Russia Blames the Victim

RUSSIA is portraying its war in Georgia as a legitimate response to Georgia’s incursion last week into its breakaway region of South Ossetia. ...But the truth is that for the past several months, Russia, not Georgia, has been stoking tensions in South Ossetia and another of Georgia’s breakaway areas, Abkhazia. After NATO held a summit in Bucharest, Romania, in April — at which Georgia and Ukraine received positive signs of potential membership — then-President Vladimir Putin of Russia signed a decree effectively treating Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of the Russian Federation. This was a direct violation of Georgia’s territorial integrity.

It came after years of growing Russian efforts to assert control over these regions, for example, by distributing Russian passports to citizens and arranging the appointment of Russians to the territories’ governments. Mr. Putin, who is now Russia’s prime minister, oversaw a build-up of Russian “peacekeeping” forces in Abkhazia, which was clearly intended to provoke Georgia into a military response.

Yet Georgia showed restraint — in large part because Mr. Saakashvili understood that military adventurism would harm his NATO prospects. Moscow, in turn, transferred its efforts to South Ossetia, where pro-Russian rebels carried out attacks on Georgian forces and villages, finally provoking the response that Moscow had sought as a pretext to intervene.

Now Moscow has sent out the Black Sea fleet to Georgia’s coast and broadened the war into Abkhazia and Georgia proper, showing that Moscow’s war is not just about South Ossetia. In any case, Moscow’s own treatment of separatism — killing tens of thousands of Chechens over the past decade — says volumes about its claims that it is just trying to protect a minority population.

Why? George Soros put the Georgian president into power, so this may be one of those rare times when liberal self-interest coincides with what is morally right.

You should see the article an employee of Lyndon LaRouche emailed me over the weekend.

LaRouche: "London Pushes World War III"

08 Aug 2008
August 9, 2008 (LPAC)--Over the past 36 hours, a new war has suddenly erupted in Europe. As British expert Jonathan Eyal told the Guardian yesterday, if it is not stopped very soon, it will become the most serious international conflict since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989-91; far more serious than the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, because of the direct participation of Russia on one side, and likely of Europe and possibly even the US on the other. What Eyal did not say, is that in fact, it will be World War III; World War III triggered by London and its Lisbon Treaty confederates and dupes in Brussels.
After weeks of increasing shelling and rocket attacks on Georgia's long-standing autonomous enclave of South Ossetia, Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili made a late-night television address Thursday night, offering an immediate ceasefire and guaranteed full autonomy for the enclave, where the troops of Russia and other neighboring countries have been conducting a UN peacekeeping mission ever since 1992. But then, as Georgia admitted Friday morning, its troops began an invasion to take over the enclave within minutes after the conclusion of Saakashvili's address. Among many other casualties, the Georgians killed ten of the Russian peacekeepers and wounded about forty.
An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council convened after one o'clock Friday morning on Russia's insistence, but stalemated when the US, Britain and others gagged at a passage in a short Russian resolution which called on all sides to renounce the use of force.
Friday morning, President Medvedev made a short nationally-televised statement to an emergency meeting of the Russian Security Council. He said that Russia has long been a guarantor of stability in the Caucuses; that Russian troops in South Ossetia were part of a fully-lawful international mission, but that their Georgian fellow-peacekeepers had suddenly treacherously turned on them and killed them. That men, women and children were now dying under Georgian attack in South Ossetia, Russia's President, under its constitution, is responsible for the safety and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever located. (Most South Ossetians hold Russian citizenship.) Medvedev also made statements, that these killings would be punished, with Prime Minister Putin making similar statements from Beijing.
Russia announced dispatch of troops to reinforce its peacekeepers, and a column of 50-100 tanks entered South Ossetia from Russian North Ossetia on Friday. Ironically, Friday was the same day that Georgia had earlier agreed to, for long-delayed peace talks,-- all as part of the deception operation surrounding the invasion.
What now?
As the accompanying article and Helga's article make clear [ed- to be posted soon on LPAC.com]: this war is the product of the British and the British-steered Lisbon Treaty gang, who intend to implement Lisbon regardless of the Irish or anyone else. Some people in Europe are thinking: "If Europe gets really united as a military strength, we would really have clout! We could begin to tell Russia where to get off!" As Lyndon LaRouche noted yesterday, "Some people in Europe, under British impetus, are beginning to think like Hitler!"
"This is not just a provocation to get the Russians upset, or to get them into a trap. It's a drive to dismember Russia. This is essentially,-- this is World War III. Look at Cheney, and look at what Cheney represents,-- and he's British, not American, really, in terms of what his policies are,-- then you see it! That this is the same thing as the attack on Iran! Exactly the same operation. And we should call it that: `London pushes for World War III.' And that's what we should say. `London pushes for World War III.'"

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