Georgia and Russia Going to War?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
202

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Pat Buchanan gets it right.

[center][b]Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?[/b]

by Patrick J. Buchanan[/center]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan93.html

[i] 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?[/i]


I used to be a fan of Pat Buchanan and am sympathetic to some of his views.  Lately, however, he's taken a turn for blaming the Jews for things and swinging from the balls of the Arabs.  Anyone who blames the former for things without, AT THE VERY LEAST, giving equal time to the latter, is a kook in my opinion.  

The paragraph starting at "True." was complete and utter bullshit and lacks any understanding of the "Shia Crescent" of terrorism.  He is right about Serbia, though.  We definitely bombed the wrong people there.  But that was because Arab money told us that the Muslims in Kosovo were losing.    
[/quote]

How do you figure?  I understand you hate Islam, and not without occasional justification.  But, and I could be mistaken here, aren't you a Christian?  One of the fundamental tenets of Christian Just War theory is proportionality.  Levelling a country's infrastructure and killing thousands of its civilians over the deaths of a handful of your soldiers by a force that did not even answer to the country you attacked is, as Buchanan says, several times worse than what Russia did.
203

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Iran wants nukes and America wants to stop them because it does not want to see nukes fall into the hands of terrorists…and we’re the bad guys…

Russia threatens Poland with nuclear annhilation…and you people love them?! Where’s the condemnation??

Read what they did to Americans who went to live in the worker’s paradise:

http://calitreview.com/796

“compulsatory” edit:

"Tsouliadis presents us with a portrait of some of these thousands of emigrants who promptly upon arrival formed a baseball team to show off our national pastime to the young Socialists.

We view them as they appeared then in the 30s, with their determined, shining, young faces. Yet, immediately relieved of their American passports, with assurances they would soon be returned along with joint citizenship in this new land, their documents were never to be seen again.

And by the end of Tsoulidaris�?? account no more than two of these survived the carnage. The terror that these Americans were engulfed by through the long Stalin era is made vivid."

and you ask “why do you hate the Russians?”[/quote]

Funny, I just read a review of that same book in the Economist yesterday. But they make the point that the people who we should be most disgusted about in that situation were FDR and his diplomats (George Kennan excepted) in Russia.

And I’m not sure how this in any way justifies us hating the Russians. Sins of the father aside, the Russians themselves were bigger victims of communism than us by a long shot. I would have thought Solzhenitsyn’s death might have been a reminder there.

204

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
Iran wants nukes and America wants to stop them because it does not want to see nukes fall into the hands of terrorists…and we’re the bad guys…

Russia threatens Poland with nuclear annhilation…and you people love them?! Where’s the condemnation??

Read what they did to Americans who went to live in the worker’s paradise:

http://calitreview.com/796

“compulsatory” edit:

"Tsouliadis presents us with a portrait of some of these thousands of emigrants who promptly upon arrival formed a baseball team to show off our national pastime to the young Socialists.

We view them as they appeared then in the 30s, with their determined, shining, young faces. Yet, immediately relieved of their American passports, with assurances they would soon be returned along with joint citizenship in this new land, their documents were never to be seen again.

And by the end of Tsoulidaris�?? account no more than two of these survived the carnage. The terror that these Americans were engulfed by through the long Stalin era is made vivid."

and you ask “why do you hate the Russians?”

Funny, I just read a review of that same book in the Economist yesterday. But they make the point that the people who we should be most disgusted about in that situation were FDR and his diplomats (George Kennan excepted) in Russia.

And I’m not sure how this in any way justifies us hating the Russians. Sins of the father aside, the Russians themselves were bigger victims of communism than us by a long shot. I would have thought Solzhenitsyn’s death might have been a reminder there.[/quote]

And you would probably think that they wouldn’t want to be ruled by an iron fisted former KGB colonel. But you would be wrong again.

205

Since Pat Buchanan can’t be trusted to give an honest history of any international incident nowadays, reliably sputtering off half-cocked with a reflexive “blame America” screed that would make Noam Chomsky blush, Christopher Hitchens notes that Kosovo and the current crisis isn’t apples-to-apples:

[i]South Ossetia Isn’t KosovoWhatever Moscow says, there are at least six significant differences between the two situations.
By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Aug. 18, 2008, at 12:00 PM ET

While it is almost certainly true that Moscow’s action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas.

Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences?

  1. Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micronationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union. It is thus impossible to avoid the suspicion that these small peoples are being used as “strategic minorities” to negate the independence of the larger Georgian republic and to warn all those with pro-Russian populations on their soil of what may, in turn, befall them. This is like nothing so much as Turkish imperialism in Cyprus and Thrace and Iraq, where local minorities can be turned on and off like a faucet according to the needs of the local superpower.
  2. Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country�??the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved�??and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means. NATO intervention occurred only when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic “cleansing.” Whatever may be said of Georgia’s incautious policy toward secessionism within its own internationally recognized borders, it does not deserve comparison with the lawless and criminal behavior of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. And in any case, it is unwise for Moscow to be making the analogy, since it supported Milosevic at the time and has excused him since on the less-than-adorable grounds (barely even disguised in Russian propaganda) of Christian Orthodox solidarity. It also armed and incited the most extreme and least pacifist forces in Ossetia and Abkhazia.
  3. Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country’s plan to send land, air, and sea forces deep into the territory and waters of a former colony that is now a U.N. member state? I thought not. I look at the newspaper editorials every day, waiting to see who will be the first to use the word unilateral in the same sentence as the name Russia. Nothing so far. Yet U.N. Resolution 1441, warning Saddam Hussein of serious consequences, was the fruit of years of thwarted diplomacy and was passed without a dissenting vote.
  4. The six former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, which all exercised their pre-existing constitutional right to secede from rule by Belgrade, are seated as members of the United Nations, as, indeed, is Georgia. Twenty out of 27 states of the European Union have also recognized the government of Kosovo as an entity de jure as well as de facto. The Kosovar population is estimated at 1.8 million, which makes it larger than that of some existing E.U. member states. Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia? On the contrary, these peoples will be reassimilated into the Russian empire. So any comparison with Kosovo would have to be not to its breaking away but to its potential absorption and annexation by Albania. And nobody has even proposed this, let alone countenanced the unilateral stationing of Albanian armed forces on Kosovar soil.
  5. Heartbreakingly difficult though the task has been, and remains, the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; subsidizing cities and communities that practice reconciliation; and encouraging, for example, Serbs and Albanians to cooperate in Kosovo. One need not romanticize this policy, but it would nonetheless stand up to any comparison with Russian behavior in the Caucasus (and indeed the Balkans), which is explicitly based on an outright appeal to sectarianism, nationalism, and�??even worse�??confessionalism.
  6. The fans of moral equivalence may or may not have noticed this, but the obviously long-meditated and coordinated Russian military intervention in Georgia comes in the same month as explicit threats to the sovereignty of Poland and Ukraine, and hard on the heels of a Russian obstruction of any U.N. action in the case of Zimbabwe. Those who like to describe Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev as reacting to an “encirclement” of Russia may wish to spill some geopolitical ink on explaining how Kosovo forms part of this menacing ring of steel�??or how the repression of the people of Zimbabwe can assist in Moscow’s breakout strategy from it.

If it matters, I agree with the critics who say that the Bush administration garnered the worst of both worlds by giving the Georgians the impression of U.S. support and then defaulting at the push-comes-to-shove moment. The Clintonoids made exactly that mistake with Serbian aggression a decade and more ago, giving the Bosnians hope and then letting them be slaughtered until the position became untenable�??and then astoundingly, and even after the Dayton Accords, repeating the same series of dithering errors in the case of Kosovo. The longer the moment of truth was postponed, the worse things became. But this in itself argues quite convincingly that there was no deliberate imperial design involved. Will anyone say the same about Putin’s undisguised plan for the forcible restoration of Russian hegemony all around his empire’s periphery? It would be nice to think that there was a consistent response to this from Washington, but I would not even bet someone else’s house on the idea, which is what President Bush has given the strong impression of doing in the low farce and frivolity of the last two weeks.[/i]

Georgia is guilty of recklessness, but the idea that but for the West’s actions, Georgia’s actions, etc., Russia would be sitting piously in good faith is silly and naive - Putin wants his empire, and he means to have it - and he’s proven very skilled at manufacturing pretexts.

206

This is pure hyperbole to the point of being blood libel. Israel did nothing of the sort. They tried to be surgical, bombing only the Shi’a areas of Beirut and going house to house on foot rather than shelling indiscriminately. And what did it get them? Buchanan and other influential gentiles with the Arabs’ balls in their mouths? The rest of the Western media carrying water for Hizb’allah (The party of God)? The only ‘disproportionate’ response was the one drawn in Photoshop throughout that whole thing.

Moreover, I find it rather telling that no one can seem to remember the Lebanese Christians that were ethnically cleansed from south Lebanon over the past thirty years. The Shia weren’t always there, you know. Take some time and read Brigitte GAbriel before you go pining away for the poor Shia in south Lebanon who got their pee-pees slapped after picking the wrong fight. If only Israel had done its job during that conflict.

207

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Georgia is guilty of recklessness, but the idea that but for the West’s actions, Georgia’s actions, etc., Russia would be sitting piously in good faith is silly and naive [/quote]

I have to ask: What makes you think anyone here is defending that idea?

People are pointing out the blatant hypocrisy and double standards of US’ foreign policy.

And let me add the most important difference your article missed: Ossetia is on Russia’s border!!!

208

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
How do you figure? I understand you hate Islam, and not without occasional justification. But, and I could be mistaken here, aren’t you a Christian? One of the fundamental tenets of Christian Just War theory is proportionality. Levelling a country’s infrastructure and killing thousands of its civilians over the deaths of a handful of your soldiers by a force that did not even answer to the country you attacked is, as Buchanan says, several times worse than what Russia did.

This is pure hyperbole to the point of being blood libel. Israel did nothing of the sort. They tried to be surgical, bombing only the Shi’a areas of Beirut and going house to house on foot rather than shelling indiscriminately. And what did it get them? Buchanan and other influential gentiles with the Arabs’ balls in their mouths? The rest of the Western media carrying water for Hizb’allah (The party of God)? The only ‘disproportionate’ response was the one drawn in Photoshop throughout that whole thing.
[/quote]

Blood libel? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Israel tried to be surgical?! By using cluster bombs and an air campaign on guerrillas? By blockading the country and bombing its airport? Do you realize how absurd that sounds?

About twenty times as many Lebanese civilians as Israeli civilains died during the war. Again, proportionality and the Just War tradition. I take it you’re not a Catholic?

[quote]
Moreover, I find it rather telling that no one can seem to remember the Lebanese Christians that were ethnically cleansed from south Lebanon over the past thirty years. The Shia weren’t always there, you know. Take some time and read Brigitte GAbriel before you go pining away for the poor Shia in south Lebanon who got their pee-pees slapped after picking the wrong fight. If only Israel had done its job during that conflict. [/quote]

Are those the same Lebanese Christians who waded through Sabrah and Shatilla? Hezbollah are not good people, but I doubt they’re much worse than the Falangists or many of the Sunni parties.

209

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
Iran wants nukes and America wants to stop them because it does not want to see nukes fall into the hands of terrorists…and we’re the bad guys…

Russia threatens Poland with nuclear annhilation…and you people love them?! Where’s the condemnation??

Read what they did to Americans who went to live in the worker’s paradise:

http://calitreview.com/796

“compulsatory” edit:

"Tsouliadis presents us with a portrait of some of these thousands of emigrants who promptly upon arrival formed a baseball team to show off our national pastime to the young Socialists.

We view them as they appeared then in the 30s, with their determined, shining, young faces. Yet, immediately relieved of their American passports, with assurances they would soon be returned along with joint citizenship in this new land, their documents were never to be seen again.

And by the end of Tsoulidaris�?? account no more than two of these survived the carnage. The terror that these Americans were engulfed by through the long Stalin era is made vivid."

and you ask “why do you hate the Russians?”

Funny, I just read a review of that same book in the Economist yesterday. But they make the point that the people who we should be most disgusted about in that situation were FDR and his diplomats (George Kennan excepted) in Russia.

And I’m not sure how this in any way justifies us hating the Russians. Sins of the father aside, the Russians themselves were bigger victims of communism than us by a long shot. I would have thought Solzhenitsyn’s death might have been a reminder there.

And you would probably think that they wouldn’t want to be ruled by an iron fisted former KGB colonel. But you would be wrong again.[/quote]

Nationalism’s a funny thing. Anyone observing the U.S. over the last seven years could come to that conclusion.

210

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Since Pat Buchanan can’t be trusted to give an honest history of any international incident nowadays, reliably sputtering off half-cocked with a reflexive “blame America” screed that would make Noam Chomsky blush, Christopher Hitchens notes that Kosovo and the current crisis isn’t apples-to-apples:

[i]South Ossetia Isn’t KosovoWhatever Moscow says, there are at least six significant differences between the two situations.
By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Aug. 18, 2008, at 12:00 PM ET

While it is almost certainly true that Moscow’s action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas.

Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences?

  1. Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micronationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union. It is thus impossible to avoid the suspicion that these small peoples are being used as “strategic minorities” to negate the independence of the larger Georgian republic and to warn all those with pro-Russian populations on their soil of what may, in turn, befall them. This is like nothing so much as Turkish imperialism in Cyprus and Thrace and Iraq, where local minorities can be turned on and off like a faucet according to the needs of the local superpower.
  2. Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country�??the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved�??and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means. NATO intervention occurred only when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic “cleansing.” Whatever may be said of Georgia’s incautious policy toward secessionism within its own internationally recognized borders, it does not deserve comparison with the lawless and criminal behavior of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. And in any case, it is unwise for Moscow to be making the analogy, since it supported Milosevic at the time and has excused him since on the less-than-adorable grounds (barely even disguised in Russian propaganda) of Christian Orthodox solidarity. It also armed and incited the most extreme and least pacifist forces in Ossetia and Abkhazia.
  3. Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country’s plan to send land, air, and sea forces deep into the territory and waters of a former colony that is now a U.N. member state? I thought not. I look at the newspaper editorials every day, waiting to see who will be the first to use the word unilateral in the same sentence as the name Russia. Nothing so far. Yet U.N. Resolution 1441, warning Saddam Hussein of serious consequences, was the fruit of years of thwarted diplomacy and was passed without a dissenting vote.
  4. The six former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, which all exercised their pre-existing constitutional right to secede from rule by Belgrade, are seated as members of the United Nations, as, indeed, is Georgia. Twenty out of 27 states of the European Union have also recognized the government of Kosovo as an entity de jure as well as de facto. The Kosovar population is estimated at 1.8 million, which makes it larger than that of some existing E.U. member states. Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia? On the contrary, these peoples will be reassimilated into the Russian empire. So any comparison with Kosovo would have to be not to its breaking away but to its potential absorption and annexation by Albania. And nobody has even proposed this, let alone countenanced the unilateral stationing of Albanian armed forces on Kosovar soil.
  5. Heartbreakingly difficult though the task has been, and remains, the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; subsidizing cities and communities that practice reconciliation; and encouraging, for example, Serbs and Albanians to cooperate in Kosovo. One need not romanticize this policy, but it would nonetheless stand up to any comparison with Russian behavior in the Caucasus (and indeed the Balkans), which is explicitly based on an outright appeal to sectarianism, nationalism, and�??even worse�??confessionalism.
  6. The fans of moral equivalence may or may not have noticed this, but the obviously long-meditated and coordinated Russian military intervention in Georgia comes in the same month as explicit threats to the sovereignty of Poland and Ukraine, and hard on the heels of a Russian obstruction of any U.N. action in the case of Zimbabwe. Those who like to describe Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev as reacting to an “encirclement” of Russia may wish to spill some geopolitical ink on explaining how Kosovo forms part of this menacing ring of steel�??or how the repression of the people of Zimbabwe can assist in Moscow’s breakout strategy from it.

If it matters, I agree with the critics who say that the Bush administration garnered the worst of both worlds by giving the Georgians the impression of U.S. support and then defaulting at the push-comes-to-shove moment. The Clintonoids made exactly that mistake with Serbian aggression a decade and more ago, giving the Bosnians hope and then letting them be slaughtered until the position became untenable�??and then astoundingly, and even after the Dayton Accords, repeating the same series of dithering errors in the case of Kosovo. The longer the moment of truth was postponed, the worse things became. But this in itself argues quite convincingly that there was no deliberate imperial design involved. Will anyone say the same about Putin’s undisguised plan for the forcible restoration of Russian hegemony all around his empire’s periphery? It would be nice to think that there was a consistent response to this from Washington, but I would not even bet someone else’s house on the idea, which is what President Bush has given the strong impression of doing in the low farce and frivolity of the last two weeks.[/i]

Georgia is guilty of recklessness, but the idea that but for the West’s actions, Georgia’s actions, etc., Russia would be sitting piously in good faith is silly and naive - Putin wants his empire, and he means to have it - and he’s proven very skilled at manufacturing pretexts.[/quote]

No one, including Pat Buchanan, is saying the Russians are saints. As to Putin’s “empire”: what does that mean? Does he expect Russia to have a great deal of influence in its near abroad, particularly as opposed to NATO? Sure. Is the USSR being reconstituted? Not unless you’re an idiot pundit looking for a scary headline.

I could go through the above point by point, but he’s right, Georgia isn’t Kosovo. One was a case of a country thousands of miles away throwing state sovereignty out the window to stop a genocide that wasn’t happening and dismember an ancient nation; the other was a state responding militarily to an attack on its ethnic brethren that it considers citizens.

I didn’t know anyone besides impressionable college sophomores was still quoting Christopher Hitchens though.

211

Which guerrillas? The entire south of Lebanon that was launching Iranian-made missiles indiscriminately into Israel?

Do you know anything about war? You bomb supply lines in war, meaning their airport. You also blockade the enemy. That’s pretty standard. The crap you’re saying just reminds me how far gone the paleo-cons are.

Boo-freaking-hoo. The Islamic definition of “civilian” and the Western definition are two different things. Muslims have no problem using women and children for “matyrdom operations” and probably kept them around to make Israel look bad. Israel leafletted before it bombed.

[quote]
Are those the same Lebanese Christians who waded through Sabrah and Shatilla?[/quote]

No, the Lebanese Christians that were living in the south of Lebanon since the time of Christ, surviving wave upon wave of jihad, only to be done in by the Shia over the past thirty years.

God, you need to stop drinking the paleo-con kool-aid over at American Conservative and other Buchananite publications. There are 16 million Jews in the world and 1 billion Moslems, and who do you paleo-cons spend your time worrying about? Talk about ‘disproportionate’. Between paleo-conservatism’s Arab-lust and neo-conservatism’s Jewish utopianism, it’s no wonder conservatism is dead.

212

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
If only Israel had done its job during that conflict.

Are those the same Lebanese Christians who waded through Sabrah and Shatilla? [/quote]

If it helps answer your question, remember that over 40% of Lebanon is Christian. Hezballah might be a religious

Note how indistinguishable PRCalDude’s position is from that of Al-Qaeda. He talks about Israel’s “job” as if the country was there for the sole purpose of executing (pun intended) whatever the Americans order it to.

213

Yes, I’m waging jihad under the banner of “La illah il Allah…” I believe that we should subjugate convert or subjugate everyone to Islam. Indistinguishable.

It’s funny how you picked this quote to respond to, yet you can’t seem to find a response for 99% of the other things I post in your direction, including the rebuttals to all of your taqiyya. Do your handlers ever bother to look at your work in PWI? You seem quite capable of churning out the Islamophobes. I thank you.

214

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
…

I didn’t know anyone besides impressionable college sophomores was still quoting Christopher Hitchens though.[/quote]

Dude, you have been worshipping at the Pat Buchanon altar lately.

I am embarrassed for you.

215

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:

No one, including Pat Buchanan, is saying the Russians are saints. As to Putin’s “empire”: what does that mean? Does he expect Russia to have a great deal of influence in its near abroad, particularly as opposed to NATO? Sure. Is the USSR being reconstituted? Not unless you’re an idiot pundit looking for a scary headline.[/quote]

No one is talking a “reconstitution of the Soviet Union”, but there is no doubt wants to extend its power and sphere of influence. And it matters - Russia is a power-hungry autocracy. Whatever “influence” Russia wants to enjoy won’t be a good one.

You can hardly contain your glee at one more swipe at “American foreign policy” - the predictable, lazy catchall to demonstrate all the world’s ills. Russia wasn’t responding militarily to an attack on its “ethnic brethren” - Russia intentionally cultivated those relationships in order to fan the flames of discontent there.

In your revisionism - not surprising - you neglect to note that South Ossetia was essentially a Russian outpost, complete with Russian security services running the show with a former Soviet official as head. South Ossetia was essentially run on KGB money and networks - and none of that is an historical accident from Russia’s perspective.

It wasn’t the case of innocent “ethnic brethren” getting surprised by mean old Georgians - it was a case of Russia creating a trap, and Georgia bumbling into it stupidly.

You’re dumb enough to actually think that was an insult.

216

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Vegita wrote:
If Russian Peacekeepers were in S Ossetia and Georgia KNEW that along with the fact that like it or not, the people of S Ossetia were provided the opportunity to become Russian Citizens, many of which did. The President of Georgia is in all reality one dumb SOB. You cannot blame anything on russia here, they have every right and in fact should put as much pressure and influence on whoever they can USA does it in every instance, and so does almost every individual. It is human nature to want to have things your way. Unfortunately for the people of Georgia and S Ossetia, the georgian President appears to not value human life and shelled non military targets in S Ossetia.

I can’t imagine what he thought the outcome was going to be from that, but it is pretty much universally frowned upon and I’m actually surprised that people are even questioning Russia on thier response. If Quebec Shelled Niagrara Falls on the canadian side and a bunch of americans died, You bet your ass we the Mighty US would retaliate with amazing use of force. There wouldn’t be a canadian base that didn’t get creamed with missles and bombs.

V

You do realize that South Ossetia has been committing acts of violence against Georgia, don’t you? It has been an endless cycle of violence.

You do realize that Russia prepositioned troops and initiated computer attacks 3 weeks before they invaded don’t you?

Russia provoked this and now they are going to swallow parts of Georgia. Pure imperialism.[/quote]

So an ally repositioning thier troops and a hacker attack, which I doubt can br proven was the government of russias doing. That is what you think just cause for bombing civillians is? Wow, I see the Neo Cons have indeed succeeded in brainwashing regular old conservatives into war loving zombies. Do you even think for yourself anymore Zap? I used to agree with you on a lot of issues, but you are talking like a politician. Avoiding the crux of the matter and giving little tidbits that don’t make much difference to bolster your position, that your ally was in the right. Zap, we are not the US Government, it is OK to disagree with the government and still be a conservative patriot. Actually it may be required. Georgias actions and our response to them are simply wrong. There really is no debating it. If the acts you described indeed require the other side to escalate, then it could have been an initial interaction of a S Ossetian not waving to a georgian that started this whole thing. Escilation of violence is rarley ever a good thing to do and it is quite insane to do it if you escalate against someone who can kill you in the blink of an eye. If Fedor stole my lunch money, I would hardly call it a good plan to punch him in the face over it. I would think the excpected outcome would be me getting my arm ripped off.

This brings us to the bigger picture. Who in our government told this loser Georgian president that we would back him up? This smells like a set up and he took a chance that killing a bunch of people so that Russia would attack him and be drawn into a bigger war with his future NATO allies would get him in NATO. At least thats what I believe he was led to believe. In other words, there had to be some future positive outcome he envisioned. And seeing as we have a big influence in Georgia, I find it hard to believe we weren’t the one giving him the green light. There is an obvious propoganda machine running in the west over this. CNN showed footage of a town in S Ossetia which was bombed out, the devastation was massive, people were seen crying in the streets but there was no sound. They claimed this was a georgian town and that this was what the russians did. Yet on russian TV who have 6 news crews in S Ossetia and georgia, they go through the same town and see the same people crying in the street and they call it some town in S Ossetia and the people are wailing in the street and cursing the President of Georgia. They also have a camera crew in a town in georgia, the one CNN said they were in. There is hardly a stone overturned and no one is in the streets bloody and crying. The BBC and Sky News also had the same footage as CNN.

Look, this whole thread is about nationalism, yet this whole time, all you Neo-Cons are really doing is being “Good Germans” or in our case, “Good Yankees”. The media is now controlled by or at least very supportive of the government. They days of reporters keeping politicians honest is over, you have to get your info from someplace else, i.e. the net, and broaden your perspective of the events of the world. I’m sure you will now claim you already do this, but newsmax isn’t exactly an alternative media source.

V

217

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
No one is talking a “reconstitution of the Soviet Union”, but there is no doubt wants to extend its power and sphere of influence. [/quote]

We have FightingIrish writing: “We cannot let them be threatened by a just-now reawakening Russian bear.”

The image reeks of the idea of “reconstitution of the Soviet Union”.

The only good “influence” is American influence.

The only good “influence” is American influence.

The only good “influence” is American influence.

Eh?

He’s just comparing Russian interventionism with that of the US. Implying that Russia is more justified in responding to Georgia than the US bombing a European country.

Nowhere did he speak of “world’s ills”.

Maybe so. But Georgia isn’t exactly neutral in all of this. They keep wanting to subjugate Ossetians and restore the old Georgian glory. Listen to any of Saakashvili’s speeches from a couple of years ago.

Russians are supporting a separatist movement. I can only encourage that. Whether they’ll invade Ossetia as soon as Georgia backs down is an unknown and I propose we wait for that to start condemning them.

This makes no sense. Russia was happy with the status quo and had every reason to be. On the other hand, and as shown by every document and announcement from Saakashvili’s Ertiani Nazionaluri Modsraoba, Georgia wants to restore its control of Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia wanted to test the waters (by shelling sleeping villages no less) apparently expecting American support. It’s simple really.

It doesn’t beat terms like “dumb”, as far as insults go.

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[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Since you like to nitpick on this point, why, curiously, do you refer to “governments” as doing things?
[/quote]

You’ll also notice I am careful to talk about the specific things that political leaders do and speak in the most general terms about government when “it” decrees certain terms to “its” citizens. The institution of government in capable to do anything without its leaders.

This is exactly the argument for why government needs to go away. It is a convenience to talk about it in such definite terms but you see? in fact, “it” does not exist. Why should we recognize it?

219

[quote]Vegita wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Vegita wrote:
If Russian Peacekeepers were in S Ossetia and Georgia KNEW that along with the fact that like it or not, the people of S Ossetia were provided the opportunity to become Russian Citizens, many of which did. The President of Georgia is in all reality one dumb SOB.

You cannot blame anything on russia here, they have every right and in fact should put as much pressure and influence on whoever they can USA does it in every instance, and so does almost every individual. It is human nature to want to have things your way.

Unfortunately for the people of Georgia and S Ossetia, the georgian President appears to not value human life and shelled non military targets in S Ossetia.

I can’t imagine what he thought the outcome was going to be from that, but it is pretty much universally frowned upon and I’m actually surprised that people are even questioning Russia on thier response.

If Quebec Shelled Niagrara Falls on the canadian side and a bunch of americans died, You bet your ass we the Mighty US would retaliate with amazing use of force. There wouldn’t be a canadian base that didn’t get creamed with missles and bombs.

V

You do realize that South Ossetia has been committing acts of violence against Georgia, don’t you? It has been an endless cycle of violence.

You do realize that Russia prepositioned troops and initiated computer attacks 3 weeks before they invaded don’t you?

Russia provoked this and now they are going to swallow parts of Georgia. Pure imperialism.

So an ally repositioning thier troops and a hacker attack, which I doubt can br proven was the government of russias doing. That is what you think just cause for bombing civillians is?

Wow, I see the Neo Cons have indeed succeeded in brainwashing regular old conservatives into war loving zombies. Do you even think for yourself anymore Zap? I used to agree with you on a lot of issues, but you are talking like a politician.

Avoiding the crux of the matter and giving little tidbits that don’t make much difference to bolster your position, that your ally was in the right. Zap, we are not the US Government, it is OK to disagree with the government and still be a conservative patriot.

Actually it may be required. Georgias actions and our response to them are simply wrong. There really is no debating it. If the acts you described indeed require the other side to escalate, then it could have been an initial interaction of a S Ossetian not waving to a georgian that started this whole thing.

Escilation of violence is rarley ever a good thing to do and it is quite insane to do it if you escalate against someone who can kill you in the blink of an eye. If Fedor stole my lunch money, I would hardly call it a good plan to punch him in the face over it. I would think the excpected outcome would be me getting my arm ripped off.

This brings us to the bigger picture. Who in our government told this loser Georgian president that we would back him up? This smells like a set up and he took a chance that killing a bunch of people so that Russia would attack him and be drawn into a bigger war with his future NATO allies would get him in NATO.

At least thats what I believe he was led to believe. In other words, there had to be some future positive outcome he envisioned. And seeing as we have a big influence in Georgia, I find it hard to believe we weren’t the one giving him the green light.

There is an obvious propoganda machine running in the west over this. CNN showed footage of a town in S Ossetia which was bombed out, the devastation was massive, people were seen crying in the streets but there was no sound. They claimed this was a georgian town and that this was what the russians did.

Yet on russian TV who have 6 news crews in S Ossetia and georgia, they go through the same town and see the same people crying in the street and they call it some town in S Ossetia and the people are wailing in the street and cursing the President of Georgia.

They also have a camera crew in a town in georgia, the one CNN said they were in. There is hardly a stone overturned and no one is in the streets bloody and crying. The BBC and Sky News also had the same footage as CNN.

Look, this whole thread is about nationalism, yet this whole time, all you Neo-Cons are really doing is being “Good Germans” or in our case, “Good Yankees”. The media is now controlled by or at least very supportive of the government.

They days of reporters keeping politicians honest is over, you have to get your info from someplace else, i.e. the net, and broaden your perspective of the events of the world. I’m sure you will now claim you already do this, but newsmax isn’t exactly an alternative media source.

V[/quote]

What the hell are you smoking? I can barely read that.

The Russians provoked this and responded with overwhelming force.

The Russians are occupying significant parts of Georgia in spite of their agreement to pull back.

The Russians and the paramilitary forces are looting Georgia.

I am the “good German” for condemning their actions? Unreal!

They are behaving exactly like Nazi Germany if you want to use that analogy. You are the good German or the Neville Chamberlain my friend.

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[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Blood libel? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Israel tried to be surgical?! By using cluster bombs and an air campaign on guerrillas? By blockading the country and bombing its airport? Do you realize how absurd that sounds?

Which guerrillas? The entire south of Lebanon that was launching Iranian-made missiles indiscriminately into Israel?

Do you know anything about war? You bomb supply lines in war, meaning their airport. You also blockade the enemy. That’s pretty standard. The crap you’re saying just reminds me how far gone the paleo-cons are.
[/quote]

Again, Hezbollah was the enemy, not the state of Lebanon. And I would think any reading of history, or even common sense, would make it clear that using airpower against guerrillas is going to solve nothing and just drive more civilians to sympathize with them. I thought you were something of a fan of 4GW theory?

It’s a shame you’re blinded by your biases. I’ll take Human Rights Watch’s word on these things (Amnesty less so), they are generally considered unbiased and professional.

[quote]
Are those the same Lebanese Christians who waded through Sabrah and Shatilla?

No, the Lebanese Christians that were living in the south of Lebanon since the time of Christ, surviving wave upon wave of jihad, only to be done in by the Shia over the past thirty years.

God, you need to stop drinking the paleo-con kool-aid over at American Conservative and other Buchananite publications. There are 16 million Jews in the world and 1 billion Moslems, and who do you paleo-cons spend your time worrying about? Talk about ‘disproportionate’. Between paleo-conservatism’s Arab-lust and neo-conservatism’s Jewish utopianism, it’s no wonder conservatism is dead. [/quote]

Huh? Arab-lust? William Lind, one of the most prominent paleo-cons around, agrees with your “clash of civilizations” view. And, from what I’ve seen, a plurality of paleocons probably fall into that camp as well. You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.

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[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
…

I didn’t know anyone besides impressionable college sophomores was still quoting Christopher Hitchens though.

Dude, you have been worshipping at the Pat Buchanon altar lately.

I am embarrassed for you.[/quote]

Coming from a continual Bush apologist, it’s hard to feel much shame.