It's war. Part III

[BeBMan]

Hadn't time to read the recent pages, so maybe someone already posted this:

Russia scales down Georgia toll

A man in a refugee camp in Tbilisi, where many of the displaced are South Ossetian (20 August)
Russian prosecutors reported finding many shallow graves in South Ossetia

Russia has issued new, reduced casualty figures for the Georgian conflict, with 133 civilians now listed as dead in the disputed region of South Ossetia.

The figure is far lower than the 1,600 people Russia initially said had died.

Prosecutors say they have opened a case against Georgia for genocide, while Tbilisi has already filed charges of ethnic cleansing against Moscow.

The move comes as the first international aid group arrived in the disputed region since the fighting.

The seven-member team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) includes a doctor, a specialist on civil protection, and a water and sanitation engineer.

See map of the region

The conflict broke out on 7 August when Georgia launched an assault to wrest back control of the Moscow-backed separatist region of South Ossetia, triggering a counter-offensive by Russian troops who advanced beyond South Ossetia into Georgia's heartland.


A basic rule of the Geneva Convention is that whenever there is a shadow of a doubt that a civilian target might be hit, you don't fire
Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch

Seeking truth among the debris
Despair among Georgia's displaced

Georgia says its action was in response to continuous provocation.

Both sides have accused the other of violating an EU-brokered peace plan agreed at the weekend, and correspondents say there has been little sign of any large-scale withdrawal by Moscow.

Severe destruction

Following an investigation in South Ossetia and amongst refugees who fled to Russia, Moscow says it now has a list of the names of 133 civilians who died in South Ossetia.

Teams working in the region gathered information from relatives and local officials; their list includes those whose bodies investigators found themselves and information from reburial ceremonies they attended, Moscow says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7572635.stm

[Arrian]

Pat Buchanan on Georgia, Russia, NATO, etc. Offered w/o comment:

Who Started Cold War II?

By Patrick Buchanan

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.

Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.

Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did -- nothing. These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.

The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.

Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.

And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?

As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.

If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.

What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?

Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation. The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.

The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way. Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.

A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia. Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe? As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/who_started_cold_war_ii.html

[Combat Ingrid]

So now even the Russian officials have been brainwashed by the western media? Good work

[binTravkin]

The conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia actually began in 1989, two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I find it difficult to believe that the Soviets planned to rip apart one of their own republics in advasnce.

It began in 1918. I'm not saying they began the dispute, I'm saying they used the dispute to flame up the civil war of 1991-1992:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_Civil_War

As far as military supplies, I'd point out that the CPC, which was involved in the rebellion in Chechnya and a couple other Russian autonomous oblasts were well supplied. Would you say that Russia supported Chechen independence as well as the atttempted rebellions of Circassians and Cossacks? This was the only region which directly abutted on a NATO member. I'm sure that military depots abounded in the area.

There's a little problem here.
Majority of osettians (no matter north or both) are christian orthodox faith.
I find it extremely hard to believe their separatist tendencies have anything to do with muslim fundamentalists.

Abkhaz are divided between sunnis and orthodoxes, and given that Abkhaz were less than half of the population of the time when the stuff started, it could hardly be related to islam.

Besides, you have to view it in chronological order - First Chechnya war started in 1994, so it's rather hard to imagine how organisations being at the peak of their strength during Checnya wars could spark more massive wars before.

At the time there were at least 3 groups fighting for control of Georgia itself. Georgia was in utter turmoil. There wasn't much independent reporting of much in Georgia at all then.

The more reason to not believe it, besides it's in Russia and the numbers are likely to be provided by Russian officials and we know how good at numbers they are.

You have their CVs? In any case 90% of the South Ossetian population voted for independence. Even if it's assumed that the majority of displaced Georgians would vote against there would still be a majority for independence. You may contest the vote, but do you here anyone from a NATO country calling for an internationally monitotred re-vote?

No, I don't have their CVs, but one can read quite enough online.
E.g. this one is good old communist "secretary general".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Bagapsh

Noone bothers - most are dependent on Russia for fuel and the issue seems so small to their scale.
They also got a much bigger vote to contest - the Putin election itself, where some areas, notably Chechnya reported as 95+% for Putin.
I think here you just need to bring up the good ol materiell about Soviet Union - they used to only have 90%+ "elections" back then.

[binTravkin]

Pat Buchanan is strange. Not accepting Georgia in NATO was greenligthing this Russian provocation.

[Jon Miller]

I agree somewhat with Pat Buchanan???

JM

[Arrian]

He can be strange, but I find his foreign policy opinions rather lucid, actually.

Sorta like this one: http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...0&pagenumber=1

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

We don't have the troops to do any confrontaton with Russia right now...

JM

[binTravkin]

And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Has Pat heard Russia already said No to anything UN and OSCE ?

[binTravkin]

We don't have the troops to do any confrontaton with Russia right now...

JM

NATO != U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#Membership

[Jon Miller]

So we no longer do the heavy lifting in Nato? Wow!

JM

[Patroklos]

A basic rule of the Geneva Convention is that whenever there is a shadow of a doubt that a civilian target might be hit, you don't fire

So completely and absolutely false.

We don't have the troops to do any confrontaton with Russia right now...

False, we just don't have the troops tp fight a war with Russia that will allow the average American to live their life completely unchanged like they are during the current war.

Our Navy and Air Force are practically untapped. The bulk of our Army (especially the heavy stuff) is sitting unused in the States.

Now, I don't think we should fight a war with Russia, but to suggest that we can't fight it and "win" it is ridiculous.

[Jon Miller]

How is some people somewhere else who may or may not even want us to come in, worth an extreme change of life in the US to prosecute a war wih russia?

JM

[Patroklos]

How is some people somewhere else who may or may not even want us to come in, worth an extreme change of life in the US to prosecute a war wih russia?

That would be the point of the last line of my last post

[binTravkin]

So we no longer do the heavy lifting in Nato? Wow!

JM

France, UK and Germany have sizable militaries of their own, completely capable of local missions.
Besides, it is folly to think that Russia would ever engage with any nuclear power.
They are not stupid.