... doesn't mean that the tiger is going to stop mauling you.
"We need to stop hostility. We don't need further military action. We need to stop it. We need to bring back peace. And a cease-fire is about both sides," [Georgian President Mikhail] Saakashvili said on CNN.
The Georgians were spoiling for this fight. They gambled that they could gain a quick victory over South Ossetia before the Russians could react. They lost that wager and now the Russians, knowing full well that the U.S. is not going to get involved in this conflict, will do as they wish. The Europeans can't do squat, lest "technical difficulties" shut down the flow of natural gas from Russia to central and western Europe.
The Georgians picked this fight, now they are losing badly and they are blaming us for not coming to their rescue:
Georgia's retreat is translating into popular anger among Georgians against the United States and the European Union, and a widespread sentiment that this small, pro-Western country has been abandoned to face Russia alone. Georgian officials said that the West's credibility is on the line and that failure to stop the continuing attacks could embolden Russia to threaten other countries in the region.
How about this response: Go fuck yourselves. You guys walked up to a far larger power, kicked it hard and bet you could get away with it. You bet wrong. So this is why Georgia was contributing troops to the Iraq Adventure; so that they could get lots of free training and access to modern equipment. Georgia was never about support for Operation Clusterfuck, it was about getting its military in shape to take on Russia.
Bad idea, that. Russian military doctrine has never been about "proportionate response," it has always been about wielding the largest hammer possible. The Georgians should have known that. If they really thought that the Russians would engage in "limited response" for the first time, they were fools.
Beyond that, it seems to me that the only folks drawing the parallel between NATO's support for the dismemberment of Serbia and Russia's support for the breakaway enclaves in Georgia are those in the blogosphere.
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I don't know squat about this conflict, so I'll just rely on your take on it and that'll be my new stance.
Thank you, counselor.
Seems like a bunch of folks lately have chosen to forget about that early in life's warning to keep their hands off a hot stove.
South Ossetia is an internal matter to Georgia. Russia has no right to get involved with this.
Try this analogy:
1) Texas tells Washington "Hey, we want to be our own country. We're seceding. Yee-haw. Lone Star 4 Life."
2) Washington tells them "Um, no you aren't," and proceeds to try and get them back via diplomatic/non-violent means.
3) Texas requests acknowledgment of its independence from the United Nations and is denied.
4) Tensions rise between USA and Texas. Skirmishes spark up here and there. This goes on for years.
5) Mexico, being on the border of both countries, decides to send in some peacekeepers to Texas and try and calm things down.
6) The USA finally gives up on diplomacy and launches an invasion of Texas. In the process, Houston and Dallas are bombed and some of those Mexican peacekeepers get killed, along with some Mexican civilians now lived in Texas.
7) Mexico says "WTF? You killed our people!" and invades Texas. Now there is fighting between the Texans, the Mexicans, and the US soldiers. Texas is being blown to pieces.
8) The world tells the Mexican to drop it and back out. The United States sues for a cease fire.
9) Not only does Mexico not stop, they invade California.
10) They've now got a heavily armed forces in both Texas and Cali, while most of the USA's forces are concentrated in Texas. The Mexicans have absolutely nothing preventing them from closing that pincer and taking the entirety of the Southwestern USA for themselves.
There - South Ossetian War Analogy for Dummies. :)
And to the Russians, the Ossetians are part of the Russian people, no?
Bottom line: The Georgians went and kicked the Russians in the nuts. The Russians are far better armed.
The Georgians are crazy. They sought to take on Russia and Russia has obliged them.
The United States had no right to send Marines into Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Guatemala, Hondurus, Panama, Grenada... but did so multiple times over the course of 150 years. The United States changed the government of Mexico at least twice, broke off the province of Panama off of Columbia and made it an independent nation so that the U.S. could build their canal, and so on and so forth.
Point being, major powers do whatever the fuck they want to do in their own back yard, and if you're one of the neighbors of a major power, the *last* thing you want to do is piss them off -- whether you're "right" or not. It's like you're about to drive through a green light and you see a car roaring at 90mph from the intersection to the right and you know he's not going to stop for that red light on his side. Sure, you're "right" legally if you just roll right on through the green light. But you're still dead in the end.
Meanwhile, Georgia was smokin' dope if they thought the U.S. was going to respond with anything more than what they've already responded with. I'm sure Pooty-poot just busted out laughing when he got the U.S. response... a sternly worded letter from the U.S. saying, basically, "Don't do that!". Why, a few more such letters, and... and... he can light a fire in one of the Kremlin fireplaces with them and roast marshmallows! Yeah!
- Badtux the Realist Penguin
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