I Do Declare

I don't think President Medvedev could say that like Foghorn Leghorn, but I'll imagine it and laugh anyway. He declared that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are independent nations. I think it's incredible that Russia was able to militarily invade Georgia and show the world just how hypocritical this administration is. In no way could the United States realistically take the moral high ground when it comes to having military operations in a nation that contains genocide and terrorism. Especially since Georgia borders Russia. Then Russia removed troops, something that we haven't done yet, and then recognized the independence of the two nations.
More importantly than what has happened is what will happen. The United States will continue arguing that Russia had no right to recognize them and I don't think we'll recognize them for at least 7 or 8 years, we haven't recognized Myanmar yet and it has been called that since 1989. The new nations will be most grateful to Russia for being the first to recognize them and that will have quite a bit of influence on what kind of governmental and economic systems they put into place. To say that Putin will have no input at all is naive and that he will be the sole decider is overly pessimistic.
While Georgia has been democratic and a U.S. ally, I doubt greatly that South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be either. Perhaps we should be trying to put that missile defense shield in the Ukraine instead of Poland... not that I'm saying the Ukraine is on the list, I'm just saying that Poland has successfully prevented a takeover by Russia before.