Cold War, Hot Blood

Friends,
I am just old enough to remember the "duck and cover" drills in grade school. I also remember the distinct feeling that we would all die when the "Cuban Missile Crisis" happened. These are not the good old days.

Peace and Love,
Rev O


Bring back the Cold WarBy Rocky Delgadillo Los Angeles Times Op/Ed
Rosa Brooks: What better way to re-live the neocons' glory days than by provoking Russia into military action?

"Among neocons and assorted righties, Cold War nostalgia has been widespread lately. And no wonder: Just compare the Cold War with the Global War on Terror. "Cold War" had a real ring to it. But "Global War on Terror"? Clumsy, and what a crummy acronym -- GWOT."

"The GWOT got off to a decent start, with Al Qaeda and the "axis of evil" to go after, but it turned out to be a dud. Maybe it was because having a "war" on "terror" never made much sense. Maybe it was because we quickly ran out of targets in Afghanistan and then became targets in Iraq (and now in Afghanistan too). Maybe it's because U.S.-sponsored torture didn't sit well with most Americans, who had actually taken to heart all that stuff about how we won the Cold War through the "power of our values."Whatever. Thanks to events in Georgia, we can put the tedium of the GWOT behind us and return to the Cold War.

"First, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we graciously provided a little economic "shock therapy" designed to turn our "defeated" former enemy into a prospering capitalist democracy. Regrettably, we instead helped plunge Russia into an economic catastrophe. This annoyed the Russians. But we continued to help by treating Russian officials as washed-up has-beens and by expanding NATO to include most of Russia's former satellites."

"Finally, the stars were in alignment. So when tiny Georgia rashly tried to seize control of separatist South Ossetia and the Russians responded with a massive military intervention, we understood that at last we had an opportunity to travel back in time -- to the Cold War. "

Carpe diem!" cried the neocons. So we demanded that the Russians withdraw from Georgia and giddily turned up the rhetorical volume (neocon pundits likened Russia's action to the 1939 and 1968 invasions of Czechoslovakia by, respectively, the Nazis and the Soviets). Then, last week, we added a few sweeteners to finalize our stalled missile defense deal with the Poles and arranged to have U.S. military personnel staff Polish air defense sites oriented toward Russia (at least "temporarily.") Because the Russians apparently miss the Cold War as much as we do, a top Russia general threatened Poland with nuclear retaliation. Ain't time travel grand? Let's build some more fallout shelters, too.