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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (2273)	9/10/2008 9:12:12 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

OK, Tim. Let me ask you a question that I truly don't understand though. When the west "recognizes" a country's right to independence, somehow that automatically makes it legitimate and defensible in a court of law. However, when Russia "recognizes" the independence of a state that has declared independence, then it is an unforgiveable meddling. How does that work? How can we not see the duplicity of that? You know, I used to never ask questions like this, until the US lost its moral authority over Abu Graib and this war of choice in Iraq and Bush's blatant favoring of the oil industry. Now I'm beginning to see that we are not a benign super power, but simply a self-interested one that has lost our idealism. Under Bush, we have been no better than Russia. So forgive me for not immediately agreeing that the US is being altruistic in our defense of Georgia. We're just falling back on our history of being the good guy and painting Russia as the bad guy successfully, because they have been the bad guy for so long. However, the fact is that both the US and Russia are in the game in Georgia for the same exact reasons and it has nothing to do with Democracy. It's all about securing oil supplies and that makes us no better than them. So how do we regain the high ground? We need to stop acting like bullies and get oil independent. Then we can act more altruistically and have leverage over bad actors around the world. Until then, we're just another part of the problem, not part of the solution.