Conversations with Mikheil Saakashvili on Obama the Anti-War Candidate

The New York Times had a puff piece with Mikheil Saakashvili. (For the life of me, I keep on typing "Mikhail" which was the accepted Latin transliteration of Микаил and am tempted to type it, now, as Mik-HEIL just for cheap Godwin laughs. No, I don't like Saakashvili, not one bit.)

The article's title was "An American Friend."

No, not the Wim Winders film.

While John McCain's enthusiasm for military interventions, and the fact that his chief foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann is, err, was, a lobbyist for Georgia are well known, Obama enthusiasts prefer to think of their candidate as "anti-war."

Here's Saakashvili:

Did you watch our presidential debates? It sometimes seems like the one subject the candidates agreed on is the necessity of supporting your country, a former Soviet satellite state that has recently been warring with Russia. I was personally very surprised that the candidates were so passionate about Georgia. Of course, John McCain has been many times to Georgia and knows it firsthand. Obama said absolutely all the right things.

and

Do you think Georgia will be accepted into NATO in December, when the next vote is scheduled? It’s the $100 million question. I was reassured by Senator Obama, who said that we should have a NATO Membership Action Plan. Whether we get it, we’ll see.

As Pat Buchanan wrote at the height of the South Ossetian War of 2008,

From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.

Change? Hope? Admittedly, the belief that we should undertake military commitments to defend Georgia are a somewhat novel change, and one I hope no one seriously considers, but then again, I rarely get the change I hope for.