It's war. Part II

[Solver]

Threads merged. I am starting to get concerned for my sanity with what's been going on here.

[Saras]

HEY! WTF WITH TEH THREAD TITLE!

[Propaganda]

Which day do you think Georgians will declare their new Independence Day? The day Russia invaded, or the day it annexes them?

Discuss.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Serb


I had no time to look for exact document. I thought that legality of Russian peace keeping forces's presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is not even a question. Nobody questioned the legality of their presence there since 1992 and 1994 up to today. Though several times Georgia tried to replace them with NATO peacekeepers and arised that issue in UN but everytime the mandate of Russian peacekeepers have been prolonged by UN.
Wiki says this:
The Russian government stated its justification for entering Georgian territory was to protect Russian citizens (since most South Ossetians hold Russian passports [22][23]) and its peacekeepers in South Ossetia, and to enforce the peacekeeping mandate given to it by the UN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_South_Ossetia_(2008)
I'll try to find something, probably tommorow. But now my shift is almost over and I have to go home and have some rest.

Thanks Serb. Once again let me state that I believe in the independence movement in South Ossetia. I do not think that Russian tanks are the way to freedom. I have not been able to find a document that authorizes Russian forces to enter Gerogian territory in mass. I did find something that limited the peacekeepers to 500 Russian troops and that stated that ALL disputes should be mediated by a council composed of all three sides.

Russia has the diplomatic horsepower to handle the situation differently than they are.

[Solver]

And to explain the thread title formally: this is, after all, the continuation of the "It's war" thread. And we usually name such threads the same as the original thread, part X. It's still a clean neutral title...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by PLATO


So you are saying that the recognitions of these type states is illegal? Then that means that you are saying that the Russian actions are illegal?

Surely you are not trying to say that two "wrongs" make a "right"? I never would have thought that Russia based their foriegn policy on the thinking of a 4 year old.

Regardless of what happened in Kosovo, th issue here is Russia invading the soverign territory of another country without any international backing. You must quit trying to deflect Russia's crimes by pointing fingers at others.

Russia needs to withdraw now.

What he's saying is that all your country's talk of human rights and consistency is self serving bull****. It's not a case of two wrongs making a right, but of people pretending that they are playing an ethical game, when they are not.

Russia may well be doing something wrong (it's hard to tell). However, withdrawing would just be serving your government's equally repugnant purposes. If, on the other hand, your government gave Kosovo back to Serbia and withdrew from Iraq, I imagine the Russians would quite happily consider withdrawing from SO.

You are making an elementary ethical mistake here. You assert that because the Russians have done something wrong (lets say for the sake of argument they have), they ought to pull out of SO. This is true except in cases where the pullout is being used to serve the immoral purposes of another, and particularly when the community of actors is morally dysfunctional.

If one actor continues to obey moral rules while the other violates them for its own advantage, then by continuing to obey moral rules (when they advantage the violator) the non-violator puts the moral community itself in jeopardy. Moral communities only function when the majority of actors follow the rules. One way of ensuring this is by punishing violators, the other is by withdrawing oneself from the moral compact and using a tit for tat strategy to goad the initial violator back into the fold. If you're a human being, you've seen this done a thousand times and seen that it most often works.

[Propaganda]

Long live the Latvian Riflemen!

[Serb]

Originally posted by PLATO


So you are saying that the recognitions of these type states is illegal? Then that means that you are saying that the Russian actions are illegal?

Surely you are not trying to say that two "wrongs" make a "right"? I never would have thought that Russia based their foriegn policy on the thinking of a 4 year old.

Regardless of what happened in Kosovo, th issue here is Russia invading the soverign territory of another country without any international backing. You must quit trying to deflect Russia's crimes by pointing fingers at others.

Russia needs to withdraw now.

I'm trying to tell you that YOU guys have opened the Pandora's box with Kosovo. If Kosovo can be independent, if you can bomb the sovereign country (Serbia) and tear a part of its core, historical land and give it to historically alien to this place people, then other unrecognized countries might ask why they can and we cannot?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by PLATO
Good Morning Aggie,

The "minor clashes" you refer to were the South Ossetians shelling the Georgians. Where do you suppose they got the mortars from?

So they aren't allowed weapons now? News to me.

Mortar attacks are not proportional to a mass artillery barrage aimed at an entire city. Only Israel thinks that way, and they are widely regarded as nuts (except in the US where people are similarly nuts ).

I don't believe it anyway. The timing was simply too convenient. The simplest explanation is that the Georgians thought they could make facts on the ground quickly enough to prevent the Russians doing anything. They failed and are now getting pounded (just like Hezbollah pounded the Israelis in 2006).

[onodera]

Damn, there isn't even a thing I can add to this thread. I think we should grease Serb and Saras up and have them wrestle.

[BeBMan]

Nah, we should just call eachother nazis when we disagree

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Agathon


So they aren't allowed weapons now? News to me.

Mortar attacks are not proportional to a mass artillery barrage aimed at an entire city.

Oh..so you want to talk about proportionality. Yeah...right.

I would have responded to your other post as well because I think here are some valid points in it, but it was just to hard to extract them from the incessant anti-American whaling that you constantly bleat these days. Sorry.

[Propaganda]

Originally posted by BeBro
Nah, we should just call eachother nazis when we disagree

Racist!

[Saras]

Originally posted by onodera
Damn, there isn't even a thing I can add to this thread. I think we should grease Serb and Saras up and have them wrestle.

Wrestle? Surely you mean a onesided Serbdirectional *****slapping?

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Propaganda


Racist!

That too, of course