Ping.
“We’ll certainly be looking at the long-term security needs of Georgia, and what role the Defense Department might have in assisting in that,” he said.”
Yep, 10,000 anti-aircraft shoulder fired weapons, 30,000 anti-tank weapons and about 20,000 high power sniper rifles should do just fine. Next time the bear puts its fat nose into a Democratic country, they can have all there toys destroyed.
Our paper here in Eugene (Berkley of the North and home of University of Oregon) allows even opinions considered as deviate as mine to appear. The below was published as a guest viewpoint allow with one by a person who called the Russian troops peacekeepers.
Despite Russian claims, no parallels exist between U.S. Iraq involvement, and Russian Georgian aggression. With that and other pretexts, Putin unilaterally attacked into Georgia, after NATO membership rejection portended a flaccid response. In contrast the United States, heading a U. N. coalition exceeding that Churchill and Roosevelt assembled to confront Hitler’s Germany, toppled Hussein’s regime, forcing the U.N. to confront the reason for its’ existence.
Russian statements are especially egregious fabrications, because they helped draft and acquiesced to every resolution. The Iraq ceasefire ended, because Hussein materially breached international obligations defined within U.N. Resolution 687, and reaffirmed by Resolution 1441. Resolution 687 incorporated 678 and 12 other resolutions without amendments, offering Hussein conditional ceasefire in 1991. Instead he ignored responsibilities to submit comprehensive declarations of all WMD stockpiles and programs, and missiles with greater than 150 kilometre range. He thwarted the program envisioned by menacing, eluding, and deceiving inspectors. He continued forbidden involvement in international terrorism.
The U.N.’s ultimatums in Resolutions 678 and 1441 authorized disarming Hussein’s regime through military operations “to restore international peace and security in the area”, and did not instruct coalition forces to merely expel Hussein from Kuwait. U.N. precedent from the Korean War ensured the above phrase intended invasion of Iraq. The term “in the area” used phraseology, confirmed by Congress, authorizing military action above the 38th parallel to disarm North Korea.
As Russian forces crossed South Ossetia into Georgia, the moment arrived for inescapable acknowledgement that Putin had revoked the Cold War armistice. Putin’s justifications contain too many parallels to Hitler’s concern for Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia to ascribe less than brutal motives. Extravagant armored attacks through the Greater Caucasus Mountains demonstrate traditional Russian ruling elite neurotic insecurity; neurosis requiring rival power destruction without political compromise. Genetic, multi-millennial paranoia infects the current cabal to regard NATO, former Warsaw Pact countries, and former Soviet republics as encircling enemies. Such perceptions, not shared by the Russian people, repudiate years of Western support for emerging Russian representative government, political security, and economic stability.
There can be no permanent peaceful coexistence with a totalitarian Russia, but traditional warfare is not inevitable. Illogics lead this cabal onto unacceptable paths, but these elites remain highly susceptible to logics of force accompanied by determination to use it. Forceful initiatives require immediately curtailing efforts to integrate the former Soviet Union into the economic, cultural, and political life of the Free World. Next initiatives require increasingly serious discussions of cooperation and membership between NATO, and former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet republics. Finally, United States must update Cold War plans through cooperative military exercises in Europe and the Mediterranean. This country must wage war, where diplomacy uses overt and clandestine activities to exploit, contradictions, stresses, and tensions between Putin’s ruling elite, and the Russian people and countries with which he needs alliances.
Such progressive, consecutive initiatives establish constraining negotiating positions Putin must consider. Such actions must proceed inexorably, subject to adjustment only following verifiable pacific initiatives for representative government, and non-belligerent neighbor relationships. Effective containment will reveal fragility of a totalitarian rule needing solidification within a disaffected, cynical population. The West must not squander this opportunity to make cruel subjection of Georgia become Putin’s undoing.
“Americans are acutely conscious of the great trials your country has faced over the last four weeks, and we stand in solidarity with the people of Georgia,”
was he addressing to Georgian genocide of Ossetians? Or just forgot to include sarcasm tag?