"........then what good is American policy?"

Soli Ozel, in the WaPo, here via War&Piece

"...I find the Russian assault against Georgia illegal and disproportionate and I think the Kremlin's regime is brutal. But then again, would anyone take seriously Paris, whose complicity in the Rwandan genocide was recently reiterated, or Washington, which invaded a country (illegally and illegitimately by the judgment of most of the world) and made torture legal, when they accuse Russia of anything? So for every country that wants to contain Russia you may find one or two that see it as a counterweight to the United States and a good response to Western conceit. What I am getting at is the question of legitimacy. The West has lost the upper hand on this because of double standards and increasingly misplaced arrogance, not to mention the lack of a coherent strategy supported wholeheartedly on both sides of the Atlantic..."