Posted on 09/05/2008 1:09:30 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
I was in Tbilisi recently to report on the Russian anschluss into Georgia. You must not expect me to be impartial on the matter. I have visited Georgia four times in as many years and witnessed the country's self-transformation after its Rose Revolution. It went from two centuries of asphyxiating "protection" by Russia, followed by a post-Soviet decade of mafiotic corruption, to a kind of light unto nations under its young president, Mikheil Saakashvili.
No doubt all that was provocation enough for Moscow. Even before the war began in early August, the Russians had prevailed on Georgia's Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatist minorities to accept Russian passports and thereby to opt "voluntarily" for that same Kremlin protection that Georgia had just shucked off. The Abkhaz and the South Ossetians have a long oblivion ahead of them in the Great Bear's digestive juices as they disappear out of history along with the Kipchaks, Kalmuks, Ugrians, Gilyaks and the like.
Unlike the others, though, Saakashvili chose to fight and, in the eyes of all too many Western journalists, thereby committed his inexpiable sin. A score of colleagues e-mailed to tell me that he provoked the Russians inexcusably, or let them provoke him into provoking them, or stupidly miscalculated the West's resolve, or that the West had already provoked Moscow by recognizing Kosovo. This, as Saakashvili promptly told me, is the language of appeasement, of Chamberlain.
As the world's press has generously noted, Moscow conducted its military-strategic maneuvers with great competence. So why on earth don't they acknowledge that the whole thing was planned meticulously ahead of time, including a highly effective disinformation campaign to suggest that Georgia provoked the action gratuitously? Strangely, no one seems willing to acknowledge the Kremlin's successful propaganda offensive, as carefully prepared and executed as the rest. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Interesting article and 1 comment at the source. Thanks for posting.
When the South Ossetian rebels escalated their artillery barges on Georgian towns, could President Saakashvili have contained it instead of sending an invasion force? It is sad because the economic damaged that the Russian boycott did was reversed by opening new market access to Europe and US. That was Saakashvili’s doing and should be commended for it. One has to wonder why he would gamble this recent economic success with invading South Ossetia? Was the escalating artillery barges that bad? Or was he duped? The good thing is that Georgia is still standing so their economy should keep flowing.
> Destroying Democracy
Never mind. I thought this was a piece on Democrats.
Saakashvili miscalculated. He assumed that a show of force in destroying the illegal Ossetian artillary positions and cutting off the Ossetia “capitol” would force Putin to back down. This was terminally foolish.
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