Russian Tanks Enter South Ossetia

[INDY500]

It's a pity that we haven't done a better job with this responsibility over the last century.

Yet that century saw the globalization of electoral democracy. Including into postcommunist states like Georgia.

 

[melon]

Yet that century saw the globalization of electoral democracy. Including into postcommunist states like Georgia.

Georgia isn't a great example. Here's a quick history of post-Soviet Georgia:

The first post-communist leader of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was elected in 1990, and formed a referendum for independence in 1991, which won close to 99% of the vote. He was then reelected president in May 1991, but then devolved into a style of government that was perceived as authoritarian, and he was ousted in a violent military coup in December 1991, where he eventually fled to Chechnya and later returned to Georgia, only to instigate a civil war in 1993, drawing on separatist support from Abkhazia. It's kind of ironic, considering one of his acts was to remove South Ossetia's autonomous status, as revenge for voting to reunite with the Soviet Union, instead of staying with Georgia.

His successor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was appointed to power in 1992, following Gamsakhurdia's ouster, and was formally elected in 1995, upon restoration of the office of the presidency. His reelection, however, was condemned by the U.N. and the U.S. as "rigged," and it was estimated by his downfall in 2003 that his inner circle of family members and closest advisers controlled 70% of the Georgian economy.

The current Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been noted for considerably improving corruption issues, although it is still a problem. However, his reelection in 2008 was noted for being questionably riddled with massive fraud, which is still being investigated by outside observers, which has limited effect, since it is not an official government investigation.

In short: sure, we've done a good job of exporting elections, but we haven't done a great job of bringing democracy yet; and while it might take a while to formulate true democratic governments, we also do not do enough to criticize those governments which have made a mockery of electoral democracy. It is not enough to just have elections; minority rights must be respected, and that includes the rights of minority groups, along with political dissidents. Otherwise, we have little more than "democratatorships," which Russia is certainly doing a good job of creating domestically.

 

[Dreadsox]

I wonder what kind of spoils Bono has promised George Bush and other G-8 leaders in the past 15 years?

I think Bono is dead on right on the issue of fighting terrorism. I think of how Castro/Che Guevera were quoted after the Alliance for Progress was started under President Kennedy. I believe had the Alliance been carried forth effectively after Kennedy's death the world would have looked quite different for South America. Guevera believed the alliance was stealing the ideals of the communist revolution.

The spoils - less terrorism and a brighter future for everyone.

 

[Vincent Vega]

I think it's fair to ask why Iraq and not Darfur just as it was fair to ask why Kosovo and not Rwanda in the 90's.

But what "interests are threatened" or what "significant strategic gain" does the United States foresee as we set a goal of sending over 10 billion dollars worth of antiretroviral drugs to Africa or our military personal and equipment along with 2 ex-presidents to the tsunami ravaged areas of Indonesia and Thailand?

Maybe we're just a good nation. Maybe we're exceptionally blessed which makes it our duty to be good. That's what I think anyway. Didn't realize saying it would cause

China is becoming pretty largely involved in parts of Africa, these parts of Africa have a lot of resources, US businesses see new foreign market opportunities, and you have committed to give .7 percent of your GDP in foreign aid. Boasting a GDP of over 12 trillion dollars annually that means quite a bit has to be given to fulfill these promises.

We are all good nations with big interests, the US is no exception there.

 

[Irvine511]

i'm looking forward to McCain trying to play Churchill.

because it's always 1938 and every autocrat is Hitler.

 

[vaz02]

i'm looking forward to McCain trying to play Churchill.

because it's always 1938 and every autocrat is Hitler.

Im stealing that quote for future use.

 

[Irvine511]

boy, that John McCain seems awfully excited about this. i guess it's great to have a clear, natural country to shake your fist at again.

just imagine the wars we could have!

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

It seems the Russians have broken the cease-fire and are on their way to the capital..

 

[Dreadsox]

boy, that John McCain seems awfully excited about this. i guess it's great to have a clear, natural country to shake your fist at again.

just imagine the wars we could have!

You seem really concerned. What should happen?

 

[Irvine511]

You seem really concerned. What should happen?

to be honest, i'm not sure what can happen.

we're going to have to negotiate, obviously, and i think everyone condemns Russia's invasion and use of excessive force, but we've got a big problem here. i don't think that Russia in 2008 is the expansionist, utopian Soviet Union of 1958, it's an authoritarian petro-state that has oil and a military, but not much else going for it. it doesn't want to take over the world, and it must be treated for what it is, and not what some wish it were (which is to be more dangerous than it actually is).

this is where it will be important to shut-down the neocons, like McCain. they're starving for a big, bad enemy to demagogue, and Russia just isn't it. it's a neighborhood bully, no question, and needs to be contained through a variety of different pressures and incentives, and we need to realize that we don't have the standing and clout anymore that we once did.

which is too bad. because we're going to need Russian cooperation to deal with Iran and, yes, keep them from fucking with us in Afghanistan. no one wants a proxy war in the Caucuses, and we certainly can't fund one right now. so it appears as if we're going to have to coax Russian aggression along into something less destructive without making the country feel as if we've backed it up against a wall -- you know, what a snarling McCain would love to do -- and hope for the best

 

[A stor]

I thought this thread was about Russia and Georgia? Why has it turned into a discussion about America? Since the United States is only supposed to be sending humanitarian aid.

 

[Zoomerang96]

correct me if i'm wrong on these basic points:

1) south ossetia has an olverwhelming majority of russian speaking citizens (and passport holders)
2) south ossetia is a breakaway province that the large majority want out of georgia
3) georgia, in a less-than-articulate-description "invaded" their own territory, which while belonging to them in the literal sense (much like greenland is sort of administered by denmark), doesn't really belong to them any longer at least in terms of spirit (oh boy, this is getting muddier by the word).
4) russia then replies by sending in forces to the area, and the fighting between the two sides begins.

while i never accept war as being tolerable, it is a reality, and to look at it straight on, to me it doesn't look like russia is behaving too out of sorts in this particular instance (assuming of course, that I was right with my loose facts). nevermind the atrocities to civilians that each side is claiming that the other are committing...

blech.

what a gross situation.

 

[INDY500]

I thought this thread was about Russia and Georgia? Why has it turned into a discussion about America? Since the United States is only supposed to be sending humanitarian aid.

Some here question if there's such a thing as just humanitarian aid. I say there is. That "love your neighbor as yourself" doesn't end at the end of your block or the border of your country.

 

[financeguy]

to be honest, i'm not sure what can happen.

we're going to have to negotiate, obviously, and i think everyone condemns Russia's invasion and use of excessive force, but we've got a big problem here. i don't think that Russia in 2008 is the expansionist, utopian Soviet Union of 1958, it's an authoritarian petro-state that has oil and a military, but not much else going for it. it doesn't want to take over the world, and it must be treated for what it is, and not what some wish it were (which is to be more dangerous than it actually is).

this is where it will be important to shut-down the neocons, like McCain. they're starving for a big, bad enemy to demagogue, and Russia just isn't it. it's a neighborhood bully, no question, and needs to be contained through a variety of different pressures and incentives, and we need to realize that we don't have the standing and clout anymore that we once did.

which is too bad. because we're going to need Russian cooperation to deal with Iran and, yes, keep them from fucking with us in Afghanistan. no one wants a proxy war in the Caucuses, and we certainly can't fund one right now. so it appears as if we're going to have to coax Russian aggression along into something less destructive without making the country feel as if we've backed it up against a wall -- you know, what a snarling McCain would love to do -- and hope for the best

Exactly right.

 

[Dreadsox]

to be honest, i'm not sure what can happen.

we're going to have to negotiate, obviously, and i think everyone condemns Russia's invasion and use of excessive force, but we've got a big problem here. i don't think that Russia in 2008 is the expansionist, utopian Soviet Union of 1958, it's an authoritarian petro-state that has oil and a military, but not much else going for it. it doesn't want to take over the world, and it must be treated for what it is, and not what some wish it were (which is to be more dangerous than it actually is).

Thanks for this part of your answer.

 

[A stor]

Some here question if there's such a thing as just humanitarian aid. I say there is. That "love your neighbor as yourself" doesn't end at the end of your block or the border of your country.

Thanks for the reply! I have gone back and re-read this thread. Now I see why the U.S. has been brought into the discussion.

 

[Irvine511]

i'm sorry, i can't not post this:

Does Michael Phelps Care About Georgia?

United States swimming phenom Michael Phelps continued his Beijing gold rush tonight, earning the gold medal on the back of a world-record-setting outing in the final of the men's 200-meter individual medley. However, the ensuing medal ceremony was marred when Phelps failed to heed the directive of presidential contender John McCain, that "we are" now "all Georgians."

Phelps gave these instructions little heed at the ceremony, where he appeared to salute the United States' own flag, while "The Star Spangled Banner" played on the loudspeaker, instead of "Tavisupleba," the Georgian national anthem. This raised many questions. Why won't Michael Phelps use his powerful "dolphin kick" to circumvent the Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea?

Recognizing that Phelps had failed to learn The Lesson Of Munich, Hungarian silver medalist Laszlo Cseh left the ceremony and immediately annexed the Sudetenland.

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

Russia levels nuclear threat at Poland:

Russia: Poland risks attack because of US missiles - Yahoo! News

 

[financeguy]

Pas de problème parce que je parle un peu français.

I realize that there are many definitions for American exceptionalism including derogatory ones now favored by the anti-American left.

Is Pat Buchanan part of the anti-American left?

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Print Article

 

[financeguy]

correct me if i'm wrong on these basic points:

1) south ossetia has an olverwhelming majority of russian speaking citizens (and passport holders)
2) south ossetia is a breakaway province that the large majority want out of georgia
3) georgia, in a less-than-articulate-description "invaded" their own territory, which while belonging to them in the literal sense (much like greenland is sort of administered by denmark), doesn't really belong to them any longer at least in terms of spirit (oh boy, this is getting muddier by the word).
4) russia then replies by sending in forces to the area, and the fighting between the two sides begins.

These are fair points.

 

[melon]

Is Pat Buchanan part of the anti-American left?

No. He's a textbook definition paleoconservative, as the pre-WWII conservatives were also isolationists. This article fits a pattern with Buchanan, for better or for worse.

Regardless, as a matter of practice, even a stopped clock is right two times a day, and these are the days when isolationism is taking on the excesses of failed neoconservatism--little effort required.

 

[INDY500]

Is Pat Buchanan part of the anti-American left?

Pat Buchanan is the type of conservative that MSNBC puts on the air if that means anything to you.

 

[BVS]

Pat Buchanan is the type of conservative that MSNBC puts on the air if that means anything to you.

another paranoid right conspiracy...

 

[Dreadsox]

I do not associate Pat Buchanan with the republican party. I find him refreshing in that he is not always lock step with the party and seems able to make arguments that are not necessarily what people want or like to hear. I am not saying I agree with him. I like him for his articulation of his opinions tight or wrong.

 

[bono_212]

 

[financeguy]

Pat Buchanan is the type of conservative that MSNBC puts on the air if that means anything to you.

Well, I could have sworn I've seen him being interviewed on Fox fairly recently.

Wonder if they'll still have him on after his one:-

Who is Randy Scheunemann?

He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.

But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.

He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.

From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 – pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.

What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.

Scheunemann came close to succeeding.

Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.

U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?

Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for 45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military response to the Russian move into Georgia.

That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality – namely, that Russia's control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.

If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain, Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO? For that would commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis, does not justify a war.

Not only did Scheunemann's two-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.

Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end of the Cold War. Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet, many Russian naval officers retired there.

The children and grandchildren of these Russians are Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians left behind in the "near abroad" when the Soviet Union broke apart.

Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee. If Russia intervenes to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed to come in and drive the Russians out.

This is the situation in which the interventionists have placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.

Scheunemann's resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9/11. He signed the PNAC ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9/11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.

Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's camp.

The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.

Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?

Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13338

 

[yolland]

.

Stung by Criticism Over Georgia, Putin Asks West for a Little Understanding

By ELLEN BARRY
New York Times, September 11, 2008


MOSCOW — For three and a half hours on Thursday, in tones that were alternately pugilistic and needy, Vladimir V. Putin tried to explain himself.

More than a month has passed since Russia sent columns of armor into Georgia, asserting its sphere of influence with a confidence not seen since the days of the Soviet Union. But since the first hours of this crisis, Russian leaders have been asking the same question with mounting frustration: Why is everyone blaming us for this?

Mr. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, made his case on Thursday in Sochi, Russia, before the Valdai Discussion Club, a collection of Russia experts from around the world. Comments aimed at the West were, at times, rueful—he said he liked President Bush more than many Americans do—and even respectful, as when he asked for a moment of silence in honor of the victims of Sept. 11. As for the criticism that has cascaded down on his government, Mr. Putin expressed only bafflement that those in the West did not accept Russia’s explanation that it had simply acted in defense of its citizens. How did they expect Russia to respond to the shelling of its peacekeepers in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, he asked—with “slingshots?” Did they expect him to “brandish a penknife?” “What else could we do?” the Interfax news agency reported him as saying. “Do you think we should have wiped the bloody snot away and hung our heads?”

His plea was serious. This week, Russia’s diplomatic relations with Europe frayed badly during negotiations about a withdrawal of troops from Georgia. President Dmitri A. Medvedev’s decision to recognize the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has made even longtime allies like China and Serbia wary of standing with Russia.

But while Russia has been unbending across the negotiating table, what its leaders seem to want more than anything is to be understood.

Mr. Putin issued a great number of reassurances on Thursday: He said Russia had “no ideological conflict” with the West and “no imperial ambitions” in Eastern Europe; he said he supported eliminating stockpiles of nuclear weapons; he said he expected Georgians to oust their president, Mikheil Saakashvili, without any help from Russia. Russia, he said, is “not against anybody.”

Well, almost nobody. Mr. Putin spoke of the Western news media with unbridled contempt. “I am surprised at how powerful the propaganda machine of the so-called West is,” he said. “This is awesome! Amazing!”

Early in the crisis, monitoring Western news sources from Beijing at the start of the Olympics, he said, he saw “absolute silence, as if nothing was happening. As if this was commanded. I congratulate you. I congratulate those who were involved in this.”

In his remarks to the group, which included prominent political scientists and journalists, Mr. Putin offered a detailed account of Russia’s thrust into Georgia, which he characterized as restrained. For the first time, Mr. Putin suggested that the military action was aimed in part at quelling instability in the Russian north Caucasus, where he said “certain nongovernmental organizations in certain republics” had “raised the question of separation from Russia under the pretext of nonprotection of South Ossetia...We would have had a new problem if we had not done that,” Interfax reported him as saying.

Mr. Putin is clearly still stung by language used by the European Union, which condemned the Russian invasion as “a disproportionate response” to Georgia’s attack on Tskhinvali. He said Russians had no choice but to proceed beyond the conflict zone to eliminate Georgian posts and ammunition depots—a move he compared to that of the Soviet Army in World War II, which pursued Nazi forces across Soviet borders and into Western Europe. “By the way, it was not only Soviet forces that entered Berlin,” he said. “There were Americans, the French, the British there. Why did you go there? You could have done some shooting along the borders and called it a day.”

In this conversation—unlike a recent interview on CNN—Mr. Putin gave measured answers, expressing as much regret as defiance. At times, he seemed to be enjoying himself, as when he was asked about the power dynamic between himself and Mr. Medvedev, his protégé. Traditionally, the Russian president controls foreign and security policy, and the prime minister acts chiefly as a manager of the economy. Yet it was Mr. Putin who rushed to the Caucasus battlefield, flying back from China to meet with Russian generals and visit the Russian wounded.

It was “a shame,” Mr. Putin said, that the crisis had fallen to Mr. Medvedev, whom he described as “an intelligent, contemporary man of liberal views.” He said the decision to invade was Mr. Medvedev’s; not a single tank, Mr. Putin said, would have moved without direct orders from Mr. Medvedev. “I never impose my advice on him,” Mr. Putin said. “As for your humble servant,” he added, “earlier, the problems of economic development consumed 80% of my time. Now I spend much more on it.”

 

[Harry Vest]

That letter from Putin calmed me a bit. This is serious. What we don't need right now is overreaction on the part of the U.S. or NATO. I'll stay tuned and comment later.

 

[Harry Vest]

Geez, did you guys get me this time. While flying through FYM and obviously not paying enough attention I thought this was a brand new post and had just came over the wires minutes ago. Talk about a internet War Of The Worlds. Geez...and whew.