printEasily one of the most mind-boggling spectacles in the Georgia/Russia conflict is that of Bush accusing Russia of “bullying and intimidation”; of Bush admonishing Russia about its unacceptable “way of conducting foreign policy in the 21st Century”; of Bush expressing “grave concern” about Russia’s “disproportionate response”; and of Bush condemning the violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation.
Bush may be describing Russia but he is also describing what he did to Iraq. Another of Bush’s Freudian projections and hypocrisies all rolled into one is to charge Russia with pursuing “a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”
Since the war in Georgia is one neocons and neoliberals can get behind, both factions–and most mindless media–have chosen to ignore this Bush burlesque.
Update I (August 16): More “pot-kettle-black” Bushisms, delivered to Russia:
“The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us.”
What’s Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Some of the reasons given by American policy wonks for the U.S.’s lingering in these blighted spots are the fear of other players getting the upper hand in these regions.
What is that if not “sphere-of-influence” plotting and planning?
Perhaps I just don’t have the necessary partisan gene, or blind sport, required to ignore these pious, specious homilies.
Update II (August 20): Americans fall for these easy storylines politicians and pundits spin, rather than look at how we conduct ourselves in the world and the repercussions this has.
Why is it that the US can increase its spheres of influence with attendant invasions and military presence in countries across the word, yet when another super power acts comparably, our “analysts” apply different yardsticks to its conduct?
In the context of the Georgia/Russia conflict, who among big-time pundits is able to consider America’s national interests? Who is able to offer a perspective that doesn’t, atavistically, galvanize American opinion around imagined enemies, but rather, looks at the crisis from a bilateral perspective?
None other than Pat Buchanan. This from Buchanan’s latest, “Who Started Cold War II?”:
“Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship?”
Read the entire column.
***
(August 15): “Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them,” writes Pat Buchanan in a sharp analysis of the conflict in Georgia, among which are some pesky facts mass media has concealed:
“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.”
Pat Buchanan is exactly right. The hypocrisy of Bush, Rice, and the neocons never fails to disgust me. Let’s hope that the U. S. stays exactly where we belong in this conflict–out of it, entirely.
We don’t have a dog in this fight over who controls Stalin’s tomb. Let the Russians, Georgians, South Ossetians, and the Abkhazians enjoy each other’s Imrpovised Explosive Devices as they divvy up the Caucasus mountains over the next 50 years. Anyway, we will be busy in Afghanistan/Pushtunistan/Pakistan with the same phenomena.
Strobe Talbot, a Clinton minion, wrote a laughable editorial on the evil Russians having no business comparing Georgia to Kosovo.
What I found surprising were the comments. They generally mocked Talbot at about 5 to 1. Buchanan may understand Washington but the American people seem all too familiar with the elitist hypocrisy of those who want us to react to the Russians.
Why doesn’t your country’s army keep itself busy with driving the prophets of the “one world government” out of your borders? Now THERE is a war I will gladly be involved in.
And the noose begins to tighten on the inconsistent. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what happens to Ossetia if the World Court rules for Kosovo independence?
Serbia wants international court opinion on Kosovo”
“The Serbian minister portrayed the idea as the way out of the Kosovo impasse. “I think this is the way forward that has to be supported by opponents and supporters of Kosovo’s independence alike,” he added. “I think we should all come together in supporting international law.”
I wonder what will happen to Georgians in these enclaves? After all, the US actively participated in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs in Croatia (Krajina?). How about the Serbs being forced into Bosnia, also by the US? Since the US supports Kosovo going to the Albanians on the basis of self determination why not the Serb Repska of Bosnia? They make up 37 percent of the population and we should at least put it to a vote in the name of democracy, shouldn’t we? The answer to all these tiny little states was best answered by Spengler at Asia Times.
”
Forget the Kosovo Albanians, the South Ossetians, the Abkhazians, Saakashvili and the Dalai Lama. These are relics of an older world that might deserve their own theme park, but not their own state.
I couldn’t agree more. Bosnia and Kosovo are welfare states, plain and simple (although, the Bosnian Serb Reska is becoming economically viable ijn spite of the rigged game played by the US). Kosovo, whose name shall long be associated with the misery to come, is nothing but a thug state not worthy of the title “organized crime”. The Albanians traffic in women and heroin and not much else, which is all made possible by EU-UN-UN welfare. They would be begging for the Serbs back in a month if left to their own devices. Not only has the US chosen to distort order of the nation state, we have taken up the cause of world socialism to a degree that would shock both Marx and Lenin.
The comments by Bush about Russia invading Georgia seem to be hypocrisy; however, when considered in more detail, it is not so simple to generalize, when considering the geostrategic implications of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Like Nazi Germany in 1939, what is next? Ukraine and Poland? What then? Germany’s tyranny is replaced by Russian tyranny. I think it would be better to fight Russia now, in a small war in Georgia, and not wait for a much larger war later in all of Eastern Europe. Keep faith with our allies.
Oh, dear God, Tom, you don’t really mean that? I mean “fighting Russia”? What in the bloody He** for? What right have we to agress against Russia, who has not aggressed against the U. S. at all?
I absolutely dispute the notion that so-called “Russian tyranny” in 2008 is similar to Hitler’s tyranny in the 1930s. Please remember that Hitler took out people who thought they belonged in Germany (as Americans of Jewish origin feel that we belong in the U. S.)and shoved them into concentration camps. Russia is doing nothing of the kind.
Again, the U. S. has no national interest in this Russian-Georgian conflict, and should stay the he** out.
From what I’ve read about the history of Georgia, Russia, Ossetia, Bosnia, etc is this: CONTROL YOUR BORDERS! DEFEND YOUR CULTURE AND LANGUAGE! IF YOU DON’T, OTHERS WILL DO IT FOR YOU!
Through migrations and invasions these areas have changed hands on numerous occasions, leading to multiple groups claiming rights to the areas.
VD has a great column relating to this subject over at WND.
“Geopolitical sematary”
It seems to me the US won the ideological debate with Russia and China with regard to economic freedom and even political freedom to an extent. But now it seems the US is bound and determined to provoke and humiliate its former enemies. It is shameful behavior and could have serious consequences, to put it mildly.
This is like a slow-motion nightmare. Someone at the Heritage Foundation from the US Army War College seems to be trying to stir up war hysteria against Russia.
Is the global warming scare not enough to distract us from the economy and who might be responsible for the problems it is having?
I hope the American people don’t buy it this time. It will serve those dangerous clowns right if they are ignored.