Billions for bullets...

...but nothing for broadcasts and communication between nations:

Ten days before Russian tanks and infantry invaded the democratic and pro-Western Republic of Georgia, the federal government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) terminated all Voice of America (VoA) radio broadcasts to Russia, The Washington Examiner has learned. This means that throughout the still unfolding international crisis, a key communications tool that helped win the Cold War for the United States has been mute.

Even after the invasion, pleas to the BBG by VoA’s Russian experts to go back on the air fell on deaf ears. Two remaining surrogate services that employ foreign journalists sound like the “Kremlin’s mouthpiece,” according to an e-mail from a Russian listener.

VoA employees are still working overtime to broadcast to Georgia, but they have also been informed that their mics will go dead Sept. 30. Dismantling such a proven means of communication with people trapped inside hostile regimes is so astonishingly stupid, it makes one wonder what planet members of the BBG board have been living on. And it’s not for want of funds, since Congress reversed the board’s proposed cuts in its markup of the agency’s 2009 appropriations bill just last month.

This doesn't surprise me as much as it might have five years ago. Our leaders have made a conscious choice to bludgeon that which they don't like, instead of using persuasion. "Soft power?" We don't know the meaning of the term anymore.

Then again, the way we govern and conduct ourselves, our view of things may not be all that persuasive anymore. So maybe they have a point. Scary thought.