Will Georgia turn into a Moscow satellite?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by DanS


At a minimum, Georgia's actions were criminally stupid. To be honest, I don't feel too hot that Georgia put itself in such existential jeopardy knowing that the US is required to act in the worst case scenario (World War I was the most useless war ever, and now we have nukes). Georgia was woefully off-side, as best I can tell at this point.

After the dust settles, and we bail their asses out as best we can, Georgia needs a refresher course on what is acceptable and what isn't.

Absolutely. This after all was the problem in WWI ... Austria et al misbehaving to the point that it forced Germany into an untenable position. We cannot allow this to happen to us here...

[Robert]

Ok, I'm going to tell why I think he is not fit for the job:
- The war on terror is a fiasco.

Why? I think that the terrorists have been hit pretty hard.

- The war on Afghannistan is subfunded

So?


- The problems with tribal Pakistan are being mishandled.

Not because of GWB. Pakistan was a problem, is a problem and will most probably be a problem for the coming years. With or without GWB.

- The oil supply to the western world is in jeopardy

Not GWB's fault.

- Lost control of Georgia pipelines

Did not.

- Turkey is turning islamit

Not because of GWB.

- Chavez is still ruling

Saddam and Mular Omar aren't anymore, but for some reason you list that as a negative......

- No new Cuba politic offer, to help the change to democracy

Cuba is changing, but I guess you'd rather have seen it happening 'iraq' style....

- Moscow is courting Cuba again,

As if they ever stopped doing that....


- Irak is a bloody mess

Iraq has been a bloody mess for decades. It's actually getting better and better. In 5-10 years I see a quite healthy nation coming for ME standards.

- USA economy is turning the american dream into the american nightmare

As if GWB is to blame for the credit crisis....

- Oil price skyrocket

GWB should've nuked China and India to prevent them from using more oil?
Again: not GWB's fault.


- Life is harder to everyone in the western world

Get real dude. Life in 2008 is once again better then in 2007 and especially much better then in 2000.
Of course, we're right now in a down going economy, but that's just part of the game.


- The dollar value shrinking

That's partly because of GWB. It's more because of the american way of life.


- No contention politic to China

So?

- Iran is getting the bomb

You want GWB to stop them getting it by going to war, or do you see better solutions?
Is Iran getting the bomb GWB's fault? Why not France, Russia or China's fault?

- Katrina handling

Was that not a local issue?


Your way of reasoning clearly is like: I don't like GWB, let's blame him for everything I can think of.

Maybe this is a very old post, just read it and had to respond to it.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Serb


Found within a minute in google:

A recent public opinion poll on the issue, conducted by the Kyiv-based Sofia think-tank from May 7 to 14, showed that only 21.4 percent of Ukrainians are inclined to support NATO membership, and 53 percent of those polled approved of the April failure to secure a MAP. The poll identified the main reasons for the negative attitude to NATO membership. Most Ukrainians fear that this would spoil relations with Russia (74 percent of those polled), force them to take part in US-led wars (67 percent), exacerbate tension in society (60 percent), prompt more spending on defense (58 percent), and make Ukraine a target for terrorists (58 percent).

http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article...cle_id=2373134

All Russian LIES!

[Kirnwaffen]

Ya know, I'd be curious to see how they would poll now.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
Ya know, I'd be curious to see how they would poll now.

I think the opinions on both sides will have hardened.

Anyways, enough of the regular but worthless military speculation (every single little crisis turn into WW3 in Poly).

The big real question is this, how likely is it that Abkhazia and S. Ossetia move to make their de-facto autonomy from Georgia De Jure in the near future, now that the Russians have, in the words of an Israeli commentator, Kinetically disarmed Georgia?

And what will the West do? (Cause I can only assume that Russia will back such a move and Georgia oppose).

And if this happens, can Saak, who came to power on the promise of putting the motherland back together, survive the internal political recriminations?

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
Ya know, I'd be curious to see how they would poll now.

Ditto Every ex-Soviet from Tallin to Baku must be ****ing his pants this week.

[Kirnwaffen]

Well, with the Georgian military out of the picture, I imagine that South Ossetia and Abkhazia will move quickly. With Russian backing, the West really won't have much say in the matter. I do see the West moving to add Ukraine to NATO, which will, understandably, irk the Russians even further. Perhaps, under a new administration, we could drop the boondogle of a missile shield we're planning for Eastern Europe as a sort of halfway point.

As for Saak, I don't see him surviving this. I doubt he'll retain the support of his military and his police, which he seems to have used in the past to suppress his opposition. He'll be taking a hike shortly.

[DanS]

Are you kidding? We're all in. We will have sailors and airmen in Georgia starting tomorrow doing "humanitarian work."

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Traianvs




And even if Bush and his cronies had strong suspicion he had them, it's not a reason to go to war based on assumptions.

That's not entirely correct. It was a Cease Fore, don't forget.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DanS
Are you kidding? We're all in. We will have sailors and airmen in Georgia starting tomorrow doing "humanitarian work."

The airmen will be coming and going, and sailors won't be there for days. After Saak claimed that Bush's pronouncement meant that the US would be securing Georgia's airport and port, the Pentagon announced that it meant no such thing. Besides, the Russians already announced victory, so by the time US sailors get there, Russia won't have an excuse to keep that kind of aide out.

[Jon Miller]

Does McCain have links to Georgia?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080808/wl_mcclatchy/3013456_1

JM

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Absolutely. This after all was the problem in WWI ... Austria et al misbehaving to the point that it forced Germany into an untenable position. We cannot allow this to happen to us here...

Except there's a fair bit of evidence that Germany egged them on.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by DanS


At a minimum, Georgia's actions were criminally stupid. To be honest, I don't feel too hot that Georgia put itself in such existential jeopardy knowing that the US is required to act in the worst case scenario (World War I was the most useless war ever, and now we have nukes). Georgia was woefully off-side, as best I can tell at this point.

After the dust settles, and we bail their asses out as best we can, Georgia needs a refresher course on what is acceptable and what isn't.

A chess game - pawn sacrifice. Black (Bush) sacrifices pawn (Saakashvili). White (Putin) takes pawn. Advantage black knight (McCain).

[MORON]

From another forum

Anyway, here's article about Ossetia by Yulia Latynina, russian independent (read: quite likely to be murdered or arrested sooner or later ) journalist.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has handed his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, a victory over the "siloviki" in Russia. And if Medvedev is able to take advantage of the fruits of this victory, the consequences will be significant not so much for Tbilisi as for Moscow.

So, why is this a victory over the siloviki -- those in the Russian ruling elite with close ties to the state security organs? Because there is no way the regime in South Ossetia can be in any sense called "separatist." Who there is a separatist? The head of the local KGB, Anatoly Baranov, used to head the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Russian Republic of Mordovia. The head of the South Ossetian Interior Ministry, Mikhail Mindzayev, served in the Interior Ministry of Russia's North Ossetia. The South Ossetian "defense minister," Vasily Lunev, used to be military commissar in Perm Oblast, and the secretary of South Ossetia's Security Council, Anatoly Barankevich, is a former deputy military commissar of Stavropol Krai. So who exactly is a separatist in this government? South Ossetian "prime minister" Yury Morozov?

However, alas, I also cannot say this regime is "pro-Russian." On the contrary, all the recent actions of Eduard Kokoity, the leader of the breakaway South Ossetian government, have run counter to the interests of Russia in the Caucasus -- beginning with his embarrassing Russia in the eyes of the international community and ending with his ratcheting up the tensions in the very region where Russia might begin to come undone. South Ossetia is not a territory, not a country, not a regime. It is a joint venture of siloviki generals and Ossetian bandits for making money in a conflict with Georgia. For me, the most surprising thing in this entire story is the complete lack of any strategic goals on the part of the South Ossetians.

As soon as Russia tamped down the war in Abkhazia, tensions in South Ossetia started rising. South Ossetian forces start shelling Georgian villages, and as soon as Georgia returns fire, the airwaves are filled with accusations of "Georgian aggression." No one pays attention to the fact that when this happens, Kokoity is not on the front lines or visiting the injured in a hospital -- he's 1,000 kilometers away in Abkhazia, apparently offering the Russian siloviki his people as hostages, as another card to be played to inflame the situation and make a few more dollars.

Again -- nothing that is going on in South Ossetia makes any sense from the point of view of strategy. It only makes sense as a means of making money. And we aren't talking about small sums. Running a gas pipeline through the mountains from Russia -- a precaution in case Georgia decides to cut off the 70,000 residents -- cost $570 million. And then there is the secret budget Russia has allotted for the struggle -- estimated at somewhere around $800 million. And don't forget the pensions and wages for state-sector workers, who officially number some 80,000 but whose actual numbers are not more than 30,000.

'Terrorist State'

Whenever someone starts telling us about shelling in Tskhinvali, it is important to keep in mind exactly what Tskhinvali is. It is not a city somewhere in the middle of a republic that is being fired upon by saboteurs. On three sides, Tskhinvali is surrounded by Georgian villages. The edge of Tskhinvali is a military outpost. South Ossetian forces fire from there into the Georgian villages, and the Georgians respond with fire of their own. To help keep Georgian fire from hitting civilians in the city, all the South Ossetians would have to do is move their military base forward a couple hundred meters.

But, of course, it is a fundamental principle of terrorists the world over -- set up firing points in civilian areas and then when your enemy fires on you, you gleefully parade the bodies of your own children in front of the television cameras. Kokoity's terrorists are following this same principle. If South Ossetia can in any way be considered a state, it must be considered a terrorist state.

When we are told about "peaceful civilians" in South Ossetia, we must keep in mind that the situation there is similar to that in Palestinian refugee camps. South Ossetia, like the Palestinian Liberation Organization before it, is not a state or an ethos or a territory. It is a peculiar form of mutated government in which residents have been turned into militarized refugees. It is a quasi-armed force that is not allowed by the authorities to occupy itself with anything other than war -- a situation that gives the authorities absolute power and absolute control over the money at its disposal. It is a place where the hysteria of this disfigured population is the primary means of filling the authorities' personal coffers.

Even more surprising is the fact that the leaders of this region -- despite all their talk -- apparently have done very little to prepare for war and have turned out to be absolutely helpless. At the first sign of trouble, the general director of this joint venture hightailed it out of Tskhinvali. I was amazed to get news overnight that Russian journalists were hunkered down in the main government building and there wasn't even a bomb shelter there. What does that mean? That all the money Moscow allocated for our joint venture never made it outside the Moscow ring road? They were all shouting "Wolf, wolf!" but they didn't even manage to build a barn for the sheep?

Georgia, I think, will win in this conflict for the simple reason that it has a clear strategic goal. The Russian siloviki do not. Moreover, it turns out that these people -- who are pretty good at bankrupting factories and terrorizing companies -- ran without looking back when faced with a real army and all they are capable of doing is complaining to the United Nations.

War Of Lies

It would seem that the siloviki really thought that there is nothing more to war than lying. Lying about "unprovoked shelling" and about wounded "civilians" who are shown on television wearing camouflage. They are still using this tactic: What are we to make of their claims during the night that Georgian airplanes had bombed a column of humanitarian aid coming out of the Roki Tunnel between North and South Ossetia? I'd like to know who was the Russian general who -- on the very night when Saakashvili had been issued a moratorium and tanks and heavy equipment were moving from Russia to Tskhinvali -- decided to clog up the only road with a humanitarian convoy. If there is such an idiot, he should, at the least, be demoted to the ranks. The siloviki supposed that the war would be won by the side that lied the most. Saakashvili knew that the war would be won by the one who won the war.

The latest events prove that Russia does not control what Kokoity does. Temur Iakobashvili, the Georgian minister for reintegration, arrived recently in Tskhinvali for talks and the Russian Foreign Ministry did everything it could to facilitate them. But Kokoity simply left the city. Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire and in response, to show that the joint venture needs more money, South Ossetians opened fire on the villages of Tamarasheni and Prisi. We can only hope that Georgia sees that at least some in the Kremlin do not intend to support Kokoity. You can support an ally. You can prop up a puppet. But you cannot support a joint venture that is just pumping money out of the Russian budget by means of inflaming the Caucasus.

So, I repeat -- Saakashvili has bankrupted the joint venture of the Lubyanka chekisty and the Ossetian bandits. Russia, as a country, has no interest in this enterprise. And the joint venture only had one interest in Russia -- the same interest that a cancerous tumor has on its host body. We can only thank Saakashvili for the chemotherapy.

The main question in the current situation is what will Russia do now. There are two choices. One would be to get entangled in a full-scale war, which is what the siloviki have been trying to force Moscow to do for the last few months. It doesn't matter to them who wins that war or how many victims there are. The mere fact of a war will mean that the siloviki will maintain their control over Russia. In fact, a defeat for Russia would be even better for the siloviki than a victory; there would be shouts, recriminations, hysterics, and -- in the end -- more money.



The second scenario is that this is a chance for Medvedev and for Russia. If Russia stays out of the fighting, that would be a defeat for the siloviki. And, maybe, the complete bankruptcy not just of their branch office in South Ossetia, but of the home office on Lubyanka as well.

[Lancer]

Blah. We need to get our tails out of Iraq and into Poland and Ukraine. There we rebuild 7th Army and THAT the Russians will understand. Trying to talk to them using other methods of communication is hardly useful as I think you guys are getting a feel for after nearly 1000 posts in three threads. You have gotten nowhere. Tanks, planes, bombs, these the Russians understand and respect. All else is weakness. That's why the Russian says they will pull back and the next day run a convoy straight towards the heart of Georgia, because we haven't gotten their attention with words.