Posted on 08/08/2008 12:47:46 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Even Russia itself does not recognize their independence. Nobody does.
that is how the US took most of our territory.
You can't plop thousands of Russians into another country after WWII with the intent to wipe out a ethnic and national identity (even banning certain languages etc), occupy this place for decades, and then years later use those people you plopped there as an excuse for why you're “intervening.” You can't over the last few years fuel the strife and pump up those that want to break away from Georgia and then under the guise of “protecting ethnic Russians” invade a sovereign country and then sell it as some moral act.
But the fact remains they are there now. There isn't much we can do about it.
In a similar fashion, when statues erected by the former Soviets in some sovereign Baltic republic today get torn down and the Russians complain about this act, and see it as suppressing a Russian minority that was transplanted there under Stalin in his attempt to destroy the cultural, ethnic, and national identity of these people, we should not cry a tear. Too bad, too sad.
Georgia is a sovereign state. The actions of Russia reference Chechnya and other areas like their meddling in the Ukraine and black mail with gas gives insight into the Russians true motives and modus operandi. While the American liberal loves to scream “no blood for oil,” it was Russian and French firms in Iraq doing all the business with Saddam, and conveniently also Russia that opposed the war and under the table worked against us. Russia sees the Caucasus as hers, Russia is not a really free state, she does not apply a real rule of law, and her motives as well as desired end state is in no way comparable to what we are doing in Afghanistan or Iraq, which the Russians will of course try to point at.
Russia is the same pariah it always has been. Today the former party bosses are called CEO, the KGB has a nice new name, and new nuclear missiles no longer go by NATO designated names, but journalists and dissidents still seem to die in the same obscure ways, they still back the same sort of regimes like in Tehran, Belarus, or Venezuela...... Putin (a former KGB guy) and one of the head honchos in East Berlin when the wall was still up, isn't a nice guy, despite Bush seeing “into his soul” during their talk. Russia isn't Western, they still see a threat picture in the West, they align themselves with near every single adversary the West and free world has.
It's real simple, Georgia is a free republic. Georgia is closely aligned with the West and is even seeking NATO membership, something which like in the Ukraine Russia vehemently opposes. Russia sees the entire Caucasus as her “sphere of influence.” The Russians are in part causing the problem, and then after they helped create the ethnic strife, they use it as their motive/cause to intervene in Georgia. This does matter, because motive, and MO should drive how we react, and our as the entire Wests reaction should be highly negative, as negative as possible shy of direct military intervention. That simple.
I agree with you there. My question is what do we do with the people that have been persuaded to become Russian citizen in Georgia?
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