Bill Mitchell: Russian Invasion

Originally uploaded by sandrino

Jon Ponder

One of the most dire repercussions of George Bush’s misbegotten invasion of Iraq in 2003 is that it has undermined U.S. credibility in speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Georgia today. Of course, having no credibility has never stopped Bush and his aides from speaking out, and it is not stopping them now.

At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council this week, the brazen hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s mindset was put on full display. First, U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Russia of trying to topple the leader of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili — to which Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Chuckin, responded in a news conference after the meeting, “‘Regime change’ is purely an American invention.”

At the news conference, Khalilzad dug the hole of U.S. hypocrisy even deeper: “We want to make sure our Russian colleagues understand, ” he told reporters later, “that the days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe — those days are gone.” (The emphasis was Khalilzad’s.)

As comedian Jon Stewart pointed out, “It’s amazing how adding the phrase ‘in Europe’ makes our actions [in Iraq] more palatable.”

Of course, Bush and his associates have been accused of far worse things than hypocrisy — including war crimes, lying to Congress and criminal neglect while an American city drowned, just for starters — and they have yet to be held accountable or suffer any repercussions.

Luckily for them, however — except for Stewart on his comedy news show — there hasn’t been any criticism in the American corporate media of these and other outrageous pronouncements by Bush and his senior foreign policy officials.