Open thread on the Russia-Georgia conflict

I'm still trying to cobble together a working picture of what's happening on the ground, so I don't want to weigh in on what's happening. Nevertheless, I recognize that it's a big deal, and that commenters may want to talk about it, so here's a place to do so. Just for sake of argument (and to give you something to initially argue back against) let's frame the question like this, initially: if we have no interests adverse to Russia's, and several in common, and if we think that it's important to make a firm ally of Russia, should we really jeopardize that over Russia's back yard? Or should we view this as the reoccupation of the Rhineland and worry that accommodation can easily become appeasement?

Leave your $0.02 in the comments, and for those of you who haven't registered to comment, please take this as an opportunity to take thirty seconds to do so and to weigh in.

Added: Robert Kagan's piece on all this is worth reading, but his claim that Putin "has reestablished a virtual czarist rule in Russia" is very nearly as overheated as the claims from the left that Bush is a virtual dictator in this country. I'd also add that Kagan's assertion that "a geopolitical power struggle has emerged between a resurgent and revanchist Russia on one side and the European Union and the United States on the other" begs an exceedingly important question (one Kagan doesn't answer): why is the United States on the other side of this supposed power struggle, if indeed there is one? Are we? Should we be? Even if you think the answers to these questions are easy, they're questions that merit conscious consideration.

And: McCain:

Post facto:
Orbital redecoration (8/13/08)
McCain Says (8/14/08)
Pushing the first domino (8/14/08)
Making sense of Russia v. Georgia (8/15/08)