I always get some criticism when I look at a conflict someplace in the world, consider the arguments of both sides, and decide that there aren't any good guys in the fight. There's something in American thinking that requires every fight to be a fight of good against evil. We choose sides, cast the conflict in incredibly simplistic terms, and decide that the team we're backing isn't just faultless, but incapable of wrong. For a long-standing example of this, look at the popular conception of Israel vs. the Palestinians. Israel -- despite consistently damning reports by Amnesty International -- is practically angelic in the average American's mind.
These good guy/bad guy narratives have seemed to spring up overnight in recent history. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait supposedly came out of nowhere. But the truth is that Kuwaitis had been stealing Iraqi oil through "slant drilling" at the Iraqi border. While no one would argue that Hussein's actions weren't excessive, only those who don't know the facts would say they were unprovoked -- which, given the sorry state of our media, would be pretty much everyone. The invasion of Kuwait was never presented as a dictator vs. thieves. For the home audience, it was bad guy vs. good guys.
And we're seeing the same thing in the Russo-Georgian crisis. There aren't any good guys there, no one we should root for on merely moral grounds. In the conflict, there's no real case to make for the legality of Russia's invasion -- it's pretty much unquestionably a crime. But another question is whether Georgia deserves to be seen as heroic. Not every victim of a crime is a solid citizen; criminal on criminal violence is awfully commonplace...
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