Posted on 08/11/2008 8:59:22 AM PDT by Fred
On October 3, 1938, Adolf Hitler’s armies marched into Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler’s tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him.
On August 7, 2008, Vladimir Putin’s armies marched into South Ossetia, a part of Georgia. Russia said it was responding to separatist demands from the large Russian population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Russia. Putin’s tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him.
Encouraged by his occupation of Sudetenland, Hitler continued his designs on Czechoslovakia itself and invaded the rest of the nation a few months later.
Will history continue to repeat itself?
Georgia is one of the two countries that have split off from the old Soviet Union and most firmly reached out to the West. Now Putin is testing whether the west will respond to an overt Russian military attack on a part of Georgia, doubtless paving the way for a full scale invasion, perhaps in the coming days. One immediate Russian move would be to use its new found military leverage to force Georgia to give up Abkhazia, another province with a large Russian population.
Russia has encouraged migration by ethnic Russians into its satellite empire ever since Stalin’s days and now is using the provinces with large Russian populations to foment discord in nations that lean to the West.
The United States and the European Union must not turn away at this crucial moment in history. The U.S. should take visible steps to bolster Georgia, including the dispatch of supplies, materials, and other manifestations of our determination not to let this nation be invaded.
Russia’s goal in this imperialism is to intimidate any nation on its borders into rejecting overtures from the west and to try to prove that the west will offer no real protection against Russian military designs.
NATO should speed consideration of Georgia’s application for admission and should extend its security umbrella to include the struggling democracy.
If the United States appeases Russia now, it will pay the same price British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain paid in the 1930s. This invasion must not be allowed to stand or, at the very least, it must be contained to South Ossetia and not allowed to lap over into the rest of Georgia.
Meanwhile, Bush is hanging out with the women’s volleyball team in Beijing.
You'd think for someone who wants to be the leader of this country, that he'd have some comment about it all, but he's busy doing other things. Must be a black thing. Being a typical white person, I just wouldn't understand it.
And our president is having a ball waving the flag at the Olympics, our congress is watching ball games and drinking beer on vacation at the beach, etc., and Europe is facing a repeat of 1938.
Everyone should get back on the job immediately.
Putin is far more dangerous than Iran because he is much much smarter.
It appears that there is a Turkish frigate off the coast at Batumi, in Georgian waters. The Israelis had advisers in Georgia, but it sounds like they are being pulled out. Russia has singled Turkey, Israel and Ukraine out as supplying the Georgian “criminals” in their aggression. Aug 10, 2008 - 10:04 pm
The comments from the linked article are quite good.
Russia is a joke in comparason with US when it comes to staling people’s welth... US and GB are the master who say one thing to get in oil reach country and then you cannot get them out ever , just look current building of 17 US bases along the oil pipe routes in Iraq...
That's because we're so good at stuning their bebers.
NATO invaded Yugoslavia, now Russia invades Georgia.
Sorry, but the precedent for this is U.S. Slavophobic policy in the Balkans.
Russia at least has the sense to invade on behalf of its own clients. We trashed the relevant parts of international law on behalf of Al Qaeda clients.
Putins strategy has been very obvious for years. He wrote a thesis on it which ripped off some US economics professor paper on the same thing. Basically. He who controls all the energy, makes the rules in this century. He's shaped his entire countries future around this.
This is how Putin believed he could return the USSR to its past glory and reclaim all that they had lost. Remember Putin's speech were he said the collapse of the USSR was the biggest modern catastrophe that had occured in our lifetimes? He truely believes that. Ofcourse, Eastern europe had another opinion, but that's what Putin still believes and now that he has an endless supply of petrol dollars to fund his plans and expand the military, we are starting to see it implemented.
Signed up today Troll! Bye bye!
IBTZ!
And I might add WE ARE STILL FRIGGIN THERE!!! Should have never been there ever. These worthless so called democratic European countries have got to start pulling their own weight.
IBTZ
obama is in Hawaii memorizing his next “speech” so he can “shine” on MLK day.
Obama has to gather his energy...he has a huge speech to read, re-read and memorize. he knows the rap about him be a tele-prompter puppet has caught up with him.. He knows his ahhss ummsss, uhhs ahhhsss, ummms, ahhhhs, hmmm, umms, ahhhs has caught up too.
obama is preening, preaching, memorizing his speech....
We are better at SPELLING and GRAMMAR too.
ta-ta TROLL
ZOT!!
That is an eminently sensible thing to do.
That is exactly how I read the situation. We screw serbia, a russian ally and they screw Georgia, our ally.
I am not a russian apologist, but we are being hypocritical.
Yes , Albania and Azerbijan on the way but his quest for
lost glory will ultimately end in Israel. He must deliver
Isreal on a silver platter as an offering to his muslim
coalition brothers ...
Obama must read FR. I just heard he crawled out of his hole and made a statement on the situation in Georgia. He claims he’s been warning about the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia for months. I’ve tried to find any statements on it that he’s made in the past, but for the life of me, there aren’t any out there. Does anyone have any info to document his claims?
Make no mistake that the Russians have their sights set firmly in taking over Georgia. The black Sea which Georgia borders has huge un tapped oil reserves that Russia I am sure seeks to controle as much as they can. For years now Russia has been seeking to use their vast oil and gas fields to controle their neigbors. They were not happy about the fact that Georgia had a major oil pipeline running through their country to the Black Sea. Plus it makes the smaller former soviet states think twice about joining NATO. I suspect they might have a problem though with the Ukraine it’s a much more vast country that had a very large portion of the military bases and weapon stockpiles when the soviet Union went under including nuclear weapons. Though I heard they let the Russians remove the ICBM’S. Who is to say they didn’t keep a few tacticle nukes.
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