After enjoying a few days at the Olympics, President Bush is saying and doing all the right things regarding the ongoing Russian invasion and occupation of a neighboring state.
"The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia," he said Wednesday. "We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected."
Bush was right to call the Russians on their continuing violations of a barely day-old cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
He was also right to task Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the U.S. military with providing humanitarian relief to the Georgians. That's the right organization for the task. And unlike Georgian civilians, American forces would be more than capable of defending themselves, should that be necessary.
Bush is also right to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice overseas in response to the crisis.
First, she traveled to Paris to confer with Sarkozy and help ensure a strong united front from America's European allies against Russia's act of aggression.
Next, Rice heads for Georgia, to, as Bush said, "convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government." Her presence there will be welcomed not only by President Mikheil Saakashvili, but by the leaders of nearby countries that spent much of the 20th century under Soviet occupation.
Russian calls for a war-crimes tribunal against Saakashvili are laughable. The movement of Russian forces within 30 miles of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, make it clear that the intention of the invasion is not to protect the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the disputed territories that provided the initial excuse for an invasion.
The Russians want Saakashvili and his Western-leaning ways out and a friendly, Moscow-oriented puppet government in. Just like in the bleak old Soviet-era days.
Saakashvili is no saint, but it is the people of Georgia who should decide his fate - not Vladimir Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin.
Bush was also right to warn Russia the other day that it risks its place in "the diplomatic, political, economic and security structures of the 21st century" if it did not end the crisis.
At a minimum, Russia risks its participation in the G-8 meetings of industrial democracies, its ties to NATO, its entry into the World Trade Organization - all potentially significant against a nation hoping to re-emerge as a player on the world stage.
But this cannot be a U.S.-Russia standoff, which is why Rice's stop in Europe will be so important. All of the West, those nations that best represent liberty and democracy, must stand with Georgia.
As Saakashvili wrote in an oped in the Washington Post yesterday, "If the West is not with us, who is it with? If the line is not drawn now, when will it be drawn?"