“No One Could Have Predicted,” Republic of Georgia Edition
Since Condi’s gone somewhere (probably buying shoes in NYC), let me anticipate what she’ll say when she ever gets back to work: "No one could have predicted that the Georgians would incite the Russians to pursue regime change in Georgia."
At least that’s the story the Administration has been feeding Jonathan Landay.
Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday.
But in the end, the warnings failed to stop the Georgian president — a Bush favorite — from launching an attack last week that on Monday seemed likely to end not only in his country’s military humiliation but complete occupation by Russian forces.
[snip]
Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province’s capital, Tskhinvali.
Me, I agree with Jeff Stein, this is spin, presumably designed to excuse American impotence in the face of Russia’s aggression.
A "surprise." My, oh, my.Except I don’t believe it. As easy as it is to believe that the CIA, etc., blew another huge event, I find it impossible to accept that not one of the 127 Pentagon advisors in Georgia, including Special Forces and intelligence contractors, were clueless about Tblisi’s intent — and preparations — to move into South Ossetia.That just doesn’t pass the laugh test.On July 15, for starters, amid rising tension between Moscow and Tblisi over South Ossetia, some 1,200 U.S. troops launched a three-week long joint military exercise with Georgian troops. Three weeks later, on the night of Aug. 7, "coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgian President Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia."It is simply inconceivable that the Pentagon wasn’t wired to the helmets of Georgian troops, despite the denials of U.S. military officials.
See also this quote one of those military trainers gave Danger Room:
One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more bluntly. “We’re giving them the knife,” he said. “Will they use it?”
As I said, I think the presumed spin is designed to excuse US inaction in the face of an utter lack of means to respond to Russia.But I do think there was an element of true surprise on the part of the US. From Landay:
At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.
"We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this," the State Department official said. "We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not."
Oops. Someone in the Administration got caught believing that whole "looked him in the eye … [and got] a sense of his soul" bullshit, I guess.
Sounds to me that, whatever the US role in encouraging Georgia to do something rash, the real surprise here was that Russia responded in the way it did–basically pursuing regime change rather than just a response within South Ossetia.
You know it’s funny. Condi, and a bunch of other top aides in this Administration, actually do have expertise on Russia, even on military relations between Russia and its satellite states. Yet even in a sphere where, unlike the Middle East, they’ve got some expertise, they’re still astoundingly incompetent.
No one could have predicted …
One could argue no one is ever really ready to be president even with 7 years on the job training.
WTF~1200 US troops were in Tblisi on the very eve of the Georgian militaries move into South Ossetia? They started a THREE WEEK joint exercise starting on July 15th? That means they left (if they left?) about August 7th…the day before Georgia began its operation.
I suspect that the US exercise was actually done as part of the preparation for the incursion into the autonomous area. Certainly Georgia’s military wouldn’t take troops out of the theater in order to “play war” with the Americans. It HAD TO BE COORDINATED!
It was also coordinated with Bush’s absence, and the Olympics, I guess for at least two reasons: Bush, a globally spirited spectator of the games would look like he had been surprised by Russian agression, which would itself evoke memories of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
On a moment’s reflection, that was kind of a thoughtless and hasty comment. Though it was coordinated with Bush’s absence.
Actually, Rice et. al. only had extensive experience with Russia as part of the Soviet Union. She seems not to have learned a thing about her own specialty since the U.S.S.R. evaporated. But when you can create your own reality, why study? Unfortunately for the U.S., as the Bushies have found out time after time, reality bites.
One of her scholarly works (ridiculed) was on the Czechoslovakian army. She must be briefing McCain, too.
Great Headline…Perfect!
So, if the US thought it would be a mistake for the Georgians to launch an offensive, and even went to far as to seek assurances that the Russians would not respond beyond a certain point, why would the US cooperate in joint war games?
War games are not just “training,” they are meant as warnings, even provocations, and anyone with a brain (or without one) would have understood this to be a provocation, given the tense situation.
The military spin to Landay is not just “who would have guessed,” its a coverup for Bush administration’s reckless provocation.
1. What did they think would happen?
2. How much did they tell McCain in advance — after all, he went out of his way to be “prescient” about this, so that Broder would notice.
3. Since they knew Georgia’s leaders were anxious to attack, why did they provide the training to do this.
4. Was this a huge set up? And for what purpose?
Since this could only end in a massive Russian smackdown, they only one who might benefit would be McCain, but only if the facts didn’t come out.
Well, it certainly wasn’t an opportunity to let Bush look presidential or as decisive
CommanderChimp-in-Chief, was it?Israel is said to have had advisers in Georgia and has been involved in arms deals there.
Somehow oil is involved.
Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.
Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.
Russia seems to have hit the Black Sea port city hard.
Cynical me, I suspect that a deal was struck with Russia to let them punish Georgia hard, perhaps even take the state, in exchange for some major concession related to Israel, US and Iran. Time will tell what that deal was.
I don’t think so. Remember that Bush is like a poker player, a bad one in deep. Putin called his bluff here.
Sounds like Putin is a chess player. Queen to queens pawn, takes pawn, check.
Bush I gave Iraq the green light to invest Kuwait in 1991, only to turn around and use that as an excuse to launch massive carpet bombing of Iraq.
I just saw McCain on tv saying that Saakashvili (carefully yet erroneously pronounced “Shakashvili”) has been a good friend for years. And that “Today, we’re all Georgians.”
Well, I did have yogurt this morning. Didn’t know it was in solidarity.
-G
Try a khachapuri washed down with cognac tomorrow morning.
The whole point of “joint” military exercises is to train for acting jointly. So the Georgian’s had every reason to expect the Americans would help them when the action began.
This explains why so many Georgians were asking “where are the Americans?” in yesterday’s NYT article. It wasn’t just Bush welcoming their application to NATO, it was the US training to fight along side the Georgians.
I was stunned by the fact they had 2000 troops in Iraq (though they might as well have been poker chips; I assume they sat tight on a base somewhere). They initially had 159 troops, then 850 in 2004, then their current force as of March 2007.
The Georgian troops were reported only the border with Iran — which was thought to be better than having US troops there, to avoid “incidents.” Now the US has to replace those positions and what they were doing.
That doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t it the whole point to create incidents?
They were not complete poker chips; they were in Kut and along the border with Iran.
They were also the third-largest force in Iraq, after the U.S. and British.
Not initially. Poland was initially the third largest. They wised up sooner than Georgia.
On BT’s thread, a poster links to this article on possible “mercenaries” in Georgia.
FYI – It appears there has been a system-wide shut down of the HaloScan comment platform on multiple blogs.
The tragic death and destruction, within you and without you. . .Bush, what a guy!!
This is just a Bush family trait. The elder Bush did the same thing to the Iraqi shia in 1991. The Georgians should have noticed how well that turned out for Iraq before they decided to poke the Russians in the eye.
I’m skeptical of that asssessment of the elder Bush: it was part of the narrative underpinning the nascent neocon doctrine of “humanitarian intervention”.
Well, right before Gulf War I, Bush said:
While war was still going on, the CIA was broadcasting messages into Iraq encouraging people to revolt. The uprising started while we were occupying Kuwait and had total control of the air in Iraq, but we allowed Hussein to use helicopter gunships to wipe out the Shia.
After the uprisings were suppressed, Bush said:
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that we should have intervened in Iraq in 1991 or today in Georgia. I’m arguing that a bully who, for his own amusement or advantage, goads other people into fighting with false promises of support for one side or the other is morally reprehensible.
But, maybe it was all pre-arranged: a soliloquy as phony as those written into the Senate record without ever having occurred.
Maybe it was, as someone suggested, a way to redeploy Georgian troops away from the Iraq-Iran border so that there would be a great excuse for replacing them there on the border with Americans.
If this was a charade I wonder what Bush promised to Georgia and Russia.
Sabotage and psy-ops aren’t part of war? I remember these statements.
And this part of what Bush said is true:
I remember the no-fly zones being established over Bush’s resistance, and have since interpreted them as the neocon foot in the door towards regime change. That may be more recent history coloring my recollection of the past, though.
ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
Ladies and gentelemen, we have a winnah
I got here late, and I was readin an wonderin who was gonna be the first to mention poppy and the Iraqis
WilliamOckham wins the prize, even though he kinda missed the big analogy for the small one:
poppy stabbed the Shia in the back after the war, but BEFORE the war, poppy displayed foreign policy acumen worthy of alice in wonderland
Saddam was a happy, if somewhat vicious puppet of the repuglitards until poppy;s brain fart in july of 1990. poppy sent our ambassador to tell saddam we didn’t give a shit about Kuwait, and then threw a hissy fit when saddam invaded Kuwait
after viewing the bush family Oedipal comedy of errors, I’ve come to realize that dopey repeats poppy’s mistakes in reverse
poppy left saddam in power and screwed the pooch
dopey ousted saddam and screwed a hundred pooches
poppy would never trust the russians and he got played like a violin
dopey trusted the russians and got played like a whole fucking symphony
I can’t wait for dopey’s snowstorm of pardons
this is gonna be fun to watch
Well, I hadn’t thought of it until I got to the end of Jeff Stein’s article, but it’s true that there are sad resonances here with Hungary ‘56 and Czechoslovakia ‘68.
Um, no. Georgia moved on South Ossetia with force.
Nothing remotely analogous happened in Czechoslovakia. That’s more of the simplistic “Georgia good, Russia bad” narrative the Serious People are committed to pushing.
Does anyone really believe Rice knows Russian?
Regime change? Erm, the “rose revolution” was the regime change bit.
Meanwhile, the Georgian gov’t announces a truce through the media but makes no representations of same through diplomatic channels or otherwise, and furthermore gives no indication of how this truce would manifest itself, after having launched the blitzkrieg with the aim of Anschluss at the expense of the populace in the targeted province. How could they not expect a drive to push them back.
They changed regimes through elections. They shouldn’t be vilified for this, nor should you turn things completely upside-down by comparing the Georgians to the Nazis.
The made in america regime in Georgia was a coup, not an election. Shaashkivili is America’s shill in Georgia. They are part of the plan the U.S. has to gain access to oil and surround Russia. The attack on the province was brutal overkill, very American-styled excessive violence.
Winning a legitimate election and being a U.S. shill (or even an assset) aren’t mutually exclusive. That said, I have an open mind as to how legitimate the election was.
you ought to read up on that orange revolution thing… it is a pretty poisoned story when you get into it…. i like what bush referred to this little excursion as – regime change in russia, lol…
For alank and brendanx: Historical note about Repo operative Gregory Stevens — who was the spy who died in Carrie Fisher’s bed in 2005.
…
According to “one of Mr. Stevens’s colleagues in international political intrigue.”
Judge for yourselves.
Bear in mind that anything with the Washington junta’s fingerprints all over it is highly suspect. If there’s anything you might’ve learned about this regime in Washington, that should be among them, by now.
This event is tragic for the people being massacred by the big bear and it’s little schmuck Putin.
It’s significant because it clearly indicates that the US is a paper tiger. The US is going to invoke the Security Counsel????? How the hell could they when Russia has a veto as a member? Cheney will become Obama’s running mate first.
Kick Russia out of the Big Eight? In their dreams.
They need Russia to blow smoke at thos
e other members of the axis of evil, the ones that Russia has never stopped supplying arms and nuclear help to–North Korea and Iran.
Military Intervention? Out of the question. We’re busy manufacturing Dover coffins in Iraq and Afghanistan while thoroughly breaking the armed forces.
And dimwit Junya and his sidekick Blahnik aren’t up to another Cuban missle crisis Georgia style.
Lessee-
Rice’s qualifications as a Russian scholar (one of the biggest charity events ever at Stanford) are:
She playe piana and practiced “really hard” as a kindergartener.
She has told Oprah’s magazine that “war is like football.”
Other than liking a class by Joseph Korbel, Madeline Albright’s daddy, it’s not clear wtf qualifies the Condi as a “Russian expert” at all. She was fascinated by cold war politics–so she has rescuscitated them–she’s in the middle of them now and has no way out as a paper tiger.
And this time the nukes are loose. No one knows where the hell they are, but we know they aren’t anyplace good.
After working as a secretary at Honneywell and giving piano lessons, she went back to school and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the relationship of the Czechoslovak Communist party to its army.
Then she got offered a job to teach at Stanford. She was a campaign advisor to Gary Hart. She bumped into Brett Scocroft and worked for him on the National Security Counsel, went back to Stanford, and now she’s evolved the US into a paper tiger.
Russia is going to take back Georgia. And the US is going to what???
And her foreign policy has been in the toilet for eight years.
Apparently, Bush initially denounced Russia as follows: “Efforts on the overthrow of the lawfully elected government of Russia is unacceptable.”
This was later revised for release to print.
alank # 13 – exactly…
It seems to me that Kasparov had some interesting things to say about Russia, chess and international politics.
The NYT analysis of this is a lot of vague, unfounded histrionics:
A rather breathless assessment from the gray lady (no change there).
One wonders what “battling” to “keep” Poland and the Baltic states is supposed to mean when they are in NATO.
I thought Saint Ronnie the Actor took care of the USSR?
”I was stunned by the fact they had 2000 troops in Iraq (though they might as well have been poker chips; I assume they sat tight on a base somewhere). They initially had 159 troops, then 850 in 2004, then their current force as of March 2007.”
—–
Looks like they sacrificed some of their kids in the hopes of currying favor with Bush. I could see the logic of doing that in 2002, but why would anyone do it in 2007? By now, there’s more than enough history for people to know that they shouldn’t cut deals with Bush.
Sort of OT thought for the day: Just how good of a swimmer is Michael Phelps? He’s so good that even the soul-draining presence of George W Bush didn’t stop him from winning two gold medals.
he’s not a swimmer
he’s a floater
there’s a difference
Putinhas referred to Georgian “genocide” in South Ossetia. This isn’t just propaganda — it’s an exact tit-for-tat kind of thing, an allusion to our demand for regime change with Milosevic and, by extension, the recognition of Kosovo.
Exactly!
There could also be facts behind these assertions, but until they’re available I’m not giving the Russians the benefit of the doubt.
This surprised me:
Looking at the article here, I noted a conclusion that the head of parliament in Georgia was seeking glory by forming a greater Georgia, lording it over the Caucasus and what is rightfully hers, god save the queen. This, after weighing the signal from Washington possibibilies, the drive to become part of NATO, and the Baku conduit.
In the latter case, the Kurdistan region armed by the U.S., has been obnoxious wrt oil access, basically shutting down upstream, what connects at Baku. So, it’s a moot point for the time being, the conduit. A pipeline in another direction is being considered as an alternative to the route through the disputed territories at bar.
Russia blowed-up all the nice shiny stuff we have been giving to the nation run by a former US corporate lawyer.
Saakashvili makes Saddam look like Sun Tzu.
Now the Georgians think he’s an asshole and the US is a bunch of Welshers.
More Neo-con skull-fuckery in action. In their pursuit of boundless US power they are whittling our credibility down to a bloody nub.
Heckuva job.
-G
More and more I find myself reminded of Pinky and the Brain. Casting is somewhat flexible, but certain assignments suggest themselves quite loudly, I’m sure you’ll find.
Plame appeal denied per TPM.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…..il_sui.php
I suffer from anger when I hear of the Plame dismissal…
From my favorite therapist, Cary Tennis
“Some of us who think of ourselves as liberal, rational, freethinking, freedom-loving patriots have a special problem with anger. We are deeply affected by what we see going on in our country. We see a symphony of outrage heaped upon outrage; we see the brazenness of it, its roots in years of secret plotting; we perceive intricate patterns in its serpentine, many-tentacled, conspiratorial vastness; we see our sacred precepts violated, sacred vows trashed; we jeer the garishly painted faces of evil as they trot onstage, and our jeers do not seem to be heard and this compounds our outrage; we join our compatriots in outrage, and our righteous anger grows.
We think our anger is justified. The abuses are so obvious, the perpetrators so shameless, the crimes so awful and historic. Who would not be angry? How could anger be our problem?”
But our anger is our problem. At historic moments like this, we are called to come up with something better than anger.”
I medicate on Heineken, Corona, Fantasy Baseball and the Sox.
McCain has been on the board of IRI, the Republican side of the NED, the democratic side being the NDI. Both have been involved in Georgia, with the ‘rose revolution’ being a highlight of that relationship. The introduce NGOs who in turn stir up the masses. It’s repackaged CIA/Spook stuff, post Central America flamingo-ups.
Someone pointed out to me that Google maps shows an empty region in Georgia, along with adjacent countries also in the American fold. Try doing a map search, googling Georgia, Asia.
Oh, I thought this bit from Landay was insightful:
To underscore your point:
– Bu$hCo lavished praise on Georgia
– Bu$hCo gave the Georgians military training
– Bu$hCo counted on the Georgians ‘as allies’ in Iraq
Wouldn’t Georgians logically assume that Bu$hCo would help them in their ‘hour of need’?
But no doubt Condi and the rest of them couldn’t possibly have predicted…
Nothing other than the fecklessness and butt-covering of the Bush crowd surprises me.
And McCain is relying on the same Bright Minds, it appears.
George Will is wearing his neocon hat today, trotting out one of the two or three books he’s ever read, “The Guns of August”, for the purposes of inflammatory analogy.
I was a little antsy about Obama’s reticence, but he knows he can’t win this mug’s game with the media. He’s doing the presidential thing and shutting the fuck up for the time being.
I don’t watch a lot of tv anymore, so it was disturbing to see McCain. He’s completely nuts.
Matthew Yglesias:
We’re all Georgians now, in the most important sense: rhetorically.
Bush reputedly went to war in Iraq, in part, because his gut told him his dad had wronged the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who had rebelled against Saddam. They were crushed after the First Gulf War when his dad concluded that it would be folly, it could only lead to a quagmire, were he to invade Iraq rather than just expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait.
Junior, always following in daddy’s footsteps but with much smaller shoes, has done the same thing to the Georgians. With less competence, less pure motives, and possibly as much destruction.
The Georgians that Mr. Bush loudly proclaimed as vital to American interests (at least oil interests), who proclaimed him as a great friend to Georgia and named a thoroughfare after him, will shortly need to learn how to speak Putinese. Junior’s empty boasts in support of the Georgians, which he wrongly assumed were harmless and victimless, like all his political acts, have helped speed the demise of Georgian independence.
Will someone give Junior an energy bar and a new stationary bicycle and tell him to stay in the basement. Do it when Cheney wants to corral him for some of those pardons. Make sure the water cooler and snack bar are full. Take their phones, and turn out the lights. They’ve done far too much damage to the world to let them keep playing with other children.
I’m not a fan of psychodramatic explanations for our foreign policy. Bush’s “gut” didn’t tell him to do anything. The important people who put him in power did.
The one ability that allows Cheney to rule in Bush’s stead is his Svengali like ability to manipulate Bush’s ego. From “Follow this advice or you’ll be a steer,” to “history will prove you right,” Cheney hits his gut every time and “makes it so”.
I haven’t a clue about why it works, but it does. No competent executive or personality would allow Cheney such dominance over him or his decision making; they would allow no subordinate such power, or provide him so much cover for his actions.
i’m curious to know what buildings, compounds, etc the russians hit. were they just lobbing bombs hither and yon to remind the georgians that georgia is closer to the russian border than to the u.s. border?
or did they go after some military or state targets in which that the americans and georgians held a common interest?
on another tact, i don’t know that it is a central issue here, but isn’t there an incipient oil pipleline somewhere in the mix (mess)?
It’s an active pipeline.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C…..3Ag04.html
Ding! ding! ding!
They were almost certainly “just lobbing bombs hither and yon.” The Russian army consists of two year conscripts who are the ten percent too stupid, without connections, or uneducated to avoid the recruiter and too poor to bribe their way out. Their platoon sergeants are similar two year conscripts sent on short courses and promoted to supervise the rabble. There are a few qualified warrant officers who direct the most technical jobs, but that is rarely the artillery. In essence, the troops, including sergeants, are poorly educated and badly motivated.
As an ex-artilleryman myself I can assure you that you need a surveyor to determine where the guns are located, a well-trained fire control specialist to calculate the angle of the gun from its surveyed location and the amount of powder to be used when it is fired, and a well-trained forward observer to determine the target and type of ammunition. None of these are jobs that can be done by an unwilling two year conscript.
The Russian Army, like the Soviet Army it came from, instead uses massed artillery and fires area fire to cover a large piece of ground. They don’t do subtle missions like firing at a military target and avoiding the nearby civilian apartment building. They always use the biggest possible hammer, since they cannot deal with precise targeting.
Of course, the Georgian Army comes from the same Soviet tradition. So don’t expect either side to try to spare civilians. They aren’t capable of it. The will send in an army to conquer a piece of ground and when they do, it will be devastated.
“Sparing the civilians” is a piece of sophistication that is unique to the western armed forces, and as the reports from Afghanistan show, isn’t something that has been perfected yet. Although I will say that the western problem is more one of identifying the wrong target rather than simply not being able to hit a precise target and leaving the surrounding area undamaged.
As for the law of unintended consequences, whose validity Mr. Bush proves daily, let’s watch what happens to all those friendly Chinese faces that George went to Sunday mass with in Beijing.
Admittedly, it was a “designated church” formally acceptable to Beijing authorities. Which means it carefully toes the line and omits the same parts of the bible also offensive to medieval church fathers: the parts about giving up material things in preference to helping others and all those bits about righteous prophets berating errant leaders. But to the extent it encourages others to act beyond their and the international community’s ability to resist official condemnation of collective worship as antithetical to party control, it may lead to the same outcomes as for the Georgians.
I’ve been fiddling with a sort of shell corporation in search of a business plan. Call it Dominant Unintended Consequences™ or DUC, Ltd.
Here are Obama’s and McCain’s statements:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c…..orgia.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.c…..orgia.html
The American government has a long history of inciting others to revolt, then abandoning them when the revolution goes bad. We abandoned the Highland Vietnamese Montanards who we employed to fight the Viet Cong. We abandoned the southern Shiites and the northern Kurds who we encouraged to revolt against Saddam. We strongly encouraged the Hungarians (and others) to revolt against the USSR, promising support, then listened passively as the last free Hungarian radio stations went quiet, one by one, desperately asking for support. We supported the Czechoslovakians until the Soviet tanks rolled in (I was an Army Captain stationed in Frankfurt in 1968. My German employee kept me informed of the Russian invasion because the US Army had a total lock down on any action or information.)
I well remember the reported statement of one CIA officer who had been making official promises of support to the Kurds when suddenly Saddam’s tanks rolled in. He was airlifted out, and the Kurds were abandoned to their fate contrary to everything he had been officially telling them. Then, when some of the Kurdish leaders later escaped (without American assistance)and asked for asylum, they were imprisoned by the US government as potential Saddam spies – based at best on allegations by their political rivals. No evidence.
Promises from American officials aren’t worth the paper they are printed on – and they never write down promises anyway. Too incriminating. Now it’s the Georgians who are learning this lesson.
Federal agents such as the FBI and DEA do not treat their confidential informants any better.
The US policy towards Russia is more neo-con BS. I thought NATO stood for “North Atlantic”. What in the hell is the US doing pushing NATO membership on places like Georgia and the Ukraine? IMO, after the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, there was no good reason for NATO to exist except as an expansion of military power controlled by the US. I remember a pitch to a military group I belong to by a nice LtCdr from the UK on the role of NATO a couple of years ago that was nothing more than laughable.
The sooner the US gets out of Russia’s face, the more peaceful the world will be. I don’t know whether to cringe or laugh ever time I hear or read about the US telling Russia what to do in regards to Georgia. After what we have done in Iraq we should just shut up.
Since when are NATO and the U.S. synonymous? Germany, Great Britain, France and others didn’t have a say in NATO expansion? And do you completely discount the public opinion of the NATO’s newer members?
Russia is not a placid, peace loving nation. It would treat its near abroad and its former satellites the way we have treated Central America, if that analogy works for you.
We’re not pushing NATO membership “on” Georgia, either, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with pushing such an alliance anyway — pushing it as far as could be done while Russia was down was a good bipartisan policy that none of those countries regrets in light of this week’s events. The problem is is that the Bush administration is so criminal, and criminally incompetent, that they can’t be stewards of that policy any more, not to mention the fact that we — and the Georgians — are in Iraq and thus not merely hated, but weak.
I’m afraid your comments show a lot of naiveté.
The US has controlled and run NATO since its creation.
Your statement on “not pushing” does not jibe with your “good bipartisan policy”. Which is it?
As far as Russia not being a “peace loving nation”, I would compare its record favorably to what we “peace loving Americans” have done to the world in the last few years.
By the way, have you been to Russia recently? Its a pretty darn nice country. No comparison to what it was when the USSR existed.
NATO was the alliance against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was originally gobbling up as much of Europe as it could get.
The only reason for the term “North Atlantic” in NATO was because it included the US and Canada. There was no real geographic meaning. NATO existed to oppose the Soviet Union.
Question. Is Russia the inheritor of the expansionist dreams of the revolutionary Communist Soviet Union? Or has the American effort to “expand democracy” made America the new revolutionary ideological power in the world and Russia the new defender of the status quo?
To the extent that the new world order remains a bipolar US/Russian one, that question will drive the propaganda wars.
The answer to your question is easy. It’s the latter.
Gee, thanks for the history lesson.
I think your first statement makes my point very well. Thanks for that also.
Patrick Lang comments on an Israeli angle here:
At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.
”We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,” the State Department official said. ”We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not.”
Why attack just Ossetia if you attack Georgia then then the Georgians feel the pain and think twice I’m guessing nobody in the Bush administration has ever won or even lost a fight.
The logic of that confused me in the article. Why come to such an “understanding” unless you are planning to incite the military action?
You are right Bush was training the Georgian troops Bush had to have known what Georgia was doing after all Georgia wants in on NATO attacking a break away republic protected by Russia would mean war if they did it after they were part of NATO.
Georgia had to take back their break away republic now before they got into NATO.
But why did Bush believe that Russia would not attack Georgia if Georgia attacked South Ossetia.
Does Bush really trust the Russians that much?
None could have predicted 9/11, that there would be no WMD found in Iraq (everyone cool thought that there would be), Katrina (or that shoe shopping during Katrina would kill her VP chances), that the NY Times would publish her Bush is my husband remark, that Russia wouldn’t stand up to little Georgia?
Have I missed anything?
Free elections, indeed. Mikhail Saakashvili had selected his own flags, one of which is likely to be burned often in the aftermath of his highly destructive escapade.
I very much doubt there was any ‘understanding’ between Bu$hlerites and Putinites over Saakashvili’s vicious land-grab plans. You can tell simply by the level of atrocities committed by Georgians that this was not something approved on high.
The more I read, the more complicated this is and I realize now it is not simply analagous to the march into Hungary or Czech. However I know this.
1) McCain is stupidly falling way short of understanding this conflict.
2) Today “we are not all Georgians.” Today we are bumbling occupiers of Iraq and Paper Tiger Rice and Paper Tiger Bush can’t do jack shit about the conflict and had little to do with the cease fire if it comes to pass.
Not All Russia’s Fault
GG and Dr. Charles King from Georgetown
Vote for Cindy Sheehan against Trash Pelossi if you’re in Cal.!
You mean if you’re in SF. I do support Cindy Sheehan, and do live in California, but can’t vote for her because I live in another district. I’ll have to support Sheehan the same way that I urge the rest of you non-San Franciscans. With cash.
McCain reaction to events in Georgia in its apparent clueless dissonance is very much like what happened with his timely trip to Columbia. You can sort of see there’s a lot of stuff going on in the background to connect events, (known before the fact) to his campaign rhetoric, but nevertheless the events appear phony against the statements and very poorly staged. This is what happens when the reality they create are done with less skill and intelligence.