Trouble in South Ossetia escalates

[Broomstick]

I hope we just leave it at that... but I have a feeling that Bush isn't done being a cock yet.

Anyone else feel like they'd better start stockpiling food & water?

Did that already, quite some time ago - came in handy during last week's tornado and power outage, so really, it's a good idea in any case.

[AniThyng]

I don't see why people are worried US might send troops into Georgia. US and Russia danced this dance many times before: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. It never led to a nuclear war.

Korea: American troops versus NK troops.


Vietnam: American troops versus NVA

Afgan: Soviet vs afgan.

If the US sends troops into Georgia, it will be American troops versus Russian troops. NOT AT ALL THE SAME AS THE 3 OTHER WARS ABOVE.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There is another angle to this.

The souring of US-Russian relations to this extent now means any co-operation with the UNSC over Iran is destined to fail. The Russians aren't happy about sanctions as it is, and they've not been all that successful anyway.

This would lead to Israel taking matters into their own hands with a military strike.

[Coyote]

There is another angle to this.

The souring of US-Russian relations to this extent now means any co-operation with the UNSC over Iran is destined to fail. The Russians aren't happy about sanctions as it is, and they've not been all that successful anyway.

This would lead to Israel taking matters into their own hands with a military strike.

I have a feeling the Law of Unintended Consequences is going to create some big ripples from this. We have not yet heard from Turkey, Iran, or Chechnya, all of which are in the region as well, and all of which have various axes to grind one way or another.

[Broomstick]

None of those involved us sending our aircraft in direct overflights of a Russian Army combat zone in which frontal aviation is roaming around with weapons free orders. What do you think would have happened if we'd started sending C-141s over Afghanistan and dropping supplies to the Afghanis?

Are you saying US is doing that in Georgia right now?

Yes, you retard - the US is flying 2,000 Georgian combat troops home to Georgia and there have been multiple reports of the Russians bombing Georgian airports. That implies US and Russian aircraft in the same area, with the Russians at least being armed and using those arms.

For the last 63 years the US and USSR/Russia have been dancing around trying to avoid a shooting war with each other. I am assuming the Russians have not changed their minds on this. I am counting on them to have the sense to take whatever precautions necessary to make sure those US aircraft land safely in Georgia and leave safely, even though they're supplying fresh troops to Georgia, because sure as hell if a US airplane DOES get shot down, even accidentally, the US neocons will be lusting for Russian blood. NOBODY needs that short of shit right now.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I have a feeling the Law of Unintended Consequences is going to create some big ripples from this. We have not yet heard from Turkey, Iran, or Chechnya, all of which are in the region as well, and all of which have various axes to grind one way or another.

Or Kuwait.

Israel, by the way, gets 20% of its oil from the BTC pipeline. That pipeline is out of action as this warfare happens.

[Darth Wong]

... if a US airplane DOES get shot down, even accidentally, the US neocons will be lusting for Russian blood. NOBODY needs that short of shit right now.

McCain does.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I cannot believe that Bush really was fucking dumb enough to write the Georgians a blank cheque--and then back it up! I mean, what the hell? The sense of personal betrayal I have over this idiot is at the moment rather extreme. We're going to fly enemy troops into a Russian warzone!? Everyone should mull over that one for a bit realize just how completely insane it is. The Russians would be fully justified in engaging the transports, so we can only pray they don't.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Fuck Bush. I don't like the Kremlin, but this is utter stupidity to blow any relations we did have over support with fucking Georgia. I can't believe for the life of me how Bush still believes the good vs. evil, democracy vs. bad meanies fairy tales waxed by his resident empty suit neocon advisers. This is utterly retarded, is he looking to be known as the worst diplomat in history?

[Darth Wong]

Fuck Bush. I don't like the Kremlin, but this is utter stupidity to blow any relations we did have over support with fucking Georgia. I can't believe for the life of me how Bush still believes the good vs. evil, democracy vs. bad meanies fairy tales waxed by his resident empty suit neocon advisers. This is utterly retarded, is he looking to be known as the worst diplomat in history?

In the neo-con lexicon, "diplomacy" is just another word for "cowardice".

[Admiral Valdemar]

McCain does.

Exactly. With McCain's current stance in the election race, the best thing he can hope for is the new Cold War hotting up. It's crazy, but neo-con hawks would love to return to those days and win with a landslide victory over the fear of Russian supremacy, now that the War on Terror bullshit is getting old.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

... if a US airplane DOES get shot down, even accidentally, the US neocons will be lusting for Russian blood. NOBODY needs that short of shit right now.

McCain does.

I'd also like to believe that our government doesn't stoop to the level of getting our own service personnel killed by the Russians to get McCain elected, but I'm no longer quite so sure of that, either. Between this and the horrifying idea of indefinitely detaining criminals beyond the end of their sentences (Jesus Christ, I mean, I even supported the military commissions as normative in this circumstance, but that? No. How did they manage to exceed my moral limits, of all people? What kind of lunatics does that mean we're dealing with?) there is nothing guaranteed and nothing safe.

[Aaron]

I cannot believe that Bush really was fucking dumb enough to write the Georgians a blank cheque--and then back it up! I mean, what the hell? The sense of personal betrayal I have over this idiot is at the moment rather extreme. We're going to fly enemy troops into a Russian warzone!? Everyone should mull over that one for a bit realize just how completely insane it is. The Russians would be fully justified in engaging the transports, so we can only pray they don't.

Why are you suprised, the man has started two wars in his term and they've been agitating for something with Iran for a while. His behaviour seems perfectly consistant. I would like to know how many more important flghts into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan were delayed in order to get the Georgian troops home though. It's not like the US has unlimited airlift.

[Broomstick]

Another New York Times article

GORI, Georgia — In retreat, the Georgian soldiers were so tired they could not keep from stumbling. Their arms were loaded with rucksacks and ammunition boxes; they had dark circles under their eyes. Officers ran up and down the line, barking for them to go faster.

Georgian soldiers in Gori. Weary residents heading south said they were beginning to feel betrayed by the United States, an ally of Georgia, as diplomacy had fallen short of expectations.

Excuse me? You fuckers start a shooting war and expect us to rubberstamp it? Go to hell.

All along the road was grief. Old men pushed wheelbarrows loaded with bags or led cows by tethers. They drove tractors and rickety Ladas packed with suitcases and televisions.

As a column of soldiers passed through Gori, a black-robed priest came out of his church and made the sign of the cross again and again.

One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov.

“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”

Your "friends" - really "allies", which are not exactly friends - are looking at you and thinking you're really stupid. There are some people among your allies who want to get involved, but trust me, they do NOT have your best interests at heart. They want to use you as cannonfodder for their own purposes.

It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

I strongly suspect no one is going to ride to their aid, beyond brokering a cease-fire.

Since the conflict began, Western leaders have worked frantically to broker a cease-fire. But for Georgians — so boisterously pro-American that Tbilisi, the capital, has a George W. Bush Street — diplomacy fell far short of what they expected.

Even in the hinterlands, at kebab stands and in farming villages, people fleeing South Ossetia saw themselves as trapped between great powers. Ossetian refugees heading north to Russia gushed their gratitude to Dmitri A. Medvedev and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian leaders. Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly. They were beginning to feel betrayed.

“Tell your government,” said a man named Truber, fresh from the side of the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. “If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this.”

He had not slept for three days, and he was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. “If you want to help, you have to help the end,” he said.

We help no one by allowing your little hissy-fit to grow into a potential WWIII.

Meanwhile, the influx of Ossetians into southern Russia continued Sunday, as the police escorted convoys of minibuses up the Zaramakh highway and through the mountain tunnel that is the only route into Russia.

The Russian authorities estimated that 34,000 refugees had crossed the border, and 3,000 more evacuations were planned for Monday.

Sounds like the Ossetians are voting with their feet.

The Ossetians emerged onto a four-lane highway whose edges had been chopped to pieces by columns of Russian armor. Around them were mountains shrouded by fog.

Tatiana Gobozoyeva was riding in a van with 20 other refugees, many of whom had spent four days huddled in dirty basements. She said she considered the United States responsible for the Georgian aggression.

What the fuck? WE didn't start this shit!

Pyotr Bezhov, who fled the violence with his daughter Oksana on Sunday, stood by a dusty dirt road.

“The biggest problem here is you, your country,” he said. “You said that the Soviets were an evil empire, but it’s you that are the empire.

“Not you personally, of course,” he added. “But your government.”

The Soviets and the US are both Empires. I'm sorry you weren't clear on that.

On the other side of the line of battle, Georgians had begun to question the strength of their alliance with the United States.

In recent years, Mr. Bush has lavished praise on Georgia — and the so-called Rose Revolution that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power — as a model of democracy-building. The feeling was mutual: when Mr. Bush visited Tbilisi in 2005, the authorities estimated that 150,000 people showed up to see him. He famously climbed up on a platform and wiggled his hips to loud Georgian folk music.

Those exuberant days seemed very distant around Gori on Sunday, as people fled, leaving behind corn fields and apple orchards. A group of men tried mightily to push a truck with a blown-out tire, but it got stuck on the road, and they finally abandoned it.

Gato Tkviavi lingered in Tirzini, a village of one-story houses where cows were wandering through the streets.

Asked where the border with South Ossetia was, he pointed at his feet. “The border is where the Russians say it is,” he said. “It could be here, or it could be Gori.”

The grimmest among the Georgians were the soldiers, haggard, unshaven and swinging their Kalashnikovs. A group of them had piled onto a flatbed truck, crowding on in such numbers that some were sitting on the roof, their feet dangling over the windshield.

One, who gave his name as Major Georgi, spoke with anger.

“Write exactly what I say,” he said. “Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us.”

No, we're letting you reap the results of your own stupidity. Sucks to be you.

[Broomstick]

... if a US airplane DOES get shot down, even accidentally, the US neocons will be lusting for Russian blood. NOBODY needs that short of shit right now.

McCain does.

>sigh<

You are, most unfortunately, correct.

If all hell breaks loose can I camp on your couch for a bit, Mr. Wong?

[Illuminatus Primus]

... if a US airplane DOES get shot down, even accidentally, the US neocons will be lusting for Russian blood. NOBODY needs that short of shit right now.

McCain does.

I'd also like to believe that our government doesn't stoop to the level of getting our own service personnel killed by the Russians to get McCain elected, but I'm no longer quite so sure of that, either. Between this and the horrifying idea of indefinitely detaining criminals beyond the end of their sentences (Jesus Christ, I mean, I even supported the military commissions as normative in this circumstance, but that? No. How did they manage to exceed my moral limits, of all people? What kind of lunatics does that mean we're dealing with?) there is nothing guaranteed and nothing safe.

I just finished Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich and am reading The Third Reich in Power, and this is exactly what the Nazis did with political prisoners even arrested according to the normative legal process. They banned Communism and made being one a crime, had them arrested and prosecuted and sentences by a pressured justice system, and then when they got out held them anyway in "protective custody" in concentration camps.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Georgians apparently genuinely believed that America would fight a nuclear war to help them reintegrate their supposed country.

[Coyote]

We're going to fly enemy troops into a Russian warzone!?

Oh, better-- troops that have been in Iraq for months-- technically, combat veterans, who've been watching this unfold the last couple days and are now being hustled out of the country very fast. You can bet they're hyped up and feeling ready to jump into it with the Bear.

I wonder what maneuvering was had with Turkey to allow this? After all, the transport planes have to go over Turkey, and their Black Sea air corridor, to get to Georgia. That could be seen as Turkey being complicit with the whole thing. Expect no happiness from this.

[Broomstick]

I cannot believe that Bush really was fucking dumb enough to write the Georgians a blank cheque--and then back it up! I mean, what the hell? The sense of personal betrayal I have over this idiot is at the moment rather extreme. We're going to fly enemy troops into a Russian warzone!? Everyone should mull over that one for a bit realize just how completely insane it is. The Russians would be fully justified in engaging the transports, so we can only pray they don't.

As I stated earlier, I am hoping the Russians determine it is in their self-interest to let those transports through unharmed, despite the provocation they represent, to prevent this situation from spiraling out of control. Because we sure as hell can't trust the current maladministration to be that smart.

[Ender]

Before we all go nuts on another "Bush is evil, he wants soldiers to die for political points, cue up the Imperial March" oneupsmanship circle jerk that adds nothing to the conversation, I'd like to point out that the terms of our agreement with Georgia for their help in Iraq requires us to return them there.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We're going to fly enemy troops into a Russian warzone!?

Oh, better-- troops that have been in Iraq for months-- technically, combat veterans, who've been watching this unfold the last couple days and are now being hustled out of the country very fast. You can bet they're hyped up and feeling ready to jump into it with the Bear.

I wonder what maneuvering was had with Turkey to allow this? After all, the transport planes have to go over Turkey, and their Black Sea air corridor, to get to Georgia. That could be seen as Turkey being complicit with the whole thing. Expect no happiness from this.

I'm sure the Russians can spare a few tacnukes for Ankara.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Would Russia be crazy enough to start shit with Turkey too?

[MKSheppard]

OH SHIT THE SIRENS ARE GOING OFF HERE IN SILVER SPR.......

Oh wait. That was my imagination.

Seriously, you guys are hysterically hyperventilating a simple airlift -- which we've done into combat zones before -- do I have to point out to you guys Operation NICKEL GRASS in 1973?

Secondly, it's really simple to call the Russians and say "Oh hi there, we're going to be flying in ten C-17 sorties to such and such airport in the southern part of Georgia. They'll be flashing such and such IFF codes."

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Before we all go nuts on another "Bush is evil, he wants soldiers to die for political points, cue up the Imperial March" oneupsmanship circle jerk that adds nothing to the conversation, I'd like to point out that the terms of our agreement with Georgia for their help in Iraq requires us to return them there.

We should have arranged for them to be flown to Turkish airbase around Erzurum and then taken by train across the border into Georgia, then. That was what I was HOPING we'd do, that's what we'd have done during the Cold War, but no, we have to be provocative with direct flights.

[Broomstick]

Before we all go nuts on another "Bush is evil, he wants soldiers to die for political points, cue up the Imperial March" oneupsmanship circle jerk that adds nothing to the conversation, I'd like to point out that the terms of our agreement with Georgia for their help in Iraq requires us to return them there.

Yes, but it might be less provocative if we sent them by truck rather than airplane.

And I don't think Bush actively wants to kill soldiers, I just don't think he gives a flying fuck about soldiers as people we can bleed and die.