Yep ... The Russians seem intent on annexing two chunks of Georgia.
That method helped them build their empire under the Czars...who knows it might work again. Czarist Russia expanded the same way that the American Empire did.
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.
The Georgian presidents a fucking idiot. There are many countries/autonomous states in the Caucasus that could have done with a little heads up that he was going to use force against South Ossetia. It's a politically fragile area, he really made it worse for all involved.
I guess the created enemy of terrorists lurking around our corners waiting to stab us in our throats as we sleep didnt really last that long so now our government has to bring back the dusty old Russian bear to fear us into stupidity, etc (insert here).
At least I can sleep better at night knowing that we captured tortured and convicted Bin Laden's driver, remember he was classified by Rummy as the worst of the worse evil doers, even though he didnt do anything but drive really bad men around. It makes me feel even better that not even Hitler's chauffeur was convicted of any trumped up charges.
Just when I began to feel safe these silly Russians had to go attack a soveign nation just because said nation's leader attacked an industial city and leveling a hospital full of Russians.
I haven't read through this thread but I sure hope somebody has mentioned, "oil, Caspian Sea, and control". Or is everybody way off base with this one?
I haven't read through this thread but I sure hope somebody has mentioned, "oil, Caspian Sea, and control". Or is everybody way off base with this one?
Thats a "conspiracy theory" We are only trying to spread democracy.
Patrick J. Buchanan
Who Started Cold War II
08/19/2008
The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.
Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.
Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did -- nothing.
These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?
As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.
If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.
What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?
Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.
The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.
The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.
Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.
A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.
Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?
As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
Yep ... The Russians seem intent on annexing two chunks of Georgia, and also seem intent on using scorched earth tactics as they withdraw. Nice. If nothing else, though, the U.S. will be that much more inclined to up military aid to Georgia, the more material the Russians destroy. What a bunch of toads, though. Peacekeepers my ass.
Well, perspective is nice, of course. Both South-Ossetia and Abkhazia don't want to be a part of Georgia and don't consider themselves a part of Georgia. They do want to be a part of Russia.
Saakashvili is a madman that needed these issues, regions claiming independence, solved. He needed this because he wants to join NATO. So after expanding the military budget forty times (with financial aid of the US), he decided it was time to strike. He ordered tanks and artillery to go into South-Ossetia to take it back. Houses were set on fire. There are even South-Ossetians claiming Americans were directly involved, they say they heard English speaking soldiers, some of them were black (there are very little black English speaking people in Georgia).
pretty random bump to play a youtube link from the same time period....?
Just skimmed the article fanch posted..... a little prophetic here, no? "Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far."
A bridge too far for Putin, for sure. This article was written well before the current unrest in Ukraine began. The 'NATO' writing has been on the wall for a long time....yet some people still believe Russia is responsible for the conflict there, and that the 'invasion' of the Crimean peninsula is the starting point, not the reaction...thus justifying sanctions and a further escalation in the new cold war.
Comments
war is a terrible idea.
MWAHAHAHAHA. A good one.Learn your history homeboy.
appreciate the link, but a warning would be nice.
The Georgian presidents a fucking idiot. There are many countries/autonomous states in the Caucasus that could have done with a little heads up that he was going to use force against South Ossetia. It's a politically fragile area, he really made it worse for all involved.
thats all you got?
hey look I have a stalker
we all wish. its nice to be liked
At least I can sleep better at night knowing that we captured tortured and convicted Bin Laden's driver, remember he was classified by Rummy as the worst of the worse evil doers, even though he didnt do anything but drive really bad men around. It makes me feel even better that not even Hitler's chauffeur was convicted of any trumped up charges.
Just when I began to feel safe these silly Russians had to go attack a soveign nation just because said nation's leader attacked an industial city and leveling a hospital full of Russians.
PEACE.
Ooops, my bad! I hate seeing the world for what it really is.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28087
Patrick J. Buchanan
Who Started Cold War II
08/19/2008
The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.
Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.
Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did -- nothing.
These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?
As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.
If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.
What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?
Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.
The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.
The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.
Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.
A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.
Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?
As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
Well, perspective is nice, of course. Both South-Ossetia and Abkhazia don't want to be a part of Georgia and don't consider themselves a part of Georgia. They do want to be a part of Russia.
Saakashvili is a madman that needed these issues, regions claiming independence, solved. He needed this because he wants to join NATO. So after expanding the military budget forty times (with financial aid of the US), he decided it was time to strike. He ordered tanks and artillery to go into South-Ossetia to take it back. Houses were set on fire. There are even South-Ossetians claiming Americans were directly involved, they say they heard English speaking soldiers, some of them were black (there are very little black English speaking people in Georgia).
naděje umírá poslední
Just skimmed the article fanch posted.....
a little prophetic here, no?
"Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far."
A bridge too far for Putin, for sure.
This article was written well before the current unrest in Ukraine began. The 'NATO' writing has been on the wall for a long time....yet some people still believe Russia is responsible for the conflict there, and that the 'invasion' of the Crimean peninsula is the starting point, not the reaction...thus justifying sanctions and a further escalation in the new cold war.