It turns out that Bush has recently been given yet another reason to imagine that he has been divinely pre-ordained to lead not only the nation, but indeed the world, in his efforts to spread democracy throughout the world. In other words, to translate, in his efforts to make the world safe for multi-national corporations to produce cheap goods with cheap labor paid with slave wages, and in the meantime to force the reduction of wages here in this country on the grounds of keeping America "competitive".
But he may have overstepped the bounds of propriety by involving himself in the recent elections in the Eastern European nation of Georgia, formerly a Socialist Republic of the old Soviet Union. While he was going for a friendly little drive with Vladimir Putin in the latters car in Russia, in what has to have been one of the silliest photo ops ever devised, he was chomping at the bits to ensure fair elections in the former Soviet republic, which Putin would dearly love to see fall back into the Russian sphere of influence.
After a speech before a crowd thousands of people in Georgia, folowing his meeting with Putin, a former Soviet officer lobbed a grenade in Bush's presence. The explosive failed to detonate, but even if it had, at one hundred feet distance from Bush with peope standing all around him and between him and the grenade, it is unlikely to have even injured Bush, at least not seriously. Yet, the attempt was made. Had it succeeded, it would have marked the first time a U.S. President would have ever been assinated on foreign soil. And the fall-out would have been devastating. Actually, it still might be. Just a few days ago, the former Soviet soldier, who had been identified thanks to the aid of surveillance cameras, had been taken into custody. As of yet, no word on his motivations.
I seriously doubt that Putin was involved in this business, though others somewhere within the Byzantine maze of the Russian bureaucracy may well have been. More than likely, the man acted on his own. It's hard to say. But even if this turns out to be the case, it says a lot for the poisonous state of our relations globally, that this type of bitterness could erupt. Things like this rarely happen in a vacuum.
Nor do I think Bush was wrong to encourage free elections in the new nation of Georgia, and to discourage Russian interference. However, he should realize that his recent policies have flayed a lot of nerves, in a lot of different ways, and it doesn't take a whole lot of input to have pretty much the effect of salt rubbed into a very raw wound.
