Janko on the Russia-Georgia crisis

[Little Arminius]

Uncle J made some very cogent observations on this situation. His posts are far more effective (and actually make sense) when he's not trying to impress everyone with his wit. Jimmy and Jack, on the other hand, come across as naive on this complex issue with deep historical roots. Uncle J, like Levicoff, can occasionally suprise you with a suprisingly insightful post.* Wow!

DD thread on Russia-Georgia crisis

*They usually revert to form a post or two later.

[ham]

1 Russia, not anyone else, caused the USSR to implode: bad mistake. Eltsin's decrees during the golpe basically doomed the USSR's fragile existence.
2 Golpe committee included USSR vice-president (authority with its own powers under the then USSR constitution ) and state ministers.
3 Gorbaciov HAD to recognize Eltsin's decrees after he got rescued from the ambush, but later he'd vacate the seat of 'President of the USSR' because it made no sense to be one. So called CIS never materialized.
4 Regional hoodlums (Shevarnadze being one, who promptly vacated his post as USSR foreign minister to become Georgia's first President ) instantly found more appealing to become maistre chez soi than a figurehead in the great scheme of the USSR thing.
5 Russia thought getting rid of its vast and expensive suburbias was the right thing to do, to retain political control via indirect means at virtually no cost.
6 By allowing its former provinces to sit on the international shelf, Russia ignored it could never compete in the long run with other countries to bid the highest to secure tutelage of said countries. USSR corpse was still warm and USSR's Asian debris were selling themselves to America. It's not a secret the Baltic states received money or grants from western countries with independence as a prerequisite.
7 It was all over newspapers how former Ukraine President Kuchma, at the orders of Moscow, had come to grips with powerful Jewish billionaires and their friends, threatening to strip Israeli citizens of the Ukrainian passport.
Oh-so-mysteriously short thereafter the 'orange revolution' booms with a ready made paraphernalia of gadgets and secret handshakes. It was also no mistake 'orange' supporters were being PAID to attend rallies...attendance that decreased over time much like the token pay did.
Western newspapers, though, were all in delight over Ukraine's newly found thirst for democracy and other typically American hogwash that
it's peddled in those occasions...I was waiting for Hulk Hogan to show up in Kiev tearing his shirt and waving the US flag while the 'real American' song plays...
8 The Georgian crisis followed much the same script. Shevarnadze, for ages hailed as good messiah, was forced to abdicate as just another tyrant, while pretty faces with pockets full of western cash 'woke the country up'...
9 I appreciate Moscow's old school, ruthless 'geopolitical' attitude...no need of Hulk Hogan waving flags or of fabricated fairy tales about democracy, miniskirts and porn cable TV brought to 'oppressed' foreigners.

Nevertheless, qui prodest with this ordeal?

This Janko wannabe missed lesson n.18...the one with the Donald duck action figure...
cui prodest, that is...

[Fort Bragg]

Janko is dead wrong. The Russians are absolutely evil, enthnocentric, and racist. They are like the Borg of Star Trek trying to assimilate all within their realm to their kind and killing all that object. The Soviet Union broke up because the member states had been abused and killed in the tens of millions and as evidence from Georgia shows, it is continuing. Thin their ranks with a few ICBMs and the world will be a better place.

[ham]

Thin their ranks with a few ICBMs and the world will be a better place.

If Nazi Germany wasn't the answer, I doubt our modern sissy West might be, already reeling and wobbling under the crushing weight of other occupational regimes and staggering economic crisis...

[Fort Bragg]

You've got to love the state of defence. The US can't keep an army of 150,000 in the field in Iraq. During the Vietnam War they had over half a million in the war and several hundred thousand in Germany, Korea, etc. Even during the first Gulf War they put about half a million in the field.

We can bitch and complain all we want but should we choose to help Georgia, we would simply be defeated.

[Don Dresden]

Uncle J made some very cogent observations on this situation.

Relative to his usual multi-lingual gibberish, that may be true.  But he doesn't know Georgia the country from Georgia Frontiere.

Pat Buchanan's take on recent events is instructive: Blowback From Bear-Baiting

[ham]

Uncle J made some very cogent observations on this situation.

Relative to his usual multi-lingual gibberish, that may be true. But he doesn't know Georgia the country from Georgia Frontiere.

Pat Buchanan's take on recent events is instructive: Blowback From Bear-Baiting

exactly what I meant.

[Little Arminius]

Uncle J made some very cogent observations on this situation.

Relative to his usual multi-lingual gibberish, that may be true.  But he doesn't know Georgia the country from Georgia Frontiere.

Pat Buchanan's take on recent events is instructive: Blowback From Bear-Baiting

exactly what I meant.

Sometimes Buchanan comes off like a nutjob but not this time. His assessment of this situation is far closer to reality than either the media portrayal or the spin from the White House. Re-read Uncle J's comments and you'll see that he's firmly in the Buchanan camp. Conversely, Jimmy Clifton, a perennial supporter of various "third" political parties, drank the mainstream media's Kool-Aid on this one.

[ham]

Sometimes Buchanan comes off like a nutjob

Buchanan is the closest thing to traditional, old-school American thought once epitomized by the Monroe, the Jefferson and the like.
America gained a reputation of freedom for refusing to play 'games for kings'...and planting bogus straw-man governments around the world IS 'a game for kings'...to create baited fields to justify further belligerence once such front-man governments are exposed or collapse on their own.
Sadly since the 1898 war with Spain, the USA are 'just another hoodlum' in international politics...
The main difference being that they put great care in the gimmick and angles for their Hulk Hogan to raise the curtain in conniptions waving flags and singing 'real American'...
Japan once invaded China to secure its Empire...Russia does the same...little to no attention is paid to gimmicks and freaks waving flags...
Casualties?
As the Dresden bombing, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Irak embargo, Vietnam etc etc show, invasion & war bring lots of innocent victims...
the difference is victims of 'bad' regimes (the bad regime of the day, that is ) are granted mourning days and counted and re-counted until the number makes you blush...victims of the 'good' regimes are barely acknowledged, or numbers are exposed as a hoax peddled by tyrants interested in bad-mouthing 'democracy'.
Strictly speaking again, the USA have a political infrastructure that was top-notch modern...in the XVIII century...

[Fort Bragg]

The few countries left that have shown an interest in joining NATO such as the Ukraine should be let in immediately. The tanks in Western Europe should have their tracks greased and pointed East. If Russia wants a cold war at least the frontier is 1,000 miles closer to Moscow and Russia has half the population. NATO has to let Russia know the Baltic states and the Ukraine will be vigorously defended. I suspect that part of the problem with admitting Georgia had to do with its lack of defined boundaries. Hell, let them in too but let it be known that Western troops will not fight for their current borders.

Is Charlie Wilson still alive? Start sending effective arms to Chechnya.