Pushing Russia’s Buttons

The combat in Georgia should stop but do americans really care? I doubt many could even point at the general direction and probably many thinks it is a State -_-. I really hate the role of "big brother" america is playing.. it is destroying our economy, lives - for what, so a country so far away that most of us never heard of or cared could be democratic? McCain's speech was purely fearmongering and betting on the stupidity of americans to follow him. Did newsweek point out McCain has a lobbyist from Georgia? I really liked the pre-WWII america where we minded our own business than now - our main concern and i "speak for all americans" is to become energy independent, improve our economy, jobs and education not to stick our nose in where it doesn't belong. UN is created for a reason - let everyone talk and come up with a solution the majority agrees on then act, that way we wont look too bad. Oh yeah, we also did what Russia did - attacking a country without provocation...think about that.

The combat in Georgia should stop but do americans really care? I doubt many could even point at the general direction and probably many thinks it is a State -_-. I really hate the role of "big brother" america is playing.. it is destroying our economy, lives - for what, so a country so far away that most of us never heard of or cared could be democratic? McCain's speech was purely fearmongering and betting on the stupidity of americans to follow him. Did newsweek point out McCain has a lobbyist from Georgia? I really liked the pre-WWII america where we minded our own business than now - our main concern and i "speak for all americans" is to become energy independent, improve our economy, jobs and education not to stick our nose in where it doesn't belong. UN is created for a reason - let everyone talk and come up with a solution the majority agrees on then act, that way we wont look too bad. Oh yeah, we also did what Russia did - attacking a country without provocation...think about that.

The parallel between Georgia and Taiwan is all too aptly drawn, and it brings to light an additional point of caution: while the US may do well to take a less antagonistic tone towards Russia, backing down entirely would send entirely the wrong message to other rising powers, namely China. If Russia is allowed to feel it can get away with attacking and then withdrawing from a sovereign, democratic nation just to prove a point, what???s to stop China from feeling it can use the same tactic to assert its clout by attacking Taiwan?

The dream of lasting world peace is dead. The last hope that I had died when our leader uttered the words, "preemptive war". Having uttered those words, we lost our right to complain about the aggression of other governments with any excuse, however thin, to invade another country, especially after our reason for the preemptive war proved to be false and weakly blamed on "faulty intelligence". Actually the "faulty intelligence" was more in the cranium of those who used it than anywhere else.
Whatever we did to diplomatically to prime the pump of the Georgian war pales in our use of military force so foolishly as we have used it in Iraq from start to finish. We wanted Baghdad so badly and we got it for a few moments of cheap glory, and now it has us and will have us for an unknown period of time. Just think about us continuing to spend billions trying to fix the damage that we did in taking the place and the now billions of Iraqi oil dollars deposited in our own banks. We were told as part of the buildup to war there that the Iraqi oil dollars would pay for our invasion. Never have so many people been fooled by so few people in power.
Forget peace in the world. It simply can't exist amongst human kind. We all love war too much. Just remember the glory of the TV presentation of the bombs falling on Iraq and lighting up the night sky while TV announcers gleefully told of how our surgical bomb strikes were just about to blow up the house where Saddam Hussein was holed up. We are hooked on war and now with our declaration of the right to wage it at the slightest excuse the world's banner of freedom has been folded. It was our banner and we lost it. The wars will only proliferate and leave less and less peace in between until we can't stand the sight of any more blood of the innocent spilled into the streets of the world.

At last someone with a real grasp of the situation surrounding Russia. Bravo, Mr. Hirsh. It is time we wandered a bit in other nation's shoes. Russia may be paranoid about the West but, historically, it has good reason. In the last two hundred years it has seen first Napolean then Hitler sweep across Eastern Europe into its heartland with the resultant loss of millions of Russian lives. Look how paranoid we've gotten with the loss of three thousand on 9/11. Look how paranoid John McCain is when he rails about the extremely remote spectre of Chinese oil wells off our coast. And now we are beginning to see Russia reassert itself. But this is what happens when you have leaders (mostly Republican) who seem to have slept through history class.

At last someone with a real grasp of the situation surrounding Russia. Bravo, Mr. Hirsh. It is time we wandered a bit in other nation's shoes. Russia may be paranoid about the West but, historically, it has good reason. In the last two hundred years it has seen first Napolean then Hitler sweep across Eastern Europe into its heartland with the resultant loss of millions of Russian lives. Look how paranoid we've gotten with the loss of three thousand on 9/11. Look how paranoid John McCain is when he rails about the extremely remote spectre of Chinese oil wells off our coast. And now we are beginning to see Russia reassert itself. But this is what happens when you have leaders (mostly Republican) who seem to have slept through history class.

Russia has agreed to both sides withdrawing their armies only because it has no intention of pulling its forces out. It sees an opportunity to make Georgia disarm unilaterally. Russia will claim that its army in Georgia is peacekeepers, policemen or voluntary militia of the South Ossetians and keep it in. The only way to ensure that both sides withdraw their armies is to send in an international peacekeeping force, no member of which is from Russia, Georgia or any group in Caucasus. That force should have the arms and authority to enforce withdrawal of armies.
Georgia was the lightning rod for Eastern Europe. Russia focused its economic, propagandistic and military bullying on Georgia, lightening the pressure on countries of Eastern Europe. In the 1990s Russian military planes were flying over the Baltic states and Russia was creating sudden stoppages of trade in them. After the Rose Revolution in Georgia this activity shifted there. Now that the lightning rod is broken Eastern European countries should expect a lot more economic and military trouble from Russia.

A couple of points:
1 In the international media the background to the Russian-Georgian war is given starting from last week and the bombing of Tshinvali. The military conflict has actually been going on for some years with Russian military planes flying over Georgia and ???unidentified??? bombs and rockets falling into Georgia.
2 The cyberattacks on Georgia started a day before the bombing of Tshinvali.
3 The Russian citizens in South Ossetia to whose aid Russia purportedly rushed were manufactured by Russia in the last few years. Russia simply handed out its passports to anyone who wanted them in South Ossetia.
4 The claim that a war is to defend civilians is ridiculous from a logical standpoint alone. Any peace is better than war for civilians. A country whose primary goal was to protect civilians would not go to war or if it was already in one would withdraw as quickly as possible. That applies to all wars, not just the present one in Georgia.
5 Russia claims that the South Ossetians chose independence from Georgia in a referendum in 2004. A fair referendum in Russian-controlled territory is a contradiction in terms but perhaps South Ossetians really prefer to secede. If Russia wants Ossetians to be independent, it should first grant independence to North Ossetia that is currently part of Russia. That would be a very powerful argument in favour of South Ossetian independence. Russia of course just wants to expand its territory and will incorporate South Ossetia into itself, not give it independence.
6 Russia claims Georgia has perpetrated genocide in South Ossetia. Considering the number of international advisers, consultants, monitors and no doubt spies in Georgia now a genocide would have been noticed very quickly. No other sources besides Russian ones have confirmed the genocide allegations however. A genocide can be carried out relatively unnoticed only in remote and isolated territories where a great power is denying access to the international community. That happened for example in Chechenya where Russia strongly discouraged international observation.
7 There are many similarities between the rhetoric and behaviour of Germany in 1938 and Russia in 2008, for example the defending of one???s citizens abroad argument, accusing a smaller country of attacking a larger one, claiming that the world is biased against them, fostering separatism and ethnic conflict in its neighbours??? territories. Carl Bildt drew some good parallels between Russia and Hitler???s Germany in a recent article.
8 On the internet the Russian viewpoint is more widely represented than the Georgian simply because the number of potential commenters and bloggers in Russia is much larger than in Georgia.
The method Russia seems to be using in gaining its objective of restoring the Soviet Union is to separate a piece from another country and then move in its ???piecekeepers??? to keep that piece for itself.