Russia invades the US.
Long live Google!
http://valleywag.com/5034988/google-news-informs-us-that-the-russians-are-invading-the-south
Google’s mixup will not help Yahoo Answers user Jessica B., who presciently asked, “i herd on the news that rusia has invaded but i dont see them no where wats going on.”
ROTFLCOPTER
Bit of trivia (or is it?): Saakashvili has a US passport.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Bit of trivia (or is it?): Saakashvili has a US passport.[/quote]
Putin probably has one too… along with five or six others.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Russia invades the US.
Long live Google!
http://valleywag.com/5034988/google-news-informs-us-that-the-russians-are-invading-the-south[/quote]
“Woolveriines!!!”
Did i hear that russia is threatening the u.s. with war not to help georgia?
[quote]NickRageSkursky wrote:
Did i hear that russia is threatening the u.s. with war not to help georgia? [/quote]
they must have some stuff they need blowed up.
Would somebody please explain to us who don’t know why the fuck Russia is attacking, or was Georgia attacking people, or…
I just don’t get the story
[quote]Erasmus wrote:
Would somebody please explain to us who don’t know why the fuck Russia is attacking, or was Georgia attacking people, or…
I just don’t get the story[/quote]
-ossetia was a autonomous, but unrecognized republic.
-georgia wanted old territory back
-a lot of people in SO are russian citizens
-georgia attacked
-Russia is defending citizens
I think I got it all right.
[quote]Erasmus wrote:
Would somebody please explain to us who don’t know why the fuck Russia is attacking, or was Georgia attacking people, or…
I just don’t get the story[/quote]
Georgian army shelled a sleeping Tskhinvali, killing more than 1500 people. Without warning.
Many of those were Russian citizens.
Russian forces didn’t move.
Georgia kept poking the bear and moved tanks and infantry. Clearly testing Medvedev.
All hell breaks loose.
You can condemn Russia’s trigger happy policy when shit happens on its borders, but you just can’t blame this conflict on Moscow.
[quote]Ken Kaniff wrote:
Nice paranoia. Of course only the USA is entitled to have a selfish foreign policy and start a war any 5 years, when someone else does it its the start of ww3…[/quote]
Ha. True.
The Russians and the Chinese will not be allies in a campaign to end the world. Some people are getting delusional here.
I don’t see WWIII coming out of this. Hell, even if some country came to Georgia’s aid, once Russia figured out a larger war was coming they would annihilate the whole country. By the time foreign forces reach Georgian soil the war would be over and the government would have capitulated.
America is going to stay out of it. What makes you guys think that after 60 years of trying to avoid war with Russia, we’d be so quick to jump in now?
If Russia made any attempt to threaten a soverign European state, you’d be a horse’s ass to think that we wouldn’t have troops there immediately.
And if Russia and China ever could stand each other long enough to team up, everyone knows that the US would retaliate with nuclear weaponry (as would be appropriate, sadly) and we would save Europe’s ass for the third time.
Fear not… Not so easily shall the lights of freedom die…
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
And if Russia and China ever could stand each other long enough to team up, everyone knows that the US would retaliate with nuclear weaponry (as would be appropriate, sadly) and we would save Europe’s ass for the third time.[/quote]
I don’t think “triggering a nuclear holocaust when Russia retaliates” counts as saving Europe’s ass. I think they’d rather you do no saving if that was the case.
[quote]lixy wrote:
tg2hbk4488 wrote:
Well it will be interesting to see whether Russia faces the international backlash that the US has faced for Iraq. At least the US had a semi-legit reason they gave
So Georgians killing Russian citizens of Ossetia on Russia’s border is somehow less legitimate than an Iraqi killing other Iraqis in the furthest possible location from the United States?
Cool![/quote]
Best laugh so far.
Russia has indeed some “right” to protect Russians, but war always involves unbelieveble suffering, pillaging, random damage, mass rape, spreading fear and hate etc… so we still must condemn that.
Why exactly Georgia did start the initial invasion is up to debate and there are various possible motivations. Some say they wanted to use a triggerhappy (Bush) America as long as they can (Hello Obama)as an ally.
Another newspaper writes how Georgia wants to sacrifice it’s own citizes, just too speed up the process of real independance and NATO membership - which seems pretty much like a fubar plan now.
But I think there was no central plan for all this, things simply escalated and Georgia was just too cocky. Being the russkies’ neighbour sucks.
I’m especially not very proud how my government does kiss russia’s ass for quite some time now.
Only marginally better then invading them…
P.S. Anyone noticed how it was Putin who immediately visited the troops and not Medvedjev? Makes you think…
In the early 1990’s after the collapse of the USSR, South Ossetia and Georgia went to war.
South Ossetia basically won.
S.O. and Georgia signed a peace treaty. Georgia lost all rule over S.O., S.O. was allowed to set up its own government, and Georgia troops had to pull out.
- Current Georgian President is elected stating he will return all Georgian provinces, ie S.O., back under the federal government - in effect against the peace treaty signed by Georgia and S.O.
In the past few years Georgia and the USA/NATO/West have warmed up to each other. Especially since Georgia has 2,000 troops in Iraq. Third behind US and UK.
Thursday: Georgia’s President gambles that with the world’s eye on the Olympics, his nation can defend S.O. And, that PM Medved of Russia will not retaliate due to the horrible press of escalating the battle on the opening day of the Olympics.
PM Medved doesn’t fall for it. After trying to get UN to tell Georgia to stop, he sends in the Russian Military.
Russia drives Georgia effectively out of S.O. by this morning.
Russia continues to pound/bomb Georgia’s military installments and military infrastructure to first to teach Georgia a lesson that it cannot invade independent lands on Russia’s borders, second send a message two the other former Soviet state (Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Armenia, Lichtenstein, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia) that no matter how warm you get with NATO and the West, they will leave you hanging out high and dry.
In my opinion, Russia is doing the right thing. Georgia’s president made a huge gamble. And, now he is paying the price.
Seriously, what was he thinking.
This is really a huge setback for the Bush administration.
GW has tried to sell NATO membership for old USSR bloc states to our western allies. Georgia acting completely out of line just revamps France, Italy and Spain’s concerns. Further, it will make the old USSR and Eastern European states think twice now about the proposed missle shield.
Example, say all those states above decided to go with the US missle shield plan on their land. And, 1 of the states decides to pick a fight with Russia. Russia probably will bomb all the “shields” in these countries in the name of self defense.
All the while, Eastern Europens have to be sitting on their couches saying, what good is it to be the USA’s ally while Georgia is getting biatchslapped, GW is waving flags at the Olympics?
Early lessons from S Ossetia conflict
[i]1. Do not punch a bear on the nose unless it is tied down.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili must have thought that Russia would not react strongly when he sent his forces in on the eve of the Olympic games to regain control of a territory he had insisted must remain part of Georgia, albeit with some form of autonomy.
Yet Russia was always likely to respond. It already had forces there, leading the peacekeeping force agreed back in the easier days of 1992 between President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and President Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia, himself the former Soviet foreign minister who helped bring the Cold War to an end.
Russia has been supporting the separatists in South Ossetia and handed out Russian passports to the population, thereby enabling it to claim that it was defending its own citizens.
The result of what many see as his miscalculation is that President Saakashvili might well lose any hope of reasserting Georgian power in the enclave.
- Russia is in a determined mood, to say the least.
Russia, as it has so often done in the past, sees itself being encircled.
In a revealing interview with former BBC Moscow correspondent Tim Whewell earlier this year, an adviser to the then President Vladimir Putin, Gleb Pavlosky, said that the Russian leadership had concluded after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that “this is what we faced in Moscow, that they would try to export this to us, that we should prepare for this situation and very quickly strengthen our political system…”
What applied after Ukraine moved towards the West also applied as Georgia did the same. Moscow wanted to prevent any such internal revolution in Russia itself and therefore saw Ukraine and Georgia as hostile influences.
It is not clear how far Russia wants to push this, but given that it says it wants to re-establish order in South Ossetia, that probably means a permanent presence, with no return to a Georgian government role. Diplomats think it unlikely that Russia will invade Georgia ‘proper’.
- Remember Kosovo.
Russia was mightily displeased when the West supported the separation of Kosovo from Serbia and warned of consequences. This might be one of them. Of course, Russia has not argued in this crisis that it is simply doing what the West did in Kosovo - that would undermine its own argument that states should not be broken up without agreement. But everyone knows that underneath, Kosovo is not far from its mind.
- Georgia is unlikely to join Nato anytime soon.
Georgia and Ukraine were denied membership of Nato in April, although they were allowed to develop an action plan that could lead to membership one day.
The Americans argued for both countries to be accepted, but the Germans and others countered that the region was too unstable for these countries to join at the moment and that in particular Georgia, a state with a border dispute, should not be given formal Nato support.
- Vladmir Putin is still in charge.
It was Mr Putin, prime minister not president these days, who went to Beijing for the Olympic opening ceremony and who then rushed to the crisis region to take control of the Russian response. His language was uncompromising - Russia was right to intervene, he stated.
- Do not allow a cuckoo to police the nest.
Mr Shevardnadze’s decision in 1992 to allow Russia into South Ossetia as part of the peacekeeping force enabled a later and very different Russian government from the one led by Boris Yeltsin to gradually extend its influence and control. It was not hard for Russia to justify its intervention. It simply stated that its citizens were not only at risk but under attack.
- The West still does not know how to deal with Russia.
Some of the old Cold War arguments are resurfacing, with no consensus about what to do. There are the neo-conservatives, led by US Vice-President Dick Cheney (and supported by Republican presidential candidate John McCain) who see Georgia (and Ukraine) as flag bearers for freedom which must be supported. In due course, they argue, Russia will be forced to change, just as the old Soviet Union was.
Against that is the argument, expressed to the BBC for example on Sunday by the former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen, that it is “absurd” to treat Russia like the Soviet Union and that Georgia made a miscalculation in South Ossetia for which it is now paying.
- Are borders in Europe to be sacrosanct for ever?
It has been one of the rules of post-war Europe - borders cannot be changed except by agreement, as say in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps this rule has been applied too inflexibly. Yet governments like that of Georgia are reluctant to give up any territory, even when the local population is so clearly hostile and might be in that state simply as a result of some past arbitrary decision. It was the Soviet Union that forced the South Ossetians into Georgia in 1921. Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine. Will this lead to trouble one day?
- August is good month in which to reflect on alliances.
In August 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to the First World War. It did so because alliances had been formed in Europe which came into play inexorably. Russia supported Serbia, Germany supported Austria, France supported Russia and Britain came in when Belgium was invaded.
Alliances must not be entered into lightly or unadvisedly. If Georgia had been in Nato, what would have happened? [/i]
It will pass shortly. Russia rolled a lot of iron into the area and will pull Georgia back into it’s sphere of influence. They want Saakashvili deposed and replaced with a puppet.
The US won’t intervene and the EU will not even consider it. This will embolden Russia and don’t be suprised if they move on other problem areas in the near future. The EU can do nothing more then complain at this point in history. Unless Western European nations are threatened the Russians would likely have free reign. The US would have to decide where to draw the line and the stakes aren’t high enough yet.
[quote]hedo wrote:
The US would have to decide where to draw the line and the stakes aren’t high enough yet.[/quote]
We do? Why? Let the Europeans handle it.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
hedo wrote:
The US would have to decide where to draw the line and the stakes aren’t high enough yet.
We do? Why? Let the Europeans handle it.[/quote]
One can only hope.
France and the UK alone militarily outspend Russia by 350%.