I have a piece up at The Weekly Standard (neocon alert!) on why the crisis in the Caucasus may not be as dire as it appears:

A crucial aspect of this whole affair is that his pro-American orientation is not the will-o’-the-wisp that Musharraf’s is. Saakashvili wants badly for Georgia to join NATO and the European Union, and while he was busying cracking down on civil liberties last week, something progressive did occur in his country: Russia formally ended its military presence there. NATO had made this a prerequisite for further ratification of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and thus any consideration Georgia’s inclusion. On November 8, Andrei Popov, the commander of Russian military forces in the Caucasus, made good on the Kremlin’s 1999 promise and signed the papers that officially transferred control to Georgia of the last of its Soviet era bases in Batumi. So its NATO Membership Action Plan can now technically move forward.

Remarkably, even Georgia’s EU prospects have not been irreparably damaged by the state of emergency. The EU Special Representative to the south Caucasus, Peter Semneby, told EurasiaNet, “[I]f Georgia is successful now in turning the agenda towards the presidential elections, if the presidential elections are carried out successfully, then there should not be any lasting damage to these relations.” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has even announced on Polskie Radio that he will travel to Georgia soon to help resolve the Imedi impasse. He was solicited for this role by the United States and by the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Here is a fine example of how the United States and Europe can still resort to an effective carrot-and-stick diplomacy with iniquitous partners who still place high premiums on their military and economic ties to the West. The rumors of the Bush Doctrine’s death have been greatly exaggerated. It helps to compare Georgia not to Pakistan but to another often refractory and complicated ally: Turkey.

A Rose by Any Other Name - The Weekly Standard

Addendum by Will:  No need for bashfulness. Someone gets a profile here also.

Little reported outside of the local media in Norfolk was yesterday’s return from Afghanistan of the First Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment (“The Vikings”). Nine of its members died, and 57 were wounded, in some of the fiercest fighting the British Army has seen in a very long time.

Welcome home, soldiers, and thanks for a job well done!

Over at Harry’s Place they are discussing Timothy Garton Ash’s struggle with terminology to describe Islamic imperialists. Rather than being drawn into that debate, I’m more interested in those who do not wish to make the distinction between various strands of Muslim opinion. These people can roughly be divided into two groups, the first being left wingers who refuse to accept such terms and label them as Islamophobic - who are probably motivated by an unwillingness to accept terminology used by their political opponents. The second group are right wingers who see Islam as the central problem. One example of this crops up at Harrys Place in the comments:

I don’t like ‘Islamist’, one bit - because Islam is a political ideology anyway.

Despite the professed anti-fundamentalist stance of this commentator, he concedes too much to the fanatics. They do not represent all Muslims. Many Muslims do not want a theocracy - see the struggle in Iraq as an example.

His objection to Islamist is also undermined by his later choice of the term Koranic literalist, since that would suggest that he thinks there are followers of Islam who are not literalists - otherwise why make the distinction? The correct term for the group people like this have a problem with is Muslims, shown by their inability to accept there are people who can follow Islam without desiring its role in the political. I meet these types of people everyday, they are not hard to find.

Koranic literalism is also useless term, because it depends on the interpretation of literalism being used - one could be peaceable, one not. In addition, it ignores the point that modern day jihadists owe as much to Nazi anti-semitic propaganda and Western European totalitarian movements as to the religion they purport to represent, as people like Berman and Küntzel have put forward. Left wingers avoid terms like Islamist or Islamofacist precisely because they see it as endorsement of such ideas. They prefer to see a monolith of peacable people under attack from arrogant imperialist Western ideology, undermining the progressive forces under attack by Islamist forces. By not opposing extremism, they weaken moderates lengthening the time it will take to undermine Islamists - who will eventually lose as their fanaticism will never carry the majority (see the fall in support for Al Qaeda over the years).

What the right wing variant does is give the impression of a monolith of organised violent people who are not amenable to reform, have no interest in democratic states, and who can only be fought militarily. There are no moderates in this universe. They may as well say they have a problem with all Muslims and be done with it, since just like Osama they believe all Muslims, to be real Muslims, should comply with the most extreme interpretations of Islam. It is form of wish fulfillment for these people to be involved in some sort of religious war, and their adoption of Al Qaeda’s binary division of the world is ironic given their professed defence of democratic values. The only logical conclusion to their analysis is war without end.

See also Norman Geras for another discussion about Garton Ash’s piece.

LaRose by any other name would still be the guy who told his Indiana flock that devil-worshippers gave him shock therapy to erase his memory and dumped him in Minneapolis, and who now says the devil-worshippers were really an underworld crime gang, which he eluded by bicycle, and then assumed the identity of a guy who died in a car accident in New York, and so got himself a new wife, and got himself elected mayor of the Arkansas town where he has his own radio talk show.

“He seemed to be a great man, with integrity, honesty, a good rapport, he loved people, good communicator.”

Moral of story: Wear your collar backwards, get away with any old crap.

MEANWHILE: Best post from Canada today, here.