Web Letters: Warning to Obama on the New Cold War

Mr. Hayden's most imperative recommendation is that those supporting Obama "should step up their criticism of his hawkish mimicry of McCain, and consider lessening their support--though still voting for him--unless he distinguishes himself from McCain on the immediate crisis." The pressing need for sending such a signal to the presumptive candidate was made all the more urgent when Sen. Joe Biden recently met with the president and prime minister of Georgia. According to Politico, Biden made the trip in the interest of "further burnishing his foreign policy credentials ahead of Obama's decision."

Claiming to have seen no evidence supporting Russian assertions that the Georgian military was "engaged in a 'genocide' in the region of South Ossetia," Biden promised $1 billion to "help the people of Georgia to rebuild their country and preserve its democratic institutions." He also used the occasion of his journey as an opportunity to engage in his own "hawkish mimicry" of McCain's bellicose rhetoric toward the former Soviet Union.

"Russia's actions in Georgia will have consequences," Biden warned, as if to illustrate one of the most salient points of Tom Haden's "Warning to Obama on the New Cold War": "Because they are still mired in what Obama himself calls 'old thinking,' the Democratic hierarchy and the mainstream media will have to be challenged by the faithful and clear-headed rank-and-file and the blogosphere to recognize the Georgia Conspiracy."

Tom Hayden is spot-on with this article's warnings and wise counsel, and I, for one, plan to take up his challenge. Like Joe Biden, I'm "convinced that Russia's invasion of Georgia may be the one of the most significant event [[sic]] to occur in Europe since the end of communism." But the veep hopeful's oversimplification of the issues and his tough-guy terminology leave me all the more inspired by Hayden's recognition of the fact that "the peace movement and netroots will have to lead the battle against this attempt to reward the very people who brought us Iraq with another lease on power."

Randy Abel

Ludong University
Yantai, Shandong, China