At what point do you not stand up though?
I keep hearing how stupid Georgia was for defending it’s land, but do you not stand up to a bully who is smacking you around on the schoolyard? Is it then your fault when you defend yourself and they beat the crap out of you? Granted, you must make that decision and suffer the consequences regardless, but it still does not make it your fault.
That is the same mentality given to rapists of women who wear short skirts, or wife beaters whose wives “made them angry”.
Oops, I hit post twice. Sorry.
If someone has a gun to your head you don’t stomp on their foot daring them to further act. Suicide isn’t productive.
My question, since the beginning, has been “why now?” The South Ossetians have been hurling rockets along the border for years, although I’m not sure to what extent Georgia may have responded in the past. I don’t know if this time their provocation was more severe, perhaps egged on or coordinated by Russia as a pretext, or if it was just a matter of a response that Russia knew would have to be made one of these days. Russia was already prepared for this scenario, in any case.
The Ossetian situation is quite strange. The EU constitution (not that these are EU members) at one point forbade the recognition of new “states,” since there are ethnic groups all over Europe that keep trying to announce that they’re not part of whatever modern state they happen to be in. Oddly enough, virtually all of them are left-wing (the Basques are outright hard-line Marxists). Those that aren’t are Muslim (although they’re usually leftists as well).
One of the reasons I think it was so dangerous to recognize Kosovo, a “state” created by ethnic cleansing carried out by Muslims, is that it makes these groups that are would-be states much more powerful because it permits a bigger power - whether the former Soviet Union or world Islam - to use them to extend and legitimize their power.
It’s not a matter of this being the “fault” of Georgia, but simply that it was unwise of them at this moment, particularly when we had advised them against it, to respond. Clearly they weren’t prepared militarily, in terms of their alliances, or in any other way to take on Russia.
I don’t think they expected it, honestly, and the only good that could come out of this perhaps is that it’s now time to sit down and work out a new strategy for dealing with things like this. The former Communist states, such as Poland, seem to want to work on it. Perhaps in fact they could establish some kind of defensive alliance, since I doubt that any of them individually are able to take on Russia, particularly if it allies with Iran, as it seems to be doing.