Posted on 08/15/2008 4:47:46 AM PDT by Thorin
Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.
Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?
That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.
When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?
American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?
The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.
We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.
Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.
Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.
How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?
For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.
Pat never met a Facist or a tyrant he didn’t like. What a friggin hump!
Pat is a cryptonazi.
Have never really trusted him.
Have begun to wonder . . . is he a deliberately trained and manipulated 5th column sort of person to influence another chunk of the populace at the globalists’ behest?
Interesting article by Pat Buchanan. Thanks for posting.
You’re welcome. And thanks for the first intelligent comment on the column.
You got it! Buchanan opposed NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, most favored nation trade status for Red China (all of which the Bushes support) because he is a "globalist." Brilliant!
Putin probably gives Pat a thrill going up his leg.
We're just commenting down to Pat's level of recent years. Missing from Pat's 'moral' calculus is that the West is working to encourage stable democracies and Putin, having snuffed out the emergence of such in Russia, is now trying to snuff out the emergence of such in neighboring countries.
I suppose you are unfamiliar with the standard strategy of training someone to play a role quite convincingly . . . until they have a major following amongst the opposition . . . then using the trained puppet’s influence to at least moderate the opposition if not turn chunks of it toward one’s goals.
I don’t know how to explain some of his stuff the last few years otherwise.
I did use to cheer him on.
This article says more about Pat than it does the situation.
Some months back I remember reading a very silly post by a certain Russian FReeper (no need to name him ...let's just say his heart is in the right place but he gets quite emotional). He was saying that the anti-missile defence network is an American plan to implement a first-strike (nuclear) into Russia, whereby American ICBMs (being very accurate) will destroy most of Russia's missile capability, and the anti-missile defence would be to mop up those that are left. Obviously that is silly, but the guy was not joking when he said it.
Russians generally feel that the collapse of the USSR left them a pathetic nation of starving beggars under Yeltsin, with all the promises that had been given to them by the West negated, and it is only after Putin came in that they finally got some semblance of dignity back. The points the article brings out sound weird, but the 'what if' scenario given (i.e. if the USSR won the Cold War, and started to set up bases in Cuba etc) is how the situation is viewed in Russia.
Again, silly if you look at it from our perspective. However, the Russians feel that having NATO literally next to them is going too far.
Not defending their viewpoint, but this is a nation willing to go to war over it. If Obama wins you can be certain other 'viewpoints' will come up as well (and since oil prices will remain relatively high, anything above 70 USD p B will give Russia enough money to excercise 'viewpoints')
The very first paragraph is ridiculous. Most of the world could not even find Georgia on a map before this started. Why would the Georgian President have to hide anything ? Georgia already was off the radar. Only a country as large as Russia would need to pull a Wag the Torch canard.
Those Russian citizens can not be helped my friend. On the present course most will end up dieing with their Khan. Their Prince of Princes. What could we have done to make the German people understand that the Third Reich was wrong ?
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Now was that sentence an unbiased factual accounting of what happened? Well, I don't know for sure because I wasn't there, but there are some clues in the language. The phrase "tens of thousands" is deliberately vague, but calculated to convey the feeling of an immense number. Cold reason informs us that no one can really have any accurate numbers this early in this kind of conflict. The term "whipped" is provokingly biased...and on and on throughout the article. I do not understand Buchanan's attitude here.
Oh, I don't see it as silliness. I see it as gross manipulation of Russian public opinion by Putin.
However, Pat misses the larger point - the West HAS to try to stand up to resurgent Russian aggression. And Georgia is extremely key to prevening Russia from having a stranglehold on Caspian oil and natural gas. Europe has already allowed Putin to gain too much leverage over them by becoming too dependent upon Russian oil and gas. We have to now try and contain Russian agression while getting other means of supply to Europe. Otherwise, Putin will steadily rebuild the old Empire.
Pat's problem is that he cannot see a moral, let alone strategic, imperative for that. But what do you expect from an apologist for Hitler?
This has been debunked as Russian propaganda. The problem is, Pat didn't just swallow it whole. He reached for the A-1 so he could relish the meal.
To be true to one's convictions is a sign of strength but to rabidly deny reality is darkness.
Horsecrap. The claims of a Georgian massacre have been debunked as Russian propaganda. Sane freepers held off judgement of such claim until either validation or debunking. Pat couldn't be bothered to wait. It fits his pre-conceived dislike of American and Europe both pursuing vital interests and extending democracy and political stability eastward.
And don't get me started on Pat's recent column basically blaming the Allies for the Holocaust. That was the nail in Pat's pundit coffin for me.
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