Ancient Christian Witness

"As Russia sees it, Bill Clinton turned the American Air
Force into air support for an Islamic revolution against the Orthodox world. The
attack against the Serbian homeland was an exercise of naiveté equivalent to
bombing Vatican City then wondering why Roman Catholics might be upset and stay
upset. Then George Bush decided it would be a good idea to place a missile
defense system in Poland, disregard Russia's advice and invade Iraq and further
insult and encircle the heart of the Eastern Orthodox world.

It takes a
special breed of a-historical American president who is steeped in the
Protestant idea of denominationalism; wherein Methodists, Presbyterians,
Southern Baptists etc., all do their thing and somehow get along, to so
thoroughly misunderstand the fact that Russia is reemerging first and foremost
as a country reconnecting with its Orthodox historical imperial roots. We just
have no concept of blood ties, soil and holy tradition in America. Since we
don't take tradition seriously we can't believe that anyone else does.

For us the bottom line is always expediency and "what works." But in
other parts of the world national pride is tied to a continuity of historic
tradition (as was just demonstrated so beautifully in the opening ceremonies at
the Beijing Olympics steeped as they were in Confucianism, and imperial
history.)

In Russia's case its public humiliation at the hands of the
United States, following the Cold War, could not have been designed better to
have produced the invasion of Georgia. What's going on is the slow-motion
counterattack of the Orthodox world against the West's latest crusade. Georgia
is just a symbol for the counter-punch to the modern version of the West's sack
of Constantinople in 1204.

Bill Clinton bombed Russia's closest and
oldest Orthodox ally into submission and did so to send a half-baked and
ill-conceived (utterly useless) message to the Islamic world that while we might
favor Israel 99% of the time, once in a while we would throw the Muslim world a
scrap. Note: America's actions in Serbia never were about halting ethnic
cleansing. If that had been our motivation the same president that was bombing
bridges in heart of Orthodox Europe while taking sides in a civil war, would
have bombed Rwanda then (and we'd be in Darfur now) and have stopped those
actual genocides. And now Russia is sending a message too, by attacking the
pro-Western Georgia. And, yes, Georgia is also an Orthodox country, but it too
is being used to send a message: we will hit back."