If I were still writing editorials, I would comment on, and condemn, Russia’s use of its military against Georgia. I would also have something to say about the Bush administration’s huffing and puffing about Russian aggression. The point I would make is that the U.S. set a terrible example for how nations should behave with its invasion of Iraq, in which Georgia joined. For the U.S. to now fault Russia for aggressive conduct seems to me to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and, if that cliché is too tired even for an editorial, how about calling a spade a spade and calling it hypocrisy?

That is not what I read in either the Washington Post or New York Times. The Post editorialized, “Nations on every continent should make clear that invasion and conquest are not acceptable modes of behavior.” That platitude was virtually an echo of Bush’s “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.” The Times expressed similar sentiments. It took Maureen Dowd to remind readers, in a brief passing reference, that Bush’s words might have carried more weight if he “had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation…”

Nothing I saw in this country matched for forthright vehemence Seumas Milne’s denunciation, in the Aug. 14 Guardian, of the outpouring “of the most nauseating hypocrisy from Western politicians and their captive media” over the conflict in the Caucusus. Milne wondered: Could these be the same folks who brought us the invasion and occupation “of the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives?’

The disconnect between U.S. rhetoric about Russia’s conduct and our own conduct deserves a thorough airing on the nation’s editorial pages. These same pages, by and large, backed the aggression against Iraq and, on the single most critical step in preparing the public for the aggression – Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations – the press lapped up every word.

Editorialists nowadays are preoccupied with figuring out how to justify their opinion pages at a time of shrinking staffs and profit margins. The Masthead, the publication of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, devoted 16 pages of its most recent issue to a symposium on the subject, complete with suggestions to “Blow up the ivory tower and ban the editorial ‘we’.”

The quarterly has never critiqued the part played by the nation’s editorial pages in getting us into the war of aggression against Iraq. Such self-examination might have provided clues to what’s needed now for editorial pages to justify their existence. More-of-the-same knee-jerk commentary is not the answer.