A couple of observations:

1. Cheney IS bluffing. What’s he going to do? Issue more empty threats? Domestic politics, the press, Dems, Liberals, etc. will NOT let the US do ANYTHING. Bush is a lame duck hanging around the Olympics, unable to do a thing. The US cannot even aid the Georgians without Dems pulling the plug.

2. That stupid core-gap theory has been exposed as monumentally idiotic. Instead you have ruthless leaders and nations, and those who are wet noodles. Putin doesn’t care about things Bush does: domestic opposition, the press, the international opinions. This allows him much more freedom of action.

3. Don’t bet that Russians have not also learned from failure, not prepared quite well to crush the Georgians, and have not looked very carefully at US tactics and strategy, with their own nasty surprises.

Georgia will probably fall in a week or so.

Yes of course no one will ally with us — because the US makes empty promises it cannot possibly keep, constrained by domestic politics and media and dems that all want a return to 1994, an endless party with Bono in Berlin, the “end of history” and all that fantasy utopia of unicorns and rainbows.

We can’t even fight in Afghanistan. Heck George Clooney is planning a reverent bio-pic of Hamdan, as a “martyr for civil rights” and Obama plans to use Winnie the Pooh as a guide (I’m not making this up) for foreign relations.

NATO is dead. So is Europe — empty shells dominated by Russia which controls along with Islam what happens there. America will need a great big Navy, global Air Force (likely with unmanned bombers), greatly expanded Marines and Army, and lots more nukes.

Unspoken in this is Russia’s counter-move should America be too noisy. Giving Osama a few nukes. It’s not like we could do anything in response to that. We are not feared. Period. We cannot be with Obama running for President.

And Georgia is proof positive on what dangerous men who deal in violence do when they do not fear consequences. They take. By force.