Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
But the Georgians are OUR elected jackasses!NecronLord wrote:Ah McCain. "Brave young democracy" I love how Georgia is one of these, but Russia just has sinister "rulers" Yeah. Russia's rulers are jackasses. But they're elected jackasses. Just like Georgia's, just like you might end up being.
American demogogues are such wonderful "you are with us or against us" people. It doesn't matter whether you are democratic or not. It's whether you support American aims.NecronLord wrote:Ah McCain. "Brave young democracy" I love how Georgia is one of these, but Russia just has sinister "rulers" Yeah. Russia's rulers are jackasses. But they're elected jackasses. Just like Georgia's, just like you might end up being.
Belarus is intensely unsurprising, given how they're essentially junior members of the Russian Federation from what I understand, but Syria is unusual.CJvR wrote:Well Russia is no longer alone in recognising the carving up of the Georgian turkey. Both Belorus and Syria have joined Medvedevs recognition.
Syria probably wants Russia to base in their country, along with nice SAMs to prevent Israel from poking.MRDOD wrote:Belarus is intensely unsurprising, given how they're essentially junior members of the Russian Federation from what I understand, but Syria is unusual.CJvR wrote:Well Russia is no longer alone in recognising the carving up of the Georgian turkey. Both Belorus and Syria have joined Medvedevs recognition.
Syria agreed to build a base for the O.R.B. Black Sea Fleet in exchange for Russian S-300 systems used to protect said base... and some Syrian object.Syria probably wants Russia to base in their country, along with nice SAMs to prevent Israel from poking.
Relations between Russia and Belarus have been more rocky than usual as of late, but yeah, in the end, I can see Belarus and Russia reuniting at some point in the medium to long term.MRDOD wrote: Belarus is intensely unsurprising, given how they're essentially junior members of the Russian Federation from what I understand, but Syria is unusual.
LOL.We Are Not All Georgians Now
By Rod Dreher
"We are all Georgians now," John McCain said in response to Russia's invasion of the former Soviet republic.
We are? Spare me. You couldn't find one American in a thousand who could locate Georgia on a map, but the Republican hothead who would be president is ready to bind America's sacred honor to the place.And more than our sacred honor, our military might, too. Mr. McCain, a tempestuous Russophobe to the marrow, demanded that the U.S. accelerate efforts to bring Georgia into NATO, thus extending a trip wire for war with Russia to Moscow's southern border. Because, you know, having conquered Iraq and Afghanistan while barely breaking a sweat, we're rested and ready to let an adventurous Caucasus nation led by a nut shown on TV chewing on his cravat drag us into World War III.
You don't have to find Vladimir Putin a sympathetic figure to appreciate what the world looks like from a Russian point of view. Imagine that America had lost the Cold War and gone through a decade of economic and social collapse. During this time, a victorious Soviet Union had brought several Central American nations into the Warsaw Pact and was trying to fast-track Mexico's entry. Would we feel threatened?
One would have hoped Barack Obama would meet Russia's aggression with a more balanced, realistic response. Mr. McCain's reckless anti-Russian huffing and puffing sent a strong signal that a vote for Mr. McCain is, at least on foreign policy, a vote for a third Bush term. If there's one thing that makes Mr. Obama's knee-jerk liberalism on social issues tolerable, it's the thought that a President McCain would lead the country into more and worse wars.
Instead, Mr. Obama me-too'd his way into Mr. McCain's shadow, joining the call for Georgia's NATO membership to go forward. Thus did Mr. Obama prove himself to be about as useful as the congressional Democrats who, having come to power in 2006 promising to bring the unpopular Iraq war to a close, went on to give President Bush all the money he asked for to fight it.
What is it with the Democrats? Are they so afraid of being baited by the Republicans as cowards that they sign on to any foolish policy proposed by GOP jingoes?
Or is something deeper going on here? Andrew Bacevich, the Boston University professor of international relations, argues in his critically important forthcoming book, The Limits of Power, that on national security matters, there's no fundamental difference between the parties.
Dr. Bacevich, a military veteran and father of a soldier killed in Iraq, has distinguished himself as a conservative critic of the Iraq war and, more generally, what he calls the "national security ideology" governing U.S. foreign policy on a bipartisan basis. In his book, he argues that presidents and presidential candidates of both parties, in the post-World War II era, have won and maintained power marketing the belief that America is a providential instrument for the spread of righteousness throughout the world.
This ideology, broadly shared by the American people, "serves as a device for sharply narrowing the range of policy debate," he writes. Argue for the proposition that not every fight across the globe is properly America's, and you set yourself up for being called soft on tyranny. Who wants to vote for a squish? A poll out last week found that, 2-to-1, Americans believe Mr. McCain is better able to deal with a resurgent Russia than Mr. Obama.
Are Americans thinking through the implications of all this? In a must-see television interview with Bill Moyers (available at www.pbs.org/moyers/journal), Dr. Bacevich said, "What neither of these candidates will be able to, I think, accomplish is to persuade us to look ourselves in the mirror, to see the direction in which we are headed." That direction, he went on, is deeper into the hole of debt and foreign entanglements involving an overstretched U.S. military. We prefer to believe the romantic image of ourselves and our country and to deal with the world as we wish it were rather than as it is.
We are all Georgians now, said John McCain, whose approach to the crisis with Russia differs from his opponent's chiefly in vehemence. Most Americans endorse that confrontational stance. Note that less than 1 percent of Americans serve in the military, which would have to do the fighting and dying should the tie-eating Thomas Jefferson of Tbilisi decide to keep poking the nuclear-armed Russian bear. That's not a coincidence.
TSKHINVALI, Georgia (AP) — Officials in South Ossetia said Friday that Russia intends eventually to absorb the breakaway Georgian province.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region's leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed South Ossetia's future earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.
Russia will absorb South Ossetia "in several years" or earlier, a position that was "firmly stated by both leaders," Gassiyev said.
A Kremlin spokeswoman said she had no such information and declined immediate comment.
Moscow has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second separatist region of Georgia, as independent, drawing criticism from the West. Russia found itself unable to shore up its own international support when China and four former Soviet republics in Central Asia refused a Moscow appeal to recognize the territories.
Russia accuses Georgia of starting the five-day war between the two countries earlier this month by attacking South Ossetia on Aug. 7. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the U.S. instigated the fighting by encouraging Georgia to use force to rein in the separatist region.
Gassiyev's deputy, Tarzan Kokoiti, said South Ossetia has the right to reunite with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.
"We will live in one united Russian state," he said.
I should think the fact that none of the NATO countries wants any part of tangling with the Russians would keep that from happening. I doubt that if Poodle Blair was still in office even he would risk a single Tommy for Georgia.CJvR wrote:Intresting, I though Moscow would have more to gain by keeping things in the air. If Georgia accepts this amputation then there will be no effective block against the rest of it getting into NATO.
Excepting maybe the Baltics and the E. European countries.Elfdart wrote:I should think the fact that none of the NATO countries wants any part of tangling with the Russians would keep that from happening. I doubt that if Poodle Blair was still in office even he would risk a single Tommy for Georgia.CJvR wrote:Intresting, I though Moscow would have more to gain by keeping things in the air. If Georgia accepts this amputation then there will be no effective block against the rest of it getting into NATO.
THE psychodrama playing out in the Caucasus is not the first act of World War III, as some hyperventilating politicians and commentators would like to portray it. Rather, it is the delayed final act of the cold war. And while the Soviet Union lost that epic conflict, Russia won this curtain call in a way that ensures Washington will have to take it far more seriously in the future.
This is not just because, as some foreign-policy “realists” have argued, Moscow has enough troops and oil to force us to take into consideration its supposedly irrational fears. Rather, the conflict in Georgia showed how rational Russia’s concerns over American meddling in its traditional sphere of influence are, and that Washington had better start treating it like the great power it still is.
As the cold war ended, the Russians voluntarily, if grudgingly, gave up their cordon sanitaire in Eastern Europe, but they still view it as a necessary zone of protection. The United States brushed off the Russian complaints over the deployment of American missiles into Eastern Europe and Washington’s effort to extend NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia. But Russians have a good point that, to them, this is as if Moscow had signed up Cuba and Venezuela in a military pact and then tried to plant missiles there pointing north.
It was inevitable that the Russians, now restored to prosperity by their oil and gas resources, would push back somewhere, and the hot-headed Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, gave them an easy excuse. What has followed in Washington is a field day of self-righteous indignation as politicians on both sides of the aisle line up to proclaim their solidarity with the little guy and deplore the interference of bullies in nations that just want to be left alone.
But such grandstanding ignores an old truth of geopolitics: great powers live by different rules than do minor ones. They demand respect — and obedience — from their weak neighbors. Sometimes they are explicit about this, as was United States Secretary of State Richard Olney when, in 1895, he declared, with respect to the Monroe Doctrine, that “today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.”
Moscow cannot be expected to show any less concern about the political orientation of the former constituent republic on its critical southern frontier. Great powers zealously guard what they benignly refer to as their “sphere of influence.” This may be a shame, but it is the way the world works, and always has. And no country has been more insistent than the United States in demanding that its interests be respected by its neighbors. Latin Americans can attest to that.
The limits of Russia’s post-cold-war retreat have apparently been reached, and the reversal of the power equation has gone too far to be sustained. Today’s leaders in Moscow are determined to protect what they perceive as their vital interests. The task for American leaders is not to pretend that these interests do not exist or can be safely ignored. Rather, it is to work out a modus vivendi based not on wishful thinking or dreams of even greater glory, but on the sober facts of power realities.
The first essential step for the leader of the Western alliance is to tone down the bombast and restore a dialogue with Russia. Our peripatetic secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, should have jetted off to Moscow, not Tbilisi. Careless talk about throwing Russia out of the Group of 8 economic powers will only backfire against the West’s own interests. The whole point of such organizations is not that they are a reward for obliging behavior, but rather that they provide a forum for dealing with common problems.
Second, we should shelve loose talk about bringing either Ukraine or Georgia into NATO — at least until we are willing to invite Russia itself. NATO is essentially still a cold-war military pact seeking a new identity that it has not yet found. Admitting these two former Soviet republics would be interpreted by Moscow as anti-Russian provocation — and rightly so. And even if it didn’t provoke a new cold war, it would create serious tensions within NATO itself.
Third, we should meet with our NATO partners to work out a common approach to the problem of ethnic separatism. We handled this badly in the Balkans by facilitating the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines, and then, over vociferous Russian objections, recognizing the rebellious Serbian province of Kosovo as a separate state. The tearing apart of nations along ethnic lines is not a problem limited to the Balkans. Strong separatist movements exist in several European states, such as Britain, Italy and Spain, and may soon tear Belgium apart. Is this a development that we want to facilitate?
At a time when this nation is bogged down in two costly and seemingly endless wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, it would not seem prudent to pick a fight with Russia over a rebellious, territorially ambitious former province. And it might be wise to recall the warning of John Quincy Adams in 1821 that by going “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” to support the territorial ambitions of others, the United States would “involve herself beyond the power of extraction in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.”
Ronald Steel is a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
QFT. The absurdity of watching the US kowtow and bluster on behalf of an irresponsible, insignificant little gnat like Georgia whilst snubbing a great power with massive influence and potential to obstruct US interests worldwide is self-evident, but then, the crushing of Georgia is a foreign policy fiasco for which the US bears much responsibility in the first place.The first essential step for the leader of the Western alliance is to tone down the bombast and restore a dialogue with Russia. Our peripatetic secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, should have jetted off to Moscow, not Tbilisi.
Major Malkhaz Dumbatze was in a celebratory mood. His 14 Georgian tanks had just taken control of the rebel South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and he was already looking forward to a trip to Israel to study new battle command systems. The jets flying over the city, where his men were mopping up Ossetian snipers, he took to be Georgian fighters.
Major Dumbatze is still going to Israel, but now it is to have reconstruction surgery on his legs. The aircraft he had spotted were in fact Russian, and one of them dropped two bombs on his armoured unit.
Speaking with difficulty because half his teeth had been blown out by shrapnel that exited through his throat, the battalion commander was undaunted about the future of his crushed army.
“I'm 100 per cent sure we'll recover from this,” he said, his wounded comrades on either side of his bed in a Tbilisi hospital.
Georgia's soldiers, trained by US and Israeli advisers, are gung-ho about returning to the fray, though some unanswered questions still hang in the air - such as the advisability of taking on their giant neighbour without adequate anti-air defences.
Major Dumbatze, 33, denied any knowledge of atrocities committed in Georgia's initial assault on Tskhinvali. His men were hunting down remaining militiamen and had left their armour in the open only because they thought they had won, bringing 17 years of secession to an end. “It was a dream for all Georgian soldiers,” he said. “I didn't expect the Russians. I thought it was politically sealed, the Russian and Georgian Governments made some kind of agreement.”
There was no deal, as he discovered to his cost. As a loyal officer he avoided criticising his Government during the crisis, but admitted that “if you thought the Russians would attack, you'd have to be mad” to launch such an operation. “But we never expected them to attack - if you see the bear coming, you either get under a rock or out of the way.”
Corporal Tristani Chinditze, 20, never even made it as far as the battlefield. His unit was on its way to the front line in lorries and Jeeps when they were ambushed by a much larger Russian force of tanks and infantry.
“Maybe without their planes we could have won. That's why I went - I thought we could win,” he said, just before doctors wheeled him out for an operation to save his legs. Both limbs were shredded by shrapnel from a tank shell. “There were three brigades, plenty of them were wounded. We were in trucks and we had no chance to open fire.”
He lay wounded on the battlefield for two days, surrounded by the dead bodies of his comrades. “Other injured soldiers could crawl and help themselves, but I couldn't move. I'm surprised I survived.” Eventually Georgian civilians came and took him to hospital, where he remains.
Sergeant Paata Veshaguri, 24, a stocky man who was admitted to hospital for concussion before returning to the front, was also upbeat about his army's performance against the numerically superior Russians. “We were smaller but better trained,” he said, praising his US and Israeli military teachers. “We not only held our lines but advanced. But the Government was thinking of how the Russians had threatened to bomb Tbilisi.” It ordered his men to pull back.
He said that he had not expected any Western countries to give Georgia military support, but suspected that the Government may have been counting on such aid. “Probably on a high level they expected this, because of all the training and equipment and foreign investment,” he said.
All the soldiers said they were ready to fight again once they had recovered and their forces had been re-equipped. “I will go everywhere for my country, any time and anywhere,” said Major Dumbatze. “If I can walk, I'll do my best for my country.”
Sergeant Paata Veshaguri, 24, a stocky man who was admitted to hospital for concussion before returning to the front, was also upbeat about his army's performance against the numerically superior Russians. “We were smaller but better trained,” he said, praising his US and Israeli military teachers. “We not only held our lines but advanced. But the Government was thinking of how the Russians had threatened to bomb Tbilisi.” It ordered his men to pull back.
Not only suprised, but delusional too. Perhaps he wasn't aware of what went on in the Chechnya in the 90s. 
Thea, Cheltenham, UK wrote:I am sorry sergey from russia, but if your government had not armed ossetian militia and given rusian passports to ossetian population all this could have been averted. Russia, as an interested party should never have been peacekeepers in that region.
Do not play God
One of the better onesKakhi, london, uk wrote:Dear Russian friends, stop absorbing foreign lands. Nobody does it any more. Wake up! It is 21st century. Yes, Georgians will fight back their territories. Be sure of it.
Sergey, Saint-Petersburg, Russia wrote:“I didn't expect the Russians. I thought it was politically sealed, the Russian and Georgian Governments made some kind of agreement.”- First they killed our soldiers and don't expect the Russians. Very crass expectations.
I don't remember anyone laughing when American soldiers got blown to shit by various IEDs in Iraq and I think they were just as surprised as Georgian soldiers.[R_H] wrote:
I knew Georgia already held positions in South Ossetia, because unlike some of the BS people are spewing the entire population never did all want independence, thus recent Russian ethnic cleansing to get ride of them; but if they held THESE positions beforehand then suddenly the Georgian attack is coming off as a lot more sane, too bad they didn’t lay 20,000 anti tank mines to the north beforehand.CJvR wrote:Map
The hypocrisy goes back at least as far as the Palestinian elections, when we refused to recognized the legitimately, Democratically elected Hamas government.NecronLord wrote:Ah McCain. "Brave young democracy" I love how Georgia is one of these, but Russia just has sinister "rulers" Yeah. Russia's rulers are jackasses. But they're elected jackasses. Just like Georgia's, just like you might end up being.
Ahhh, I see. They were ordered to pull back by Tbilisi, and in their well-organized tactical retreat borne from their superior training, abandoned scores of tanks, AFVs and self-propelled guns to the Russians in what was only cleverly disguised as a massive, humiliating rout. I see. That's some superb training.Sergeant Paata Veshaguri, 24, a stocky man who was admitted to hospital for concussion before returning to the front, was also upbeat about his army's performance against the numerically superior Russians. “We were smaller but better trained,” he said, praising his US and Israeli military teachers. “We not only held our lines but advanced. But the Government was thinking of how the Russians had threatened to bomb Tbilisi.” It ordered his men to pull back.
To clarify, theKane Starkiller wrote:I don't remember anyone laughing when American soldiers got blown to shit by various IEDs in Iraq and I think they were just as surprised as Georgian soldiers.[R_H] wrote:
was directed at his assumption that they were better trained. Not at his, or other Georgian soldiers' injuries.To be fair there were a number of accusations of fraud, and it was hardly properly overseen. Hamas also then went on the offensive to try to clear out the opposition party through violence, so you can understand the reluctance.Surlethe wrote:The hypocrisy goes back at least as far as the Palestinian elections, when we refused to recognized the legitimately, Democratically elected Hamas government.NecronLord wrote:Ah McCain. "Brave young democracy" I love how Georgia is one of these, but Russia just has sinister "rulers" Yeah. Russia's rulers are jackasses. But they're elected jackasses. Just like Georgia's, just like you might end up being.
Got any links to these accusations of fraud? All I can find is Human Rights Watch and the Carter Center claiming that the elections were free from corruption and genuinely democratic.Block wrote:To be fair there were a number of accusations of fraud, and it was hardly properly overseen. Hamas also then went on the offensive to try to clear out the opposition party through violence, so you can understand the reluctance.Surlethe wrote:The hypocrisy goes back at least as far as the Palestinian elections, when we refused to recognized the legitimately, Democratically elected Hamas government.NecronLord wrote:Ah McCain. "Brave young democracy" I love how Georgia is one of these, but Russia just has sinister "rulers" Yeah. Russia's rulers are jackasses. But they're elected jackasses. Just like Georgia's, just like you might end up being.
