* Â Yeah, it may not be jihad, but we can’t ignore it any longer. The incompetence of this Bush administration is unbearable: when an ally is attacked, we have to help. What are you doing Bush? Anybody home?
Abkhazia in Russian Hands, Tbilisi in Danger
Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:08:51 pm PDT
Fox News reporters on the ground in Georgia are now saying that Russian troops are moving in on Tbilisi (Steve Harrigan said Russian forces were at one point within 12 miles of the city), and that Abkhazia is under the control of Russian-backed separatists
Pic ripped from ZIP
Platitudes and bullshit:
Bush: Russia’s Actions Raise ‘Serious Questions’ About Intent
Henry J. Pulizzi reports on the White House.
U.S. President George W. Bush said he is concerned by reports that Russia isn’t living up a provisional cease-fire in Georgia, warning that the Kremlin is putting its relations with the U.S. and Europe at risk.
“We expect Russia to meet its commitment to cease all military activities in Georgia and we expect all Russian forces that have entered Georgia in recent days to withdraw from that country,” Bush said in a statement in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday. “As I have made clear, Russia’s ongoing action raises serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region.”
The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinated archduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this little war, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as the start of the twilight of America’s sole world hegemony. If the new version of the Great Game – the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century – is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the West may be in the process of losing it…
Russia, which appears to be pushing its tanks into Georgia to overthrow its democratically elected president, has demonstrated gleefully the limits of US power and Moscow’s historic destiny as regional hegemon and restored 21st-century superpower. The empire has struck back and shaken the order of the world.
But this is, of course, not just the beginning of the end of American “world hegemony”, such as it was, but a further sign of the decline of the West it defends.
Even so, I’m not sure how decisive a step is the West’s failure to defend Georgia. When did it ever have the power to help, successfully, a territory so close to Russia’s borders? Even when the American “hegemon” was near its zenith, Russia could still crush Hungary and Czechoslovakia without fear of the West taking up arms. The great imperial powers couldn’t even win the Crimean War.
UPDATE
Bush tries what little he can dare – and warns of Russia’s growing threat:
President George W. Bush said the U.S. would stand behind its ally Georgia and warned Russia that it must respect the “territorial integrity’’ of the Black Sea nation.
A U.S. military cargo plane is heading to Georgia with relief supplies and Bush said he directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to organize a humanitarian aid effort…
“Russia’s ongoing actions raise serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region,’’ Bush said today at the White House in Washington. He said he was concerned about reports that Russian forces continue to move through Georgia in spite of an agreement on a cease-fire…
He held out the threat that the U.S. would withdraw its support for Russia’s “aspirations’’ in diplomatic, economic and security organizations.
Other American allies in the region grow nervous:
Moving to counter any threat, Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko today restricted the movement of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, citing national security. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow denounced the decision as a “serious, new anti-Russian step.’’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s first order of business in confronting Ukraine likely will be to try to thwart its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
 AP/Gerald Herber
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Chris Kelly: I don’t believe Condoleezza Rice can actually play piano. Everything else she’s ever touched has been a fraud and a catastrophe, why should her alleged musical abilities be any different? Think about it. Think about any event she’s been even remotely involved in since you first heard her name. An endless string of threats and blundering and arrogant bluffs turned squalid pigf*cks. It’s not that she can’t do her job; she can’t do anything. I think when she plays piano the piano catches fire and the audience dies. So yeah, sure, Condoleezza Rice for Vice President. Time’s a wastin’. But there’s one other thing that we’re always told to keep in mind when we consider Condoleezza — I mean, besides her wondrous ability to play an instrument: Whatever happens, It’s not her fault. Click here to read more.
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George Bush Jr couldn’t even run the Texas Rangers right when he run the club. He couldn’t run the State of Texas right as the Governor. And we expect him to be able to handle the Russian Bear and the Mohammedan Mad Men?
Hello?
Are we reading the same news releases?
Georgia started this fight by invading Ossetia and murdering 2000 or so civilians and Russian peacekeepers.
Russia then came down and kicked ass and took names; causing that simpering pansy Saakashvili to wet his pants and cry for mama.
In another vein, offering guarantees of defense to a remote and essentially useless nation like Georgia is just another manifestation of the suicidal insanity that got us involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m with Russia on this one.
Georgia can consider itself lucky it hasn’t been totally flattened and occupied, with the NKVD/FSB now running riot, a bit like what happened to the last country to launch a surprise military assault that killed Russian soldiers. An assault that, incidentally, killed 3% of the S.Ossettian population in one night. That’s a higher percentage loss than the U.K. endured in the whole of WW2.
Listen, we may not like many of the things Putin does, but you can’t deny that he does things in the interests of his country. Don’t we all wish we had leadership like that? He’s a nationalist first. As a nationalist myself, I can’t help myself liking that, and the man himself. I wish my government would act in my country’s interests the way he acts in his.
You seem to have lost the plot here.
Georgia is not an ally of the US.
Georgians are parasites, sucking billions of aid out of the US, using the US to arm and train its troops, using the US as cover for its aggression and its insane war with Russia, and Georgia is blindly and arrogantly pursuing its belligerent policies with the expectation that the US will bail them out.
If georgia still exists outside Tiflis right now, they should consider themselves lucky. Georgians are a minority in 3 Georgian provinces, and Armenians and Azeris and Turks are as sick and tired of Georgian arrogance and stupidity as the Ossetians and Abkhazi are.
Georgia was REJECTED as a NATO member precisely because it is irrational and belligerent.
How on Earth is Georgia a US ally. It’s a miillstone around America’s neck.
“Georgia is not an ally of the US.”
So they’re good when they fight alongside the US in Iraq in the ‘coalition of the willing’ but not good enough when they get themselves in trouble with the Russian gangsters?
What’s your agenda?
1. Sending troops to Iraq makes a country an “ally” of the US?
Georgia has stated that its sending troops to Iraq was not done to support the US, but to support Iraq. Perhaps Iraq should send troops to Georgia.
Georgia sent troops to Iraq to get combat experience to prepare to fight Chechny battle-hardened Russian troops based in North Alania.
How many billions has the US poured into Georgia and how much effort has the US put into arming and training Georgian soldiers?
The following countries have sent troops to Iraq:
Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Uzbekistan
So according to you, they are now all US “allies” and that means the US is obliged to support them when they commit war crimes and atrocities and go to war with Russia.
2. As you say, “get themselves into trouble”
3. “What’s your agenda?”
You sound like some moveon dot org or daily kos moonbat.
What’s your agenda?
“American Sheeple line up behind Puppet Tyrant of Georgia Soros”
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/american-sheeple-line-up-behind-puppet-tyrant-of-georgia-soros/
“when they commit war crimes and atrocities and go to war with Russia???”
Last time I checked it was Russia that committed a war-crime by bombing Georgia, which is now being dismantled:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7204901&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.4.1
You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
Alanis and Abkhazis the Stalinist borders imposed on them. They split from the Soviet Republic of Georgia as soon as the USSR was history. They’ve never been part of the Republic of Georgia.
Saakashvili, after agreeing to South Ossetian neutrality, and assuring Ukraine the US and NATO that he would not yet again attempt to use military force there, attacked the CIS peacekeepers there, slaughtered thousands of people he claims are citizens of his country, and has potentially dragged the US into a third world war. Now the US has to choose between supporting a lunatic against Russia, or look weak.
Geoergia: With an “ally” like that, who needs enemies?
And did Bush really say with a straight face that Russia must respect another country’s alleged
“territorial integrity”
You couldn’t make up these absurdities!
Correction: “Alanis and Abkhazis rejected the Stalinist borders imposed on them.”
I guess it’s irrelevant that Stalin was yet another Georgian gangster…
By the way, are you familiar with the expression, “The tail wagging the dog”?
Re: “Last time I checked it was Russia that committed a war-crime by bombing Georgia,”
Well, that’s funny, cause even CNN was reporting on Georgia’s assault having been under way for many hours, and Russian troops just being sent out to defend Ossetians.:
Live report:
“Through the night, the Georgians attacked the South Ossetian capital Tsingvali. And we woke up this morning to a full-scale war going on. Hospitals in flames. The university in flames. We don’t know the casualties yet, but no doubt they will be quite high. And then, through the day, of course the Russians responded. The Russian peace keepers were actually attacked in Tsingvali. That, of course, was quite a mistake by the Georgians.”
Maybe not a mistake.
Maybe the Georgians were right when they gambled that Americans would be dumb enough to come to Georgia’s defense, and that the media would just regurgitate all the crap they spewed about the Balkans, with of course the evil Serbs replaced by Georgians, and the poor suffering angelic Muslims replaced by the poor little Georgians. And all the morons would just swallow it all, hook, line and sinker.
Well, repeating it ad absurdum doesn’t make it any truer, or does it?
Here is a later account of what’s going down there, very much to the point:
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/south_ossetia_the_perfect_wron.html