Stone on Georgia conflict at HNN

"There is a great deal of blame to go around for the disastrous war over South Ossetia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili deserves the greatest share, for starting a war to reassert control over South Ossetia that Russia can now finish on its own terms."

This from David Stone at History News Network. I have to agree. Saakashvili has demonstrated an uncanny ability to unhinge diplomacy with rash statements and actions. Nevertheless, as Stone then states, Russia has taken the opportunity to exercise the utmost tyranny. He goes on to note the role of precedents set by American actions in Kosovo. Ah, that fateful law of unintended consequences!

Russia without honor

Russia has clearly violated the Olympic Truce (among others). Should not the Russian Olympic athletes be stripped of their medals and banned from the Beijing games?

Goodbye Solzhenitsyn

A hero fell today: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, prophetic scourge of the late Soviet Empire (and, in many ways, of the waning American Empire), died today at the age of 89. He burst upon the international literary scene in 1962 with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a book about life in the Siberian gulag. I read it years ago, but as I recall, it's a strangely optimistic book in the sense that grace, brotherhood, and love of life thrive even amidst horrible political oppression. It's also one of the few (only?) classics of 20th-century literature that portrays a Baptist in a positive light.

After publishing One Day in the Life in the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn defected to the United States and exposed the horrific conditions behind the Iron Curtain. Though it's hard to believe today, many Western intellectuals embraced the Soviet experiment even up to that time. However, Solzhenitsyn's courage to tell the truth of the ill-fated Russian communist experiment played a key role in the thaw of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Be sure to read his 1978 Harvard address. Also check out the Solzhenitsyn Reader. And here is a lengthy eulogy from the New York Times.

(I received the news via telephone from Tokyo - thanks for the tip, Josh.)