What is up with Garton-Ash today? Did someone put something in his tea? Leave aside this little snark:

In the Berlin
Tagesspiegel, I read a comparison of the opposition’s tactics with
those of Lenin in 1918; in Italy’s La Repubblica, a commentary
suggesting that Warsaw and Vilnius are trying to foist on the European
Union a policy of destabilising the region. And so it goes on.

Translation: I read German and Italian and you don’t so Yah Boo Sucks.
The meat of his piece is here:

1. Can’t you see the wood for the trees?   

You
point out some bad trees, but here’s the shape of the wood: An election
was stolen. Most of the orange revolutionaries want their country to
enjoy more of the freedoms, rights and opportunities that we in western
Europe enjoy, rather than being tied back closer to an increasingly
authoritarian Russia. Wouldn’t that be a good thing, for them and for
us?

2. Do you think Ukrainians don’t deserve democracy?   

Please
examine your attitude and see if it doesn’t reflect some deep-seated
prejudices of west Europeans towards the continent’s other half,
typecast for centuries as distant, exotic, mysterious, dark etc. A good
test is to substitute, say, "Spaniards" or "French" for "Ukrainians" in
any statement, and see how it reads.

3. Are you reluctant to support the orange movement just because the Americans do?   

Put
thus starkly, most people would say no. But some of the west European
unease undoubtedly comes from the fact that American pro-democracy
organisations have actively supported the Ukrainian opposition, and
Washington does have a geostrategic agenda involving the expansion of
Nato, military bases across central Asia etc. Yet the knee-jerk leftist
or Euro-Gaullist reaction – "if the Americans are for it there must be
something wrong with it" – is silly. Please consider the Ukrainian case
on its own merits, not through an American or anti-American prism.

4.
Why is Russia entitled to a sphere of influence, including Ukraine, if
the United States is not entitled to a sphere of influence, including
Nicaragua?   

The
truth is, neither Moscow nor Washington is entitled to such a sphere.
There are hard realities of economic, military and political power with
which the smaller, weaker neighbours of great powers have to deal. In
the case of Ukraine, this is further complicated by the cultural and
ethnic identification of many eastern Ukrainians with Russia. But these
are constraints with which Ukraine must deal itself, as a sovereign
state. The country of Yalta (a town in the Ukrainian Crimea) should not
be subjected to a new Yalta.

5. Would you rather have George Bush or Vladimir Putin?   

Preferably
neither. Given the choice between Bush and Putin, I choose Marilyn
Monroe. But it’s incredible that so many west Europeans, including
Chancellor Schröder of Germany, seem to prefer as their partner an
ex-KGB officer currently reimposing authoritarian rule in Russia over a
man who, for all his faults, has just been re-elected in a free and
fair election in one of the world’s great democracies.

What is the world coming to? Good sense, rationality even, in an op-ed in the Guardian by Tim Garton-Ash? Do I have to completely rethink my entire attitude to the paper and the writer?
Naah. Just find out what they did put in his tea and make a bulk order for the rest of them. Wonder if Moonbat actually drinks tea, or is that a  relic of our oppressive imperialist past?