While you can't blame the Bushies for being frustrated that everything is blamed on Dubya (and his dubious record speaks for itself), foreign policy is clearly not his strong suit. To be fair, Dubya has not been wrong on everything; after all he did use Karl Rove to run a brilliant political agenda, albeit with a strong Machiavellian flavor.

Dubya employs a consistently simplistic approach to resolving issues. While that can be good in some cases, foreign relations is that area that almost always is made up of complicated nuances, and where most everything is played out in muddled shades of gray. Not exactly Dubya's area of expertise, nor the people he surrounds himself (political hacks and neo-cons) with and places them in positions that demand only the most seasoned professionals, namely foreign policy domain experts. I have only to think of Paul Bremer and his Young Republican incompetence corps running the clusterfuck in post-invasion Iraq.

If Dubya indicates to the Georgians that he will support them, then he has an obligation to follow through. Or perhaps he should have consulted with a few of the other members of NATO in the EU to get their input before he made such commitments. Putin complains that the U.S. is reverting to a Cold War mentality. We won that war because we stood our ground with a strong NATO. That is why Putin hates the idea of losing yet another former satellite to NATO, but this entire issue is one that should be multilateral NATO action, if action is indeed called for. We need to support all independent democracies like Georgia, but the reality is Dubya has no clue in how to handle the situation with a Russia that is acting more like the former Soviet Union than a member of the G8.