Josh Marshall has free passes for Georgia

Well, actually, the TPM honchos freebies are for the Obama-Biden campaign on Georgia, as Josh claims it has a significant difference with McCain-Palin on this issue.

Here’s Josh:

It's true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia's accession into NATO -- a very bad policy position, as I've argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain's positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter's favor. But there's a big difference.

And, here’s my response:

Given the ultimate reason WHY both political campaigns of the “bipartisan foreign policy establishment” want Georgia in NATO — a three-letter word called “oil” — I think your “Clinton ain’t a neocon” analogy doesn’t carry the freight, Josh.

BOTH campaigns favor the same thing — NATO membership. Neither has proposed NATO observer status or some other “NATO lite.”

Both campaigns, in essence, we’re willing to back Georgia in a war against Russia.

(Either that, or they’re lying through their teeth.)

As I’ve said before on my blog, this bears a lot of parallels to Iraq, which Obama criticized in 2002. In this case, we’ve got a “friendly” regime already in power, it’s just a question of keeping it in power for oil access, which NATO membership would ramp up.