Blowback From Bear-Baiting
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 whom 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 antimissile 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
--
Sean Gabb
Director, The Libertarian Alliance
sean@libertarian. co.uk
Tel:
http://www.libertar ian.co.uk
http://www.seangabb .co.uk
http://www.hampdenp ress.co.uk
http://libertariana lliance.wordpres s.com
FREE download of my book - "Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives
Lost England, and How to Get It Back" - http://tinyurl. com/34e2o3
Wikipedia Entry: http://tinyurl. com/23jvoz
Monday, 18 August 2008
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