Very bias article.  Making a margin between Russia and Nazi Germany was a cheap try to revoke 60 year old hatred.  After all, USA started 6 or 7 wars, more than Russia in last 60 years.  And we are still considered "liberators". 

I was hoping to get the neutral view from Europeans, but seams that Bush maddness has gone into your brains, more than here in states.

To answer a question for our bias writer: "Where is USA now?"
Well….
South Osetia, is a a very similar case of Kosovo, if USA backed independence of Kosovo, it can’t support Georgian request to help them wipe out South Osetia, since USA should continue their "libration" agenda, and help the seperators (south osetia), just as they did in Kosovo case…

How ironic, Russia, that warned all world about "dangerous precedane" that was made in Serbia with separation of Kosovo, now is the one that is taking the best out of it’s "prophecy".  
We were very stupid, when we took such a big roll as a "liberators" of Kosovo.  Russia was saying loud and clear:"give islamic kosovo indepedence" and you will be faced with pandora box of some 50+ regions in world, that want their own indepedence. 

We didn’t listen….we never do….

It seems the writers of this blog are more hawkish than the "hawkish conservatives" they bitterly complained about in the lead up to the Iraq war.  Ossetians are a distinct ethnic group who chose in 1990 to separate from Georgia.  They chose to align with Russia, the same as how Georgia is trying to ally itself to America.  Russia has historical ties with Ossetia, in fact Joseph Stalin was originally from this area.  The Ossetians are in fact Russian citizens.  With the disastrous precedent the US has set by forcefully dislodging Kosovo from Serbia, it now finds itself in the unenviable position of complaining about policies that it, itself set the precedent for earlier this year with Kosovo.  The difference here is that Georgia decided to gamble on a unilateral blitzkrieg to try either destroy or pacify the S. Ossetia region.  Thanks to this blitzkrieg 98% of the Oseetian capital has been destroyed.  Imagine, if Mexico, of a sudden decided to ally itself with Russia.  Would that make America happy?  Would it anger America even more if Mexico decided to base missiles aimed at its soil?  The bear (or any animal for that matter) can be cornered only so much before it fights back for its survival.  It seems the writer of this blog fail to grasp this idea.

I don’t disagree with some of the criticism of the American recognition of Kosovo, as it was a short-sighted decision, to say the least, and, of course, there are energy interests at stake in the Caucasus, but do not forget that the United States has an obligation to provide greater assistance to an emerging democracy that committed 2,000 combat soldiers in Iraq. (It is only because of the Russian invasion that those troops are being called home.) Russia has been fermenting unrest throughout the region for years now; this is just a tragic consequence of Western weakness.

Georgia attacked territory inhabited by ossetins. Ossetins don’t want to live in georgian state. They declared it point blankly in the early 1990s. After 1992 conflict Russian troops were located there to keep peace and prevent fighting. It was done by UN decision. Russians kept peace there for 16 years.

Now Georgians supplied and encouraged by US suddenly attacked South Ossetia. Georgians announced that there would be no fire from their side just several hours before attack! and then at night started to shell sleeping Ossetian city on the first day of Olympic games!

They wiped out city almost completely, killed 2000 ossetins (mainly civilians in their houses) and forced 34000 to flee to Russia. Mind that the whole population of South Ossetia is just about 70000.

Who is aggressor?

Funny too how Russia has long had one policy for the people of Dagestan and Chechnya, who never wanted to be under Moscow’s control, but conveniently forgets all about those anti-separatist views when making bold statements about Ossetia and Abkhazia….

The notion that the USA has been involved in Viet Nam or Iraq to prop up the oil companies shows a very shallow interpretation of US foreign policy.  Despite all the comments asserting the validity of this view from Move.On and other fellow travelers, its probably much more accurate to view US intervention for the last century as largely supporting a policy of expanding the Western democratic concept around the world. 

Yes, there has often been an economic element, or at least that of protecting American nationals, for instance, Wilson’s sending the punative expedition into Mexico following the killings of US nationals in Mexico and the cross-border raid into US territory.  But people who think this was to protect US mining companies haven’t red much of Wilson’s writing.  He was planning to bring US style democracy to the Mexicans.  A few years later, he argued that the League of Nations would prevent Europe from future devastating wars.  While Wilson was wrong – on both counts – I suspect that the idea of spreading democracy has much more to do with G. W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq than profit margins of oil companies.  Read Bush and Wilson carefully – both seem to be guided by the same optimism about Western democratic government, and the belief that if it spreads around the globe, wars will be reduced.  Viet Nam seems to be more of the same. 

While I think US intervention in Mexico and Viet Nam were both mistakes, and probably un-winnable, the alternatives don’t seem to have been much better.  Certainly the romantic notion that the communists were bringing a democratic government coupled to  a fairer economic system have been thoroughly debunked by _The Black Book of Communism_.  The evidence is there for anyone with ordinary intelligence:  communism has not worked, and the efforts to make it work caused greater bloodshed and ecological degradation than the capitalists. 

So to the present.  A US intervention in Georgia would be very foolish.  The people asking why we don’t do anything will likely be the ones demanding a quick US withdrawal once the war expands.  The US, by itself, cannot win a conflict with Russia.  China is not likely to accept a US intervention nearby, and even though Sino-Russian relations may not be much better than Sino-Soviet relations were in 1990, I doubt that China will acquiesce to a war with Russia.  So where are all the rest of the Europeans?  Trying to figure out how to do business with Putin’s Russia, just as they did with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  Trying to balance economic and political realities of maintaining a high standard of living for their citizens against the unpleasant nature of dealing with an unsavory oligarch who controls access to petroleum and needed resources.  Much like the USA. 

Under Putin, Russia has rapidly returned to the old authoritarian  imperial model of governance that worked poorly under the last czar, and better under Lenin and Stalin, but, for all that, is still a repressive government of the many by the few.  As Woodrow Wilson discovered, he could not ‘teach the Mexicans to elect good men,’ and we cannot teach anyone else do do it either.  If Western democracy is to expand, it will do so because people want it for themselves, and we – the Western democracies – can try to assist.  But for a small nation to stand up to one as large as Russia will require a degree of unity which I do not think is possible in the world at the present.  Too many peace movements in the countries of Europe and in the USA itself would demand an end to a war for Georgian independence once the bodies started coming home.  Until the collective will is there to pay that price, in blood as well as euros and dollars, there is little point in getting involved. 

Perhaps this seems craven, much like the arguments in many US cities in the late summer of 1914 that Europe’s insanity was not an American problem, or the notion expressed in many US cities in 1936 – 1939 that European borders were not our problem, or the arguments on college campuses in 1967 – 1968 that the Vietnamese should solve their problems without our interference, or the complaints from much of the US left that the war in Iraq was to make Iraqi oil available to US companies.  The will to pay the price simply isn’t there.  Heartbreaking as that is for the Georgians, like the Czechs and others, the general will to defend small nations against the aggression of larger neighbors is generally not really supported until the threat is aimed directly at the larger Western democracies, and they perceive that the threat is real.  Europe and the US have not yet reached that conclusion about Georgia. 

Russian nationalists’ fascination with Kosovo and Serbia seem to explain a lot. It seems like the pan-Russian and pan-Slavic ideas have not died down.

Russians continue to see Serbs, who recently committed genocide, as brothers. For some reason they compare Kosovo’s situation to the brutal massacre of Georgia created solely by Russia’s imperialism.

Let’s not forget the oil in Georgia must really entice Russia’s interest. Let’s not forget that Russia was amassing soldiers on Georgian border months before these alleged South Ossetian attacks. Let’s not forget the brutal put down of Chechens by the Russians, or the Bulgarians, or the Ukraine, or Afghanistan–Russia’s track record for brutal world destruction is not good– it makes America look like an angel.

Will Russia bomb the US or invade or anything? Please.. Someone reply..