Obama keeps growing, and it will continue to drive evangelicals away from him.  This has indeed been happening according to the last Pew survey, as Obama lost five points among evangelicals to fall to a lowly 20% and gained seven points to take the lead among white, non-Hispanic Catholics.  This is why Obama will not make a “move to the center” on abortion: all things considered, it is unnecessary.

Quoth the mayor of Newark:

I want people to ask me about nonproliferation. I want them to run to me to speak about the situation in the Middle East.

It seems to me that Cory Booker should be in a different line of work if he wants people to ask him about nonproliferation, much less run to him to talk about Middle Eastern politics.  This came from an interesting part of Matt Bai’s article on whether Obama represented “the end of black politics,” which included Booker’s remarks that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed simply as a black leader and identified with the standard issues of “profiling by police, incarceration rates, [and] flagging urban economies.”  While I suppose this desire is understandable if a politician aspires to statewide or national office, I still find it rather odd.  Presumably, whatever one thinks about typical Democratic views on these issues, the Democrats who espouse them think that they are representing their constituents’ interests by taking these positions.  Whether they are, in fact, representing their constituents’ best interests is the subject of debate, but it does seem a little curious that a politician wouldn’t want to be identified with issues on which he thinks he has the right ideas.  It seems to me that there are many Republicans who have this same defensive attitude when it comes to social issues (John McCain leaps to mind), as if they are glad to receive votes and take money from donors on the basis of these things but are clearly embarrassed to be associated with the people and the issues in question.  It is fitting, I suppose, that this dynamic seems to apply most to the issues important to those two constituencies that provide the most loyal support for their respective parties–blacks and socially conservative Christians–and are most taken for granted by the parties. 

On the right, there is the same desire to break out of stereotypes, whether it is Sam Brownback talking about Darfur and prison reform or Rick Santorum pushing debt relief for developing countries, but at least on the Republican side this has the unfortunate effect of strengthening the worst activist and interventionist tendencies already present in the party.  The effort to carve out a different political identity that goes beyond a relatively “narrow” social issue focus unfortunately seems to result in something of a grab-bag agenda that adopts faddish proposals in no small part for their ability to shock and surprise journalists and political opponents.  It’s worth pondering which bad Democratic habits will be reinforced as black politicians become more prominent as state and national leaders.

John Schwenkler points us to this summary of an appearance by Rick Santorum at the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life:

After he’d accused Obama and other Democrats of religoius fraudulance for a few minutes, journalist Terry Mattingly of GetReligion.org asked whether it’s possible that rather than being fake, perhaps,Obama was sincerely reflecting a form of liberal Christianity in the tradition of Reinhold Neibuhr. Santorum surprised me by answering that yes, “I could buy that.”

However, he questioned whether liberal christianity [sic] was really, well, Christian. “You’re a liberal something, but your not a Christian.” He continued, “When you take a salvation story and turn it into a liberation story you’ve abandoned Christiandom [sic] and I don’t think you have a right to claim it.”

The troubling thing I find in the summary is not that a Republican imputes bad (or rather non-existent) faith to professing Christians in the other party, since it is also pretty much standard fare for liberals to get on their own soapboxes and assure everyone that real Christians could never support a given GOP policy, or they may insist that it is hypocritical to confess Christ and endorse, say, tax cuts.  (Sometimes, when it comes to things as heinous as legal abortion, torture or aggressive war, there is certainly a valid argument that Christians shouldn’t support such things, but that would apply to Christians on both left and right.)  It’s not a particularly attractive habit, but it is one that we come to expect from partisans.  What I find troubling is that Santorum feels free to see-saw between the correct understanding that he cannot know–and should not judge–whether Obama’s faith is sincere and the partisan talking point that he joined his church only for political advantage.  God alone knows all the reasons why Obama joined his church, and if that’s true you cannot conclude categorically that Obama joined his church simply for political gain.  (Was there a political dimension to his membership?  Of course there was, and it would be a bit surprising if that weren’t somewhat true for politically engaged conservative Christians as well.)

In fact, Santorum’s critique of liberal Christianity as theologically deficient or misguided is where he is on the strongest ground, because doctrine is something that can and should be assessed critically.  It is quite reasonable to conclude that Obama, among others, is a sincere liberal Protestant who is therefore going theologically awry because he is a sincere liberal Protestant, but you cannot simultaneously find fault with his doctrine while also saying that he doesn’t really believe it and then expect to be taken seriously.  It is one thing to say that a given church or doctrine lacks the fullness of the truth and is therefore necessarily spiritually lacking, but it is something else all together to claim that those who believe in that doctrine are engaged in a massive fraud by merely pretending to believe.  The first is a reasonable, defensible position, while the second is pretty much baseless character assassination.