The following excerpts are from editorials published Friday in the newspapers indicated.

Kansas City Star: The Bush administration’s initial reaction to the crisis in Georgia was sluggish, but since then the White House has made up for lost time.

It appropriately dispatched humanitarian aid, canceled plans for a joint NATO-Russian military exercise and issued a strong statement in support of the embattled Georgian government. …

Russia needs to understand that its massive invasion of Georgia will carry significant costs.

The stakes go well beyond the fate of one tiny nation.

Unless the U.S. and the Western allies react strongly, the next victim could be Ukraine, given that last year Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke of “dismembering” that country.

The independence of every country once a part of the Soviet Union could be undermined if Russia is permitted a free hand in the region.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: … Bush is right to stand up for the democratically elected government of Georgia. The Russian incursion is designed to intimidate not only that country, which has been forging closer ties with the West, but also other former Soviet republics such as Ukraine that have followed similar paths toward free and open societies.

And the fact that U.S. military options are limited does not mean that America can do nothing. It is unlikely that Russia can be isolated the way Iran or North Korea have been. But NATO and our European allies have plenty of ways to punish Russia for its aggression.

The United States and its allies, for example, could organize a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games scheduled for the Russian city of Sochi on the Black Sea near the border of Georgia. The West also could ostracize Russia from key cooperative international economic groups. …

It may be obvious to us in the West that the United States has no plans to intervene militarily in Georgia. But Russian military commanders in combat on the ground probably would regard it as unwise to take that for granted. …

The Philadelphia Inquirer: … 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. …

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. …