As one commenter wrote on Dad29’s unabashed review of Mark’s Belling’s “pontificating,”
Dude… I had to check the URL. I thought I was reading Whallah for a second.
So did I… So did I.
But Dad29, a blogger I don’t believe I ever agreed with before, has something going for his defense. When you look at the overall Russia/Georgia war, I think many Republicans are going to have a hard time chastising Russia over their military maneuvering. The only difference between Iraq and Georgia is that Georgia is labeled as a Democratic country, whereas Iraq was headed by an evil dictator, Saddam Hussein. But Vladimir Putin is pointing out rather strong points to President Bush, as reported by Fox News (emphasis mine):
Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim, instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.
“Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several
Shiite villages,” Putin said in Moscow. “And the incumbent Georgian
leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people
and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds —
these leaders must be taken under protection.”A Russian official said at least eight U.S. transport planes delivered between 800-1,000 Georgian servicemen from Iraq.
The better analogy is the Serb brouhaha, in which Clinton’s policy was to defend ‘breakaway’ single-ethnic dominated provinces. South Ossetia is much like Kosovo in that regard.
Both Putin and Shaak’li are propagandizing, of course, so most of what both say should be taken with a large bag of salt.
The important question is ‘whether there are compelling US interests’ in Georgia. The answer is no. Shaak’li was playing with fire, figuring that the BushBoyzz/NeoCons would pull his chestnuts out.
Not very smart at all.
On the other hand, Putin pushed Shaak’li, too.
The point? There are no, zero, zip, unalloyed “good guys” here, and half-brained diplomats would have been yelling “cool it” a long time ago.
Maybe they were–but I didn’t see any reports of that, did you?
dad, I actually have to agree with you here as well. It seems to me like Georgia wanted to play a dangerous game of chicken with the Russians, and they ended up on the losing end of that game. One thing that strikes me is the fact that Russian military forces were serving as “peacekeepers” in South Ossetia, which would seem to me to be a gross conflict of interest, given Russia’s own interests in South Ossetia. Now I’m no expert, but I’d think it would make more sense to put peacekeepers in South Ossetia who are a disinterested third party, as opposed to being one of the parties to the conflict.
Well, yah!
Another blatant failure of the UN, or NATO…