I wonder if this would have happened had the USA not recognized Kosovo as a new "country" a few months ago? That kind of gave Russia the excuse to invade and demand independance for South Ossetia.

I think that's sort of like trying to pin Katrina on global warming. Yes, it made the event more probable, but you can't say definitively that it was the cause. The Russians were obviously looking for any excuse.

The bigger point is that every single thing the Bush administration has done (and McCain has argued for, along with much, much more) in regards to Georgia was directed at provoking Russia and/or giving the Georgians the false hope that we would come to their aid. I mean, damn:

Since 2002, the U.S. military has been providing Georgia with a serious amount of military assistance, beginning with the Georgia Train and Equip Program in 2002. I first visited Georgia’s Krtsanisi training range in fall of 2002, when the Georgian military was still little more of a militia, with some of the troops wearing sneakers and surplus Soviet uniforms. The U.S. trainers carried sidearms – mostly, as I was told later, to deal with the threat of wild dogs roaming the training ground.

When I returned to Krtsanisi in early 2006, the place had been transformed into a model base. It even had a sparkling new KBR-style dining facility. The Georgian troops were smartly decked out in U.S.-style uniforms; they were preparing for a troop rotation in Iraq.

Officially, SSOP was supposed to prepare Georgians for service in Iraq. But Georgian trainees I spoke to in 2006 at the Krtsanisi training range saw things a bit differently. A female sergeant told me: “This training is incredibly important for us, because we want to take back Georgia’s lost territories.”

and:

the larger concern has been that Georgia might be tempted to use its newfound military prowess to resolve domestic conflicts by force.

As Sergei Shamba, the foreign affairs minister of Abkhazia, told me in 2006: “The Georgians are euphoric because they have been equipped, trained, that they have gained military experience in Iraq. It feeds this revanchist mood… How can South Ossetia be demilitarized, when all of Georgia is bristling with weaponry, and it’s only an hour’s ride by tank from Tbilisi to Tskhinvali?”

One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more bluntly. “We’re giving them the knife,” he said. “Will they use it?”

These things also served to undermine arguments that could be used to cast the Russians as the agressors on the international stage.

It fits the pattern with the other examples I listed above:

- a complete misreading of the local political situation

- a complete misleading of the relative military capacities of the actors

- a complete failure to anticipate the likeliest outcome, and to recognize how the outcome would in fact narrow American options - not increase them

Great:

John McCain’s presidential campaign and his supporters are pressing the argument that the escalating conflict in Georgia verifies the Republican’s foreign policy judgment and gives him a boost against his Democratic opponent Barack Obama."

Insert innocent victims in one end; extract political sausage on the other. Magically delicious.