[BRIGADE] PJB: Blowback from Bear Baiting
Published: Fri, 08/15/08
By Patrick J. Buchanan
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.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney
and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the
Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning
coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started
this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get
to decide how and when they end.
Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days
in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were
killed and two captured? Was that not many times more
"disproportionate"?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not
the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to
surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater
historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both
of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When
Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke
from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two
provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and
who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when
they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally
detest Russia?
That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and
stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is
undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the
West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated
her like Weimar Germany.
When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in
Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into
15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United
States, what did we do?
American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot
the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we
moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's
doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the
Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia
into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with
Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the
Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's
Black Sea fleet.
When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with
Russia?
The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile
treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site
anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend
against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic
bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an
anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.
We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through
Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over
regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine
and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.
Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as
others see us is not high among them.
Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had
opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20
missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us
to go home and become subservient to Moscow.
How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into
the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put
missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China
to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to
Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were
Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the
way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react?
Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?
For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting
into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of
democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.
SOURCE:
http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/08/pjb-blowback-from-bear-baiting/