Appeasing Russia

We are Americans. The Georgians are our allies. They are a democracy. The world is watching. What will we do? One can only hope that we will not let a friend fall because we did not have the nerve to do the right thing. I hear all of the talk about oil and national security, but what about national honor. We support Georgia and have allied with them. Is our friendship worth the price Georgia is paying? When tanks roll in do we abandon our 'friends'? I would hope that our leadership would send a stong message and place troops on the ground. It would not take many. The message would be clear. A line must be drawn and there must be no mistake that it will not be crossed. If the bear wants to growl then the eagle must be ready to fly.

Sir.....read the ast line of your essay and please heed it. The breadth of your idiocy is stunning.

With what US military force are we about to invate a Russian border state and engage in likely large-scale warfare with the Russian army?

With what logistics resources will we be supplying those troops given undoubted horror on the part of everyone in the neighborhood over the prospect of a large-scale outbreak on their doorstep.

Your reasoning echoes the idiocy of the administration which has gotten us into the mess. george bush (name intentionally lower-cased in light of the lack of respect due him) gleefully stood in front of cheering crowds in Tiblisi giving them every encouragement to break away from Russia and turn to NATO and the West. Trouble was, george's ignorance of history and diplomacy found him doing this while ignoring how clearly violently opposed Russia would be to such steps and how likely that they would react with force if challenged.

So when they did, what has been our response....you and McCain and cheney and all the rest of your band of idiots turn immediately to the course you always recommend.....military action.

The hell with what it costs us in live and treasure because like Mr. Cheney, when the call comes for service, you all have "other priorities."

Our nation is in an international decline, driven by the ineptitude and fervent ideology of people whose ideas have already been clearly demonstrated to be disastrous. And yet here you are, once again, proposing military adventurism.

We have the largest most powerful army in the world. And we are losing to folks armed with war-surplus artillery shells and garage door openers. does this not suggest that some other course of action might be warranted?

I don't know what the qualifications of this writer are, but what he is suggesting is a prescription for initiating a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States. There is an extremely compelling reason that the US and the USSR did not become engaged in direct, conventional conflict during the cold war. To do so would have created an unacceptable likelihood of escalation to mutually assured destruction. I find it incredible that such irresponsible drivel as this can be published by a theoretically respectable media organ (i.e., Newsweek).

What an amazing plan: yes, let's risk our own nuclear annihilation by militarily confronting the Russians. Let???s do it on the behalf of the major ass Saakashvilli, who became a serious war criminal as of last Thursday. I mean, is it just me, or should it be considered universally unconscionable to wheel MLRS rocket launchers up to a urban population center in the dead of night and just hose it down? He has been vituperatively arguing that these are his own citizens, after all. But that doesn???t matter, right? He???s OUR war criminal, what we say goes, and the people he destroyed aren???t exactly friendly to our interests, so they just don???t count. You can bet the free, courageous American press will be checking these victims down the memory hole until all we???re left with is headlines screaming about Russia???s ???unprovoked attack.???

Let???s face it, the U.S. government, in it???s infinite wisdom, has again gambled and lost. Bush, of course, is just a clueless boob. Cheney is raving and frothing at the mouth because he figures he may lose out on some pipeline money, and is just a poor sport generally. I just sincerely hope that they aren???t stupid enough to try anything along the lines of what this author is suggesting. And if, instead, they think to try and clandestinely sneak weapons into Georgia, they need to be reminded of how exposed our own troops are in the field to retaliatory measures in kind.

I urge everyone not to vote for McCain. It???s not that I think Obama is such great shakes, but McCain is in the same straitjacket as this author, and will likely get us all killed.

the world must stop Russia from invading sovereign countries by any and all means.

American military power is a *** joke and its all you idiots who keep sending Republicans into office who are to blame. The nation is now whored to the Chinese for its debt, to the Arabs and Russians for oil and scared of Paki nukes to go after Bin Laden. Bush and McCain run around like dickless wimps. The only thing we can do is bomb innocent Iraqis and you stupid idiots think that Bin Laden is in Iraq. Pathetic.

Is this guy nuts? is it a joke, the west should go in..anywhere and everywhere?
they are so stupid........the world knows who popped up saddam hussein in the first place, the taliban and mujahiddin, the mullahs of iran.......this president of Georgia..........how do they get it all wrong?

if the US can go into IRAQ without any reason, RUSSIA has all the legitimate reasons to go into georgia.

ps: I support the war in afghanistan, we need to get those mullahs out, they are the worst of humans who walk on this earth

All of the apologists for Russia's brutal Imperial invasion of the tiny country of Georgia should be ashamed of themselves. It is more than obvious that RUSSIA planned this attack for a long time.. why else would a massive country like Russia have tens of thousands of troops and over a thousand tanks already on the border with a country that has almost no military, and absolutely NO history of being violent. Yes, I have been in Georgia, and know the Georgian people.. this war was completely the result of Putin's ambitions and manipulations. Once a KGB agent, always a KGB agent... the west did not stand up to him over Chechnya, so now he is murdering Georgia.. what is it going to take for the west to FIGHT Putin? Russian tanks rolling through London to "protect the Russian residents" of England?

DenisK.. never ever forget the lessons we should have learned from WW2... that allowing a brutal dictator to win small victories against "unimportant" countries will only lead to you having to fight a stronger brutal dictator later. The West can shut Russia down NOW.. Putin and his cronies are living high only because of the greed and stupidity of the West... stop commerce with them, completely! Stop giving them investment money! Begin to treat them as the rogue state they are... who do you think has given Iran its nuclear technology? Come off your high horse DenisK... at what point would you stand up to Putin? He has taken off all pretense of being a "modern Western looking leader"... he is a brutal old like dictator no different than his Soviet predecessors.