When John McCain declared, "We are all Georgians now," Matthew Yglesias called it "mawkish sentimentality." I called it a perfectly appropriate way to express solidarity with the victim of aggression.
Now Mikhail Saakashvili has expressed his wish that Americans move from words to deeds. Yglesias sees this as proof he was right: Saakashvili expects us to back up our words with deeds. In fact it proves the opposite -- he understands perfectly well that words are different than deeds. Would Georgia prefer that the U.S. take stronger measures? Of course. But they'll take expressions of solidarity over nothing. Words are meaningful. If the world leaders are declaring Russia to be the aggressor and expressing their solidarity with Georgia, Russia is constrained in a way they wouldn't be if the rest of the world was mumbling equivocally.
--Jonathan Chait