Marching through Georgia?

I tend to think Thomas Friedman is too much of a globalist for my admittedly America First taste. So I was pleasantly surprised when a friend emailed me this column:

On Wednesday, The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline that caught my eye: “U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia.” Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia.

We’re going to spend $1 billion to fix the Georgia between Russia and Turkey, not the one between South Carolina and Florida.

Sorry, but the thought of us spending $1 billion to repair a country whose president, though a democrat, recklessly provoked a war with a brutish Russia, which was itching to bash its neighbor, makes no sense to me.

...where are our priorities? How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Georgia. Which is the priority? Americans are struggling to meet their mortgages, and we’re sending $1 billion to a country whose president behaved irresponsibly, just to poke Vladimir Putin in the eye.

Meanwhile, the sudden change in Air Force leadership may have come just in the nick of time, if these comments by former Secretary Wynne indicate his predilection for twisting the Bear's tail:

Michael Wynne, recently-fired Air Force Secretary, says we should have gone a big step further in siding with Georgia. As in, a World War III-size step. Military.com published Wynne's editorial yesterday:

We could have flown Global Hawks or U-2s on the Russian-Georgian border to signal our watchfulness to the Russians. We could have escorted these assets with the F-22s, which fly at high enough altitude to operate as a defense of unmanned assets, or can operate to defend key assets in Georgia. If the Russians determined to invade, we could have strengthened air defenses of key Georgian positions, provided fighter re-enforcements, and placed Special Forces or Marines on the ground in the national capital.

Holy pointless apocalypse, Batman!

Indeed. Seems like ever since Sherman marched through Georgia in the 1860s, our nation's had a tendency to jump into pointless international quagmires. Do we really need to add another one to our plate?