The Devil Went Down To Georgia
Well, okay, it was Dick Cheney. Close enough. From The Los Angeles Times:
Appearing alongside beleaguered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday criticized Russia’s conduct in its short war with Georgia and pledged to continue American support for reconstruction and humanitarian aid.
…
Cheney’s remarks probably will further inflame Moscow, where officials have railed against the United States’ alliances with the former Soviet states. This week, President Dmitry Medvedev said bluntly that Moscow expected to maintain a "privileged" sphere of influence in the region of the former Soviet Union.However, U.S. officials Thursday brushed off criticism that the White House is deliberately approaching the brink of confrontation with Russia.
"The United States is not trying to paint Russia as an enemy," said Robert A. Wood, a State Department spokesman. "We’re very concerned about its behavior and what that means for the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. We’re looking at all aspects of our relationship with Russia, in terms of how we go forward."
Russian officials also have been dismayed by the apparent staying power of Saakashvili, often referred to in Moscow as a "war criminal" for launching the military operation in early August in the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in troops to defend the pro-Russian enclave, which broke with Georgia’s government more than a decade ago. The fighting ended with Russia continuing to occupy parts of Georgia proper to enforce the separation from South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that the world should impose an arms embargo on Georgia until Saakashvili is out of power.
Georgian officials have said the United States will help rebuild the country’s crushed military. But that was not directly affirmed during Cheney’s visit, which came a day after President Bush said the U.S. would provide up to $1 billion in nonmilitary assistance.
The whole Georgia/Russia war in, and over, the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions in the Caucasus seems somewhat surreal. In spite of the critical nature of what happened, and continues to happen there, there has been a paucity of credible reporting in the United States. What are still the two nuclear superpowers in the world, and a clear step toward cold war renewal, were all involved as were, of course, the people who actually live in those areas. Some of them are no longer living; and, yet, we still don’t know who the true aggressor was. And, strangely, the American educated, Cheney confidante, Georgian President Saakashvili was literally plastered on American television during the entire conflict in an unprecedented manner for a foreign leader. While there may be slight confusion over who started the Georgia-Russian war; we do know who ended it, the Russians handed the Georgians their own rear ends.
Juan Cole relates:
All sides have committed massacres and behaved abominably. There are no clean hands involved, notwithstanding the strong support for Georgia visible in the press of most NATO member countries. (Georgia has been jockeying to join NATO, something Moscow stridently opposes.) Still, not everyone in NATO agrees that Saakashvili is a hero. While traveling with the negotiating team of President Nicolas Sarkozy, one French official observed that "Saakashvili was crazy enough to go in the middle of the night and bomb a city" in South Ossetia. The consequence of Russia’s riposte, he said, is "a Georgia attacked, pulverized, through its own fault."
Far as I can determine, that is about right. Tiny Georgia made a gutsy, and monumentally ill advised, move on South Ossetia, an area that wanted independence and that was under the protective eye of Russia. Despite initial heavy losses, Georgia did not back off, and Russia rolled over them until there was basically no way for Georgia to continue fighting.
What would motivate Georgia, with a military probably not ready to take on the Alaska National Guard and it’s brilliant commander in chief Sarah Palin, to make such an insane play? There appear to be two possibilities 1) Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided on his own that Russia would not care that much; and, if they did, the United States and the West would come to his aid militarily, or 2) the United States affirmatively led Saakashvili to believe the scenario in 1 ahead of time. You can place Vladimir Putin emphatically in favor of door number two.
From a remarkable interview with Matthew Chance of CNN, Putin states:
If my suppositions are confirmed, then there are grounds to suspect that some people in the United States created this conflict deliberately in order to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates for the U.S. presidency. And if that is the case, this is nothing but the use of the called administrative resource in domestic politics, in the worst possible way, one that leads to bloodshed.
You really should read the entire interview. The detail, knowledge, intricate history over hundreds of years – the mastery of the situation, that Putin just casually rattles off unscripted, is eye opening. Then ponder that for seven and a half years Bush has been dealing with Putin thinking he was his equal. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and could see Putin’s soul and that Vlad was a man he could do business with. Vlad looked into Bush’s eyes and saw an ignorant rube he could take advantage of. Guess which one had it right?
Which brings us back to Cheney.
The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind: he was willin’ to make a deal.
The monumental insanity of Georgia’s aggression, and the direct allegation by Putin, sure make you wonder about Cheney’s trip down to Georgia to placate his friend Saakashvili; and, out of the blue, for apparently nothing in return, decision by the Bush/Cheney Administration to give Georgia a billion dollars in civilian and, potentially, military aid. Would darn near make you think we owed them something for them having started the recent war and getting annihilated. A war that Cheney’s designated replacement John McCain, who "was in a bind ’cause he was way behind", took huge advantage of at the time to try to boost his sagging campaign heading into the conventions.
Putin was awfully sure of himself about the deal he suggested the Fourth Branch government devil may have made in Georgia, and I don’t think it was because he had been busting out his collection of old Charlie Daniels Band vinyl recently.
I often wonder what Putin makes of the Collasus that is the U.S. somehow becoming led by this rube?
Putin must have some conjectuures about how this dysfunction could come to be. It is of course, largely due to the lying machine that is Fox News.
bmaz rocks!
Please Digg.
the more the diggers digg the betterer.
(OT: the last five laps at Spa were un be live able!)
No kidding. Young Hamilton has quite the soft, deft touch in the wet eh? That is the mark of an elite driver, equally fast in the wet as the dry.
“What are still the two nuclear superpowers in the world, and a clear step toward cold war renewal, were all involved as were, of course, the people who actually live in those areas.”
man, i have re-read this sentence a couple three times and i still don’t know whut it means – any word(s) missing? something misspelled? can somebody hep me out here please?
Smack on (is that the right expression?) Saakashvilli went in for a reason during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. The presence of Rove in the Crimea and the virgin Condi in Georgia just weeks prior to the invasion is no coincidence. If Putin is right about door #2 – and I personally agree with him – then just look to see who has benefitted: 1) McCain’s poll #’s went up; 2) if McCain is president, Bush and Cheney get off scott free for their crimes and misdemeanors; 3) $1bb in new aid to Georgia – the U.S. companies receiving these funds make out nicely; 4) revival of the cold war (see my door #’s 1-3, above). Moreover, there is precedent in the Bush family for this kind of false hope of support – remember the Shia and Kurds who were slaughtered when the first Bush failed to support them after he publicly and prominently promised to do so if they would rise up against Saddam. Moreover, the fact that our ally got its ass kicked and made to look foolish is irrelevant if Putin’s door #2 is correct. The total idiocy of Saashkivilli has been so coloured by the lack of inquisitive journalism, that the neo-cons are learning, much to their glee, that they can say anything they want, regardless of the truth of the statement, and a certain percentage of the people in this country will believe them (see Glenn at Salon) because they are simply not challenged by msm.
FWIW, Russia has been calling for OSCE observers to replace the russian army currently holding a buffer zone in Georgia. No response has been forthcoming from the European Union to provide those observers. Rather the EU has been issuing rumblings of sanctions against Russia. Please note: The following countries have governments headed by NeoCon or fellow traveler Prime Ministers; Great Britian (Brown); France (Sarkozy); Germany (Merkle); Italy (Burlescony); Poland (?); Ireland ( Cowan). Only Spain does not have a conservative led government (of the mid-sized countries in Europe) that follows the party line out of Washington. The governments of the EU’s largest and richest countries are mesmerized by Washington policy and, like lemmings, fail to retain their county’s independence and own council. Russia has kept the door open for the observers despite the EU’s freezing of relations. It all could end quite badly for Bush’s lapdogs in the EU.
Have the early reports that Russian backed irregulars were burning Georgian houses in South Ossetia when Saakashvili broke the cease fire and started bombing been debunked? Georgia is a break away former Soviet republic and the pro-active foreign policy engagement in the Caucuses is not so far removed from the one Clinton maintained in Southeastern Europe. The paradigm of the democratically elected client state is an advancement away from the traditional strongman approach.
US and Russian airbases have existed side by side in Kyrgystan in the post Iraq environment. The revised attitude of the Russian Federation is an emergent factor underlying the Georgia problem. This is not to make light of the possibility of possibility of Cheney’s forcing the issue for political gain. The acid test of legitimate policy would be a sincere commitment by Western Europe, beyond a pro forma reorganization, to Georgian democracy. As Clinton’s precedent demonstrates absolute disengagement is not a realistic response to the strategic moment.
Yeah, as BoxTurtle just below you observes, I don’t know that the two are mutually exclusive. I kind of doubt that they planned and worked it together consciously, but it sure looks like they both have taken advantage of the situation.
What we have to realize is that this benefited both Bush and Putin. Who says they didn’t work together? The Russian buildup on the border didn’t happen overnight and it seems odd that Bush waited to “pull the trigger” until the Russians were ready.
Boxturtle (Only winners I see are the Russians, the Ossetians(sp), and McBush)
don’t forget about the OIL.
with cheney, you can never take your eye / focus off the energy supplies – that is what drives every single one of his decisions.
Cheney Blusters Through the Caucasus
So much for all that democracy stuff. Cheney thundered against Russia’s brilliant coup de main in Georgia, and he said that he was conveying President Bush’s determination. “President Bush has sent me here with a clear and simple message to the people of Azerbaijan and the entire region: The United States has deep and abiding interests in your well-being and security.” Umm, and your oil.
I agree. BoxTurtle is spot on. The Russians were over the Caucuses in the bat of an eye. The range includes 17,000 ft. peaks. This was entirely premeditated and the speed of their response was not possible without specific intention prior to Saakashvili’s bombing. I imagine the Russians find the Caucuses of particular strategic importance as a natural defensive feature.
The challenge for Obama will be to find away to maintain a critical strategic awareness and call bullshit on the political manipulation,IMHO. That is why I suggested the call for greater material support from Western Europe. This would represent a broader interest.
This was in response to bmas@7.
If the Russians don’t have (in someone else’s words) Georgia wired like a Christmas tree, I’d be very surprised. Yeah, they were ready for it, but Georgia still made the mistake of giving them the opportunity to walk all over them.
Thanks to MadDog for the link to the report.
Furthermore, in line with the advance info thinking, the report says that Russia in late July was engaging in military maneuvers in the area that were focused upon the hypothetical case that Georgia might try to do exactly what it did. This suggests more staging than I can readily comprehend.
If the Russians weren’t listening on Saakashvili’s toilet droppings, they should disband the KGB and take up card reading to foretell the future. Of course they knew what was up, and they knew weeks in advance. Why S. didn’t know this, too, defies belief. To my mind, the only mystery is why he hasn’t been assassinated. He may still be too useful to Putin. He’s certainly dumb enough, just like Bush.
The point that I am making is that the strategic picture was framed prior to the election of the current US administration. The balking of European observes coming forward is however politically instructive. Still, its really not merely a question of a responsive Russian intelligence and commensurate Russian innocence:
CRS.
“observers”, even…
re: 2 points…
As far as a) goes, I’m unaware of any Russian targeting. I am aware of a lot of SAAK/US media claims of it, but I followed EU press quite closely and all of those were debunked to my satisfaction… much of it w/photos on the ground of the alleged targeted areas. I’ve seen nothing evidentiary to support these claims, and currently don’t believe ‘em.
And b: SAAK continuously, repeatedly defied the ceasefire for at least 3 days after it’s declaration… in big ways. All while screaming Russian aggression. This, as well was on film, documented.
If need be I’ll dig up references.
…
I spent a few hours during this time reading up on this guy (SAAK)… really didn’t know much about him. There a decent WIKI page with a number of links pretty well attributed.
Interestingly, as I understand it Rupert Murdoch has assumed control of major media in Georgia just this year. There were also reports of opposition (to SAAK) media being shut down @ the beginning this thing. Saak has done this before, BTW (Nov ‘07).
I dun’o, haven’t we seen this before these last 7+ yrs?
There’s also the little matter of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline development, just recently open for biz. Corp watch has some info there (I find some of their info questionable). IMO Wiki has better history of the thing.
There’s also the issue of W’s recent agreement w/Poland to host his Missile Defense system which, from everything I’ve seen, doesn’t work. This thing is closer to St Petersburg than LA is to SF. If I were Putin (or any other leader) I don’t think I’d trust Bush/Neo-cons w/”what you see is what you get” regarding plans for this operation. Woodward’s recent allegation of tapping Al Maliki’s phones, doing the Same w/Blair and other “New Europe” leaders leading up to Iraq invasion… I dun’o.
The Asian Time’s reported on 7/19/08 (link via MoA comment #7):
I’d also mention, in weeks leading up to this Georgia affair, word of Russia’s proposed talks w/Iran on establishing a natural gas cartel certainly rattled a few WH folks, particularly with Iraq outcome in which it seems Junior’s Rangers aren’t going to get control of Iraqi oil as they’d been promised. I read comments from lower level WH people (sorry don’t recall who and didn’t save links) saying during this period that “Russia is holding a gun to our head with energy.”
Funny how capitalists free market ideals erode when they can’t control those markets, no?
Peripheral (or not), Laura Rozen wrote on 7/18/08:
Funny how a little oil shortage/inflation can move W’s foreign policy. Somehow, Laura’s post seems relevant.
As long as I’m at it, for those not aware: Upthread kspena @ 13 quotes Times Online, saying (Kspena)
The article goes on to say Putin plagiarized his thesis, as claimed by a Brooking’s study by Clifford G. Gaddy.
Perhaps.
What is not in disupute: since Bush has been in office, Putin has nationalized Russian oil/gas development essentially freezing out BP/Chevron. In that time, Russia has gone to small player (out of top 10) in gas to the largest on the planet… more than 10 x next largest producers combined. They have built the largest, most extensive n/g pipeline in the world… by far.
I hardly see any of this in US press. And personally, whatever throwback tendencies Putin may or may not have, I have a grudging respect for what he’s accomplished there: this was entirely his doing, his planning, and his execution. The benefits are showing up in Russian infrastructure in a big way. I have friends (Americans) developing commercial real estate their (and in Ukraine as well) and they’re doing well. They’re raising $$ in capital markets for their projects, and they speak well (in both countries) of state cooperation and lack of undue interferance.
And lastly, from Reuters on 8/19:
This Georgia thing is not such a simple situation. I suspect it’s not really about Georgia at all.
Regarding ousting BP/Chevron; heh, no doubt, put the heads of their Russian collaborator Yukos in prison no less.
I appreciate this information. I traveled to Southern Siberia last Summer (2007) and was awestruck by the retail oil boom I witnessed there. Russia is poised for prolific economic expansion. I also appreciate your grudging respect. I was very moved by my contact with the Russian people. I suppose I do come from a place of aspiring to an effective foreign policy even in the light of neo-con misadventures especially where there are over-arching interests that transcend administrations. I have no doubt the experience with BP and the alleged London murder have influenced policy with regards to Russia.
Its important not forget as well that Obama’s Berlin speech claimed a shared destiny with Western Europe citing the specific example of the airlift overcoming the Soviet blockade there. It is not only the neo-cons that have deployed the subtext of the strategic struggle now being played out. We will be misguided in this issue if we do not acknowledge the viability of the siloviki phenomenon in Russia. I understand that it is not a simple situation and I am absolutely sure that we do not have a generally accessible understanding of the Russian psyche which to a large degree yet champions Stalin for his industrialization of their society even at the cost that was endured.
My view is that in the context of the election it is important to triangulate the Georgia issue at the very least. I personally regret the degeneration of our emergent relationship with Russia. I think it is a significant loss which I hope can be recovered in some kind of reasonable way.
One more thing with regard to your first two points. I am not really in position to dispute anyone as to the actual facts on the ground. But to the degree that we are awash in propaganda I would be leery of giving the Russian version full credit. Here is the full quote recounting the HRW conclusions:
CRS
All I am suggesting is that there is enough debunking going round for both Russia and Georgia to share in the discredit. I ask in my first post in this thread whether reports of the provocation of Russian based irregulars before Saak’s response had been verified.
I am familiar with those allegations. I have no idea as to their veracity, but it certainly sounds plausible. Even if true though, it would seem to be the gnat that brought out the Georgian hammer. I think that, in a way, both sides seemed to be itching for this battle; but that is often the case in the world, and we depend on supposedly enlightened democracies like Georgia, and superpowers like Russia, to resist the urge and behave in a restrained manner. They didn’t. And part and parcel in that is that we apparently know when Maliki picks his nose, but didn’t see this little war coming? Baloney, we had a duty to prevent, and if not that, stop, the conflagration. We didn’t, and from many appearances, may well have pushed, or at least feinted, Georgia into it’s action. That is what really goads me.
I sure am not as informed as you and jdmckay though, and am enjoying the excellent discussion you two, and all the others, are having..
Thanks. I am not sure I know much but am intensely interested in the emergence of statist politics in contravention to Eurasian nomadism. I think it is a profound story in terms of understanding who we are as humans and I am not sure that the neo-feudal impulse really is uniquely American nor Neo-Kantian idealism yet so passe.
In any event “rational duty” is not one of the Bush strong suits. It will be interesting to see what kind of international response might arise in judgment of any US provocation. We may end up being the last to know that we have been contained by acts of international judgment. The Russian’s I met last summer were highly amused that the leading presidential contenders were a woman and an african-american. We can only hope that the American example of a pluralistic political process is not side-tracked by economic short-sightedness.
I just found this article by George Friedman in New York Review of Books in a link at Digby’s joint. Pretty good read and attempts to answer many questions we have discussed here.
In passing, several times when looking for some report out of European sources (BBC, The Guardian, Timesonline, The Independent, etc.) that I had read previously, those articles are not to be found (online), very frustrating when they haven’t been bookmarked. I am wondering just how much archival material is being sanitized to support the current regime and its lapdog heads of government in their manipulation of public knowledge to further the political/diplomatic attack on Russia? Just a question, nothing more. This should be watched quite closely and all reports should be bookmarked at the time for reference to see if the public record is being laundered.
comment:
a) I posted upthread MoA’s discussion of this. There are 2 alleged incidents of cluster bomb use. The 1st HRW originally attributed to Russia. They have subsequently corrected that, identifying said cluster bomb casing as Israeli made. Russia still is attributed with the 2nd incident, although there is dispute about identification of those as well. What I haven’t seen is any evidence of damage from Russian cluster bombs.
b) From everything I’ve been able to gather, that’s true: genocide is much too strong a word, and doesn’t describe SAAK’s (Cheney’s?) motive. But Georgia most certainly targeted civilian areas initially & w/out provocation. Unless Russia’s significant investment in improved transportation from their interior to South Ossetia are legitimate “provocation”. And if they are, then provocation has become another humpty-dumpty “means what I want” word.
I would also point out Russia has had peacekeepers in North Ossetia since the early 90s. Ossetia’s “independence” has been internationally recognized since then, with statements from the UN acknowledging such and also acknowledging SOUTH Ossetia’s implied association with it’s northern half.
There’s a lot of good info out there on the Georgia & Ossetia cultures/history/etc., and they are very much distinct. Both Ossetia’s have, by choice, declared their desire to be associated w/the Russian Federation. Point being, from everything I gather (and I’m sure no expert… just tried to piece together a coherant picture of all this) all the stuff I’ve read from r-wing/Town Hall/WSJ OpED (etc.) suggesting the resurrection of Russian Soviet style expansion is just provocative bull shit: The Ossetians want this relationship w/Russia, and do now want to be dominated by a Georgian state.
On August 8, Russia appealed to the UN (immediately after SAAK’s bombing began) asking for the council to issue a renunciation of Georgia’s use of force. A draft statement was rejected by US/UK/France:
Less than 24 hrs later, Russian troops were in South Ossetia.
Bernard also documents US/Gondaleeza/US DOS shenanigans and outright falsehoods regarding the ceasefire agreement here. DOS statements that graced US headlines I saw completely distorted the actual agreement, citing instead DOS wishlists never agreed to by Russia. CNN reported (and I saw this same headline & quote in WP/NYT/ABQJournal etc etc.):
Well, it was. (Again Bernard documents this in yeoman’s fashion. I know he pokes his head in here now and again, be nice if he showed up and said his piece).
My own opinion: just another BushCo keystone cops (lack of) diplomacy imbroglio… one of many littering his presidency.
I’m a programmer/tech guy, for many years now. I participate on a number of tech forums, all well represented by similar professionals from all over the planet. Because of the volatility invoked by Bush (Iraq) these geo-political consequences have woven into what used to be exclusively tech talk on most of these forums.
Most of these folks are smart, informed, intelligent folks. Almost to a person, utter scorn for US policy/actions is the norm. The European folks I know (going back 15+ yrs now) from these groups, representing Germany/Scandevia/Norway/Russia/Ukraine (eg. all of it) pretty much have harmonious view of this event consistent w/what I’ve had to say in this thread. And in these international episodes, US press has gotten so bad (almost mythological) that I routinely spend endless hours (what a waste, as consequence of unbelievable media) scouring international sources for more realistic view of things.
FWIW, I’m quite disappointed that Obama jumped forthright into the accepted US storyline on this Georgia thing. He’s done that on other stuff as well. From my POV it greatly dillutes his standing, particularly when confronting Palin’s “I lived next to Russia” foreign policy experience.
(apologies if I’ve gotten longwinded on this one. This one’s very high on my own “state of the nation point-o-meter”, and another big plot on the line of BushCo’s “leadership” right into 3rd world country status.)
z
The other thing we have to accept is that this is done deal. The Russians are in control, the only question is “independence” or assimilation. We can hollar all we want, but NOBODY is going to back the Georgians against the Russians with military force. Not us. Certainly not Europe.
Boxturtle (Think what would have happened if Georgia had joined NATO)
Dick Cheney, never the brightest bulb in the lamp. Not then re: W-gate & his cogitations w/Rumsfeld on its true meaning, certainly not now. You blew another one. Time for the coverup, Wyoming DIck, & way past time to head back to Jackson to vegitate & count your millions.
You’ve fucked up enough in DC & sunk us all enough. Retire to your fishing hole.
Can we stop having schmucks in charge of our country’s policies for a while now?
And being the brilliant fellow that he is–and despising and abusing the CIA as he has for the past eight years–it cannot have occurred to Cheney and his dwindling circle of neo-cons that they might need a reality-check from one of those spies-in-the-sky….
If McSame gets the nod don,t be so sure of that
Two items to add to the discussion are 1) Putin has (?) a PhD in economics; his thesis is “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations,”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…..695235.ece
and 2) Putin humiliated bush by systematically destroying all the military hardward the US has provided to Georgia. This included communications, radar, runways, ammunition and sinking the military boats in harbors.
bush’s reaction? from Reuters:
W.House: Russia needs to return any U.S. equipment
REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service
Aug 19, 2008 11:01 EST
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) – The White House Tuesday said if Russia has seized any U.S. military equipment in Georgia, Moscow must return it immediately.
“If the Russians have it, it needs to be returned immediately,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said about reports that Russians had taken a container carrying U.S. military humvees at a Georgian port.
(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by David Wiessler)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Actually whole lot of that military hardware was Israeli, right down to cluster bombs at first attributed to Russia. Isreal had a cortery of military advisers on the ground there as well.
Bernard (@ above link) has done a lot of writing on this. Not sure I agree w/everything he’s put up, but most of it checks out. Among B’s other finds, Rove was there a week or so before Saak showered bombs on his little breakaway republic. And with these guys, starting a little war for campaign advantages no longer stretches the imagination AFAIC
I’ve read that the US never knew the Russians were ready–depending, as it does, for its information on spies-in-the-sky, all of them being beamed at the time on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
If this is true, and I believe that it probably is, then we have only ourselves to thank for supposing the Russians to be, shall we say, about as competent as the Georgians in the management of their military affairs.
And it would certainly follow that the Georgians operated on the intelligence supplied by their American advisers.
The Bay of Pigs all over again…
FT has an article today on US training of Georgia commandos..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdff…..ck_check=1
bmaz:
Thank you for this informative posting. I’ve been hoping for some detailed analysis of the events in Georgia, and what a surprise to find it comming from the mouth of Putin. I noticed a few odd points in that interview that stuck out, involving the role of the journalist conducting it. At one point Chance asked, “Can you guarantee us that Russia will never again use its military forces against a neighboring state?” What struck me was how the objective seeker of truth suddenly became an adversarial extension of the state department with his use of the word “us”. Then he tried to extract an open ended promise of national policy with a perjorative implication of guilt.
As if this kind of “journalism” wern’t bad enough, Chance let it slip that at the time of the outbreak of hostilities, when nearly everyone else was in China, he happened to be in the remote country of Georgia. Interesting. Then when Putin made his allegation of US manipulation of the events, Chance editorialized that allegation as “farfetched”. Very interesting.
Like so much of the Republican playbook, Cheney and McCain are going back to Richard Nixon’s Greatest Hits. I can certainly see McCain in a debate with Obama repeating Nixon’s charges to Kennedy in 1960 of being soft on communism, arising out of Nixon’s charge during the campaign debates that Kennedy would not use U.S. forces to protect Taiwan’s forward positions in the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait. The irony, of course, is that the measured response of Obama was precisely the right approach in an area where the breakup of the former Soviet Union is still trying to find an equilibrium, and legitimate issues of self-determination among ethnic groups in an area where borders were very arbitrary up until the collapse of the Soviet Union must be balanced against the realpolitik that the Russians will have very little tolerance for foreign adventurism in a place which until very recently had been part of the Russian Empire for centuries.
Prezidentin’ is hard!!!
thanks Bmaz. Do we have military bases in Georgia?
similar to the U.S. wink and nod before Saddam invaded Kuwait.
Jon Stewart Cheney “loyalty oath”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/vi…..yalty-oath
Totally on topic, from Secrecy News – CRS Report for Congress – Russia-Georgia Conflict in South Ossetia: Context and Implications for U.S. Interests
Oh wow:
“Simmering long-time tensions erupted on the evening of August 7, 2008, when South Ossetia and Georgia accused each other of launching intense artillery barrages against each other. Georgia claims that South Ossetian forces did
not respond to a ceasefire appeal but intensified their shelling, “forcing” Georgia to send in troops.”
No wonder Congress acts like idiots if the CRS treats them like mushrooms and feeds them this shit.
The CRS also says this:
which jives with your point concerning opportunity.
This discussion touches on exactly one of my beefs; how in the world do you know what to think when the news reporting is so crappy (and that to the extent it even exists). Every bit of major coverage I have seen domestically has been heavily invested in the position that Russia was the egregious aggressor. Curiously, all the other coverage, even a piece done by a Fox foreign correspondent, is diametrically opposite. It sure looks to me like, as much of an instant bludgeon as Russia may have applied, they did act upon substantial outright aggression by Georgia.
BushCo: “Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?”
Looks like it was a Mexican stand-off to me with much history and military maneuvering in the short term where Georgia blinked first. I do not find it too far-fetched to see Rove or other administration agents to have egged Saakashvili on so muddying the culpability issue. But it doesn’t make much sense where a military exercise involving US troops was recently ended and these troops had left Georgia. Maybe the exercise gave the Georgians a false confidence. The CRS report does a good job of describing heightened tensions in the region. The cause in this light can not be narrowly attributed to one event in my mind, but it makes sense to look at the nature of any disproportionate Georgian response in the atmosphere of a fragile status quo where Georgia’s military spending has recently escalated from 30 million dollars a year to a billion a year.
I was going to the Moscow Daily, an english language online news outlet even left links here a few times, at the time of the violence. The Russian media is just as guilty of misinformation and misleading information in this case as our media. HRW was unable to verify the Russian claim of 1500 civilian deaths. It was only after a week or so after the critical hostilities began and HRW observers were able to make assessments that some semblance of truth began to emerge. As best as I can tell The International Herald Tribune was the first to report these HRW observations in mid-August. I know that doesn’t necessarily fully address your beef.
I will say that Marcy’s attention to detail in attribution in the Libby matter has taught me much in reading the media. The CRS report does a good job of noting attribution but obviously this was not compiled in real time. I will say that following the Moscow Daily and the IHT left me with a pretty detailed picture of the claims and available critical data as ultimately reflected in the CRS. So we have to work for our information in the market place of perceptions. Its regrettable especially in the context of military action where consequences are ultimately quite grave.
“On August 10, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl
Levin averred that the United States does “not have much impact, I
believe, in terms of [Administration] declarations anymore,” but
should work with Europe to make clear to Russia that its action “is
way out of line” and to convince it to halt aggression in Georgia.”
From the CRS Report.
Not only was Saakashvili plastered all over American screens he always had the European Union flag close at his side as misleading to everyone as were the pictures of Ossetian damaged buildings touted as damages to Georgian territory, pictures stolen from Russian news sources documenting Georgian atrocities.
Book Salon up
Looks like Saakashvili is back at it again:
Doesn’t matter as long as those dollars keep rolling in.
Excellent blog!
The fits McCain has thrown over what was after all an American operation with American soldiers (qua advisers) on the ground during the assault by Georgia’s American trained troops on independent provinces was totally disingenuous.
Putin was bang-on in his assessment.
The situation with Georgia and Russia to me reaffirms what a complex and dangerous world this is, a world in which however much we desire to paint things as simple for or against, reality and history (something Americans always tend to forget about) create something far more thorny. Even in the Cold War, in which the Soviets were particularly nasty in Eastern Europe, just as American nastiness in the Middle East has resulted from the shock of 9/11, some of that nastiness had to do with the loss of 10 million lives in World War 1 and 10 million more in World War 2. If 3,000 lives lead Americans to this weird assed Spectacle in Iraq that our populace blindly went along with, Russian instransigence, however violent, in Eastern Europe, believe me, plays quite well in the Russian political mindset.
On the other hand, except for their bloody little operation in Ossetia, if anyone knows anything at all about Georgia, it’s impossible for a Democratic Georgia not to be an extremely romantic idea.
Then there’s the oil connection to everything and–oh that Maverick reformer–added in is that one of our Presidential candidates has as a campaign manager, a former lobbyist for what amounts to be a foreign country. That is whatever we do, if John Mc Cain is elected, well then, our foreign policy will be profoundly affected not by what is necessarily wise or even good for the American populace, but lobbyist dollars.
Of course, does it do any good to mention the one-two punch of George Bush looking in Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul (after all it took a whole day for McCain to find Sarah Palin was his soulmate) and our current dour Veep aka Dr. Evil going after the Russian bear with his quail gun.
Obama, also tends to see foreign policy matters a bit, shall I say, traditionally, although I do sense in him at least the ability to understand that as the Tao Te Ching suggests running a government is more challenging than cooking a small fish so that it is well enough done, but still juicy.
Btw, the flag reminiscent of the Crusades was adopted during the so-called Rose Revolution engineered with the assistance of NED funds. The flag was Saakashvili’s own. All very contrived.
BTW, who is John McWorse’s chief foreign policy advisor? Isn’t it Randy Scheunemann, the paid lobbyist for Georgia? What a strange, strange coincidence.
Shouldn’t there be a law??? Geeeeeez. And Randy gets much much more from Georgia than from McCain.
In the end we screwed up, should have given Georgia the means to defend itself (i.e. Patriots and Javelins) and let them have at it. It is not in our best interest to have a resurgent Russia, but at the same time we do not need to be involded in this.
Interesting to see the conversation turn to North Ossetia. The following link has an excellent map of Georgia, and even a charming monoplanar painting of the visage of King-woman Tamar of the twelfth century. Eccentrically, my studies of the region parallelled some work I did on Arabic social mores in the zone around Fallujah, though of an epoch disparate from the recent warframe. Yet, work I did in linguistics has surfaced again to inform the readings on Charlie Daniels’ chromatic scaled electric fiddling into Georgia. Philologically, some folks got confused when they left their home region, so Ossetia has a place called Iber, and linguists are trying to identify settlers of the Iberian peninsula with origins in the Caucasus. I will stay with the antiquarian history of Caucasus viticulture for starters, here, and agree with the comments somewhat akin to sphere of influence concepts in foreign policy, plus the devil meddling. That is the way I pieced the mosaic of newsbits, too.
bmaz:
Interesting op-ed today from one of those colorless establishment opinionator’s the Post features, Jackson Diehl.
He refers to Saakashvili as “The Troublemaker In Chief”
He’s evidently the responsible wing of our establishment, i.e., the kind of op-ed writer they hedge bets with, as he crafts a narrative that makes out Saakashvili to be a lone hothead:
I read the Putin interview with some amazement, and no little nostalgia. I’m not so old that I can’t remember a day that the United States had presidents capable of what Putin showed. Speaking in complete sentences that actually make sense. Forming thoughts into paragraphs. A firm grasp of history and the ability to relate it to the present.
But the best part was his discussion of US media. Putin says:
Now, this is not to say I’d like to live in Russia, given that Putin and his government (and anyone who thinks they’re not purely authoritarian, needs to have their head examined), but he puts Bush to shame.
And, for those interested, they should go read a diary I posted over at Talkleft on this matter – “Georgia on my mind”. It seemed fairly obvious to me weeks ago – absent reading or receiving any commentary from the media – that the Georgian war was purely a confection of Bushco trying to bolster their own position and start a new Cold War to benefit their arms-making, arms-dealing buddies in corporate America. After all, a high-tech development-pushing Cold War against a first-world economy is insanely more profitable than a low-level insurgency against a bunch of guys living in caves, where the work is done and money spent on shoe leather and rifle ammunition.
Heh, crikey, it was only 8 years ago that we had a guy capable of the kind of riffing that Putin rattled off. And it does make a difference in how we relate and interrelate with the world. And as you can tell withthe post, i kind of agree with the rest of your thoughts as well.
NYbooks has a pretty good assessment of this Georgia event IMO.
Since the glosses I found interesting mostly were things like millenia traditions of winegrape ag in the Caucasus, and the perennially curious, to me, linkages among language groups like a Caucasian language, Basque, and Finnish, I thought, in archiving some materials discovered in background reading, the following linked EuroParliament research paper on the state of foreign policy in 2005 in the nation of Georgia, which, among other helpful threads of a difficult region to image ethnically, provides an few useful insights into some of Georgia’s first NIS leader, Shevardnadze, who, at the time, seemed to me to provide the necessary aliquot of both worlds, CCCP and NIS, in a credible way for the purposes of international diplomatic circles and their respective key governments, given his record as an arbiter of some import in diplomacy, at the time, to afford an opportunity for Georgia to do what it had in its historical past done, though in a refreshed way in the NIS atmosphere of the 1990s.