Conflicted

Back on the 2nd of December I blogged back on my own site about the Guardian's apparent newsroom civil war about the Ukraine. (Es wohnen, ach, zwei Seelen in meiner Brust..) On one side we had the news section and the grand liberal hawks like Aaronovitch and Tim Garton Ash, on the other the conspiracy/nouveau marxist gabblers like John Laughland. Lacking consensus, I opined, the Grauniad had simply let both sets bloviate to their heart's content.

Today, the paper ran this leader, a rather strained effort to incorporate both factions. Almost exactly the first half of the story recognises that the regime are bastards enough to resort to assassination and that the Ukraine will be better off once the bums are kicked out. But then, half-way through the second par, there is a shuddering metallic clunk and bloviation mode is engaged.

"Yet with each seismic tremor in the post Soviet world - the fall of Slobodan Milosevic and of Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia, and now Ukraine - Washington's presence has become sharper all over Russia's near abroad."

Don't let's be nasty to the old genocidaire, eh? But the piece de resistance is yet to come - the last paragraph declares that

"the question Washington should be asking is whether its new "muscular democracy" helps or hinders the long-term prospects of democrats in Eastern Europe. To what extent do the cold war veterans around Bush and the KGB veterans around Putin merely play into each other's hands?"

Now what the hell does this actually mean? We should refrain from supporting democrats in "Eastern Europe" (which is where exactly?) because it's better for them in the long run if they suffer a few more years? Frankly, who cares about either side's cold war veterans if life is better for those most concerned, those democrats in "Eastern Europe"? This is not good enough.

(Note - French accents removed due to incorrect rendering)