Posted on 08/12/2008 2:55:56 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
When he burst on to television screens across the world last week, speaking perfect English, Mikheil Saakashvili looked every inch the charismatic New York-trained lawyer that he is.
Known to friends as "Misha" the cosmopolitan 40-year-old is unquestionably brilliant, speaks half dozen languages and has a Dutch wife.
But Mr Saakashvili has handed Russia a victory it could scarcely have dreamed of - his decision to invade South Ossetia has left his army humiliated and he could soon be fighting for his political life with no prospect of any meaningful help from his Western allies.
How did he make such a catastrophic blunder?
The answer appears to lie in Mr Saakashvili's own character. While supporters praise him as a passionate and patriotic leader, whose drive and energy have transformed Georgia, critics say he is bombastic, impulsive and confrontational. His suave exterior hides a burning nationalist pride.
His abject defeat will hurt further still because it means the loss of long personal battle with Vladimir Putin.
A few years ago a document titled Mikheil Saakashvili: A Psychological Study, origin unknown, was circulated among Western journalists.
The now discredited paper claimed Mr Saakashvili's behaviour was narcissistic, paranoid, egocentric and hysterical and showed "psychiatric disturbances".
There is no doubt that Russia has been trying to undermine Mr Saakashvili for years.
According to diplomatic sources Russia stepped up its campaign to provoke him into a rash move in South Ossetia or Abkhazia - the two breakaway provinces of Georgia - over the last two weeks. There were occasional clashes and Russian jets entered Georgian airspace.
Mr Putin, it seems, knew just which buttons to push and Mr Saakashvili took the bait.
Friends of Mr Saakashvili claim he is neither a nationalist hothead, nor a political ingenue, and has instead simply been naive.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
And people thought the KGB is dead.
” his decision to invade South Ossetia”
How does one invade their own province?
They're clearing the way for Bark Obama's knee-jerk perception of America's always wrong point of view!!!
It's plainly BOGUS!!!
gitmo
First the Guardian sides with Putin`s Russia. Now the Telegraph shows its true colors. Sad.
How did Serbia “invade” Kosovo?
We expelled the Serbs from there by heavy use of force.
He was set up.
Entering your own province to settle unrest is normally a means to quell civil disobedience and restore domestic tranquility. Evidently the Russian Federation took umbrage, because most of the “civil unrest” was from ethnic Russians who had been settled in South Ossetia back in the days of the Soviet Union, as part of their scheme to “homogenize” the various provinces of the Soviet empire.
My understanding is that South Ossetia has been a "province" in name only for several years now...as the Russian (ex-Soviet) military never really withdrew from it since the collapse of the USSR. It has an ethnic Russian majority (like many provinces in ex-Soviet republics) and Russia sees it as strategically valuable.
Isn't it amazing how completely we've forgotten the “Evil Empire” and what it was so capable of, and and good, at doing! There has been absolutely no indication over the years that anything about the Russians other than their financial abilities has changed. And what with the recent rise in oil prices and their large deposits of oil those changes are not likely to be reversed any time soon.
And just as disturbing is the evidence that our CIA continues to live with its head up its you-know-what. So busy making sure nothing George Bush does works as planned, not at all if possible, to catch on that all this was going in Russia.
This is another example of how our refusal to break our addiction to foreign oil is hurting us. If we weren't such a big player in the world oil market, and getting what we need from our own sources, it would drive down the prices around the world and thus deprive Russia of the cash it needs to keep up its belligerence.
Of course China would step right in and buy up the oil available at a much lower price and therefore be able to buy a lot more. On first blush that seems like a problem, but they have absolutely no system for protecting their environment and will probably go right along until they choke themselves to death.
Isn't it amazing how completely we've forgotten the “Evil Empire” and what it was so capable of, and and good, at doing! There has been absolutely no indication over the years that anything about the Russians other than their financial abilities has changed. And what with the recent rise in oil prices and their large deposits of oil those changes are not likely to be reversed any time soon.
And just as disturbing is the evidence that our CIA continues to live with its head up its you-know-what. So busy making sure nothing George Bush does works as planned, not at all if possible, to catch on that all this was going in Russia.
This is another example of how our refusal to break our addiction to foreign oil is hurting us. If we weren't such a big player in the world oil market, and getting what we need from our own sources, it would drive down the prices around the world and thus deprive Russia of the cash it needs to keep up its belligerence.
Of course China would step right in and buy up the oil available at a much lower price and therefore be able to buy a lot more. On first blush that seems like a problem, but they have absolutely no system for protecting their environment and will probably go right along until they choke themselves to death.
Get ready for a load of BS, particularly from the European papers (and, of course, the NYT, AP & Reuters) -- because, well, Europe can't/won't do squat to defend anyone, against anything, and they need the gas from that pipeline.
So, hail to Europe's new master: Russia!
(Oh, and hiss to the US, of course, because it's somehow always our fault.)
Despicable. Having just read the very same thing in the execrable U.S. News & World Report that the equally vile Telegraph has reported, I can only conclude they are parroting the official line from Moscow. Horrendous.
I don't know if that's true. According to what I've been able to find out something like 70% of the population has Russian citizenship. Most of them are Orthodox and speak or understand Russian. But "ethnically" only a tiny percentage are Russian. 66% are Ossetian and 29% are Georgian.
Pray for this man.
And the "official" line from the White House is?
yitbos
All Georgians are childlike and naive to a great extent.
It is a part of their national character.
Exactly.
actually ethnic Christian Iranians. But in recent years has become Russian citizens.
Does that apply to Stalin too?
A Russian co-worker told me that the typical attitude of Russians toward inhabitants of the southern Caucasus region is: "All those people down there are just crazy."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.