How To Speak Mush.

Michael Cooper, "War Puts Focus on McCain's Hard Line on Russia". August 12

His hard line has been derided as provocative, and possibly dangerous, by some so-called realist foreign policy experts, who warn that isolating Russia would do little to encourage it to change. But others, including neoconservatives who deem promoting democracy a paramount goal, see Mr. McCain’s position as principled, and prescient. Now, with Russia moving forcefully into Georgia as Mr. McCain seeks the presidency, his views are being scrutinized as never before through the prism of Russia’s invasion.

1) So-called realists? If there's some sense in which this does not, in fact, qualify as Real realism I for one would sure like to hear Mr. Cooper explain it. 2) Others, including neoconservatives? Here I'd just like Mr. Cooper to explain the construction. Is it intended to show that neoconservatives have garnered support from other points on the political spectrum? To deny that Mr. Cooper was singling them out for their so-called incoherent irrationalism? Why bring them into it at all, except as a kind of shorthand for conventional wisdom? There is one option, and one alone, for repelling the Russian army without availing ourselves of the one we no longer have: we could start WWXVI, at last count, in the name of spreading democracy. Let's hear the neoncons, and "others", say that. 3) Similarly, McCain's views have had all the scrutiny they require, in Iraq and Afghanistan, supposing that we need to actually poke our own eyes out in order to understand sightlessness. The only people who weren't scrutinizing it beforehand were the very people paid to do so, but who have a personal interest in a blustering, expansionist--and already dead and buried--US foreign policy.