Condoleezza Rice: We'll take Georgia thanks.
Her exact words: ""As to choosing, the United States has made very clear that it is standing by the democratically elected government of Georgia"
Well, good.
And LOL.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Russia to the U.S. "Choose between us or Georgia"...
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Okay, I'm getting a little tired of the all deep thinkers out there who say that the Georgians should get whatever's coming to them. These are the same people who like to remind us of how cruel we've been to American Indians, and use that deplorable term, "Native American," because they're too lazy to find out which of the specific 1000 or so tribal groups they're talking about in any given moment.
Yeah, the White Man stole the lands from the many tribes and continue to treat them as dirt, or museum pieces. But do you really not know the history of the Iroquois, the Navajo, the Apache, the Lenape, The Mi-Wuk... all the rest. It's always been the mighty taking from the weak.
And we have deplored it because it's wrong. Even while we bask in the luxury of being American.
The term "Native American" came from ass-dragging white bureaucrats, who wanted a convenient way to save them reams of paperwork, by grouping all those aforementioned tribal group together. Now the heart-renders among us try to assuage their own sense of White guilt by labeling all the tribes in a... wait for it... politically-conscious way.
So when I hear these same people accusing Georgians of crimes against humanity, it makes me think of the lousy way we treat American Indians, and the lousy way we pretend that we still don't treat them. It makes me think that, man, there’s a bunch of hypocrites in America.
Number one, you can't bemoan the fate of the American Indian on one hand, which includes a large number of warring tribes who simply all got defeated by the superior firepower of the whites - and at the same time tell me that the Georgians deserve it. And number two, the citizenry are not responsible for the crimes of their leaders.
Or have we all forgotten how much we despise George W. Bush? Have we forgotten how the Chinese people flourished in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies when their draconian government finally gave them a chance?
What Putin and Russia did was wrong, plain and simple. Or should I remind us all of another history lesson? This one courtesy of an English cap named Neville Chamberlain.
Well, I agree on the being sick of people blaming Georgia bit (not that they're ENTIRELY innocent, but certainly not to blame!).
I'm a little confused by this though "have we all forgotten how much we despise George W. Bush?". Well, I'm still no fan of Bush, but on this issue, I'm more than happy to see the Americans be as hard ass with the Russians as possible.
That's why I liked Rice's reaction to Russia's "make a choice" ultimatum so much. Russia's CLEARLY the bad guy here (and apparently hasn't remotely ceased fire yet) and I hope the West generally supports Georgia very strongly.
How about we just don't get involved and let a country for ONCE deal with their differences without picking up a war with yet another country? I am sick and tired of my tax money going to a trip to Georgia so Condoleezza Rice can "intervine" in the conflict. LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE!
The bigotry of the US politicians is simply stunning. Isn't Kosovo=South Assetia? Georgia=Yugoslavia? Sakasvili=Molosevic? ... US=Russia? Bush=Putin?
Even more amazing is how the public is swallowing all the anti-russian propaganda. Looks like everyone is happy to have the Cold War back. Wake up guys. We are being duped - again and again - with the false patriotism trick.
We are stuck in Iraq for years. 150,000 of US troops - on the other side of the planet. "Defending our freedom". 15,000 Russian troops in the territory that has 70,000 of their own citizens - for 5 days - that is a major invasion... They must be also "defending the freedom" - but of their own citizens who are geografically stuck in Georgia and do not want to be Georgians.
Why Saakashvili is always "democratically elected" - what about Putin or this new Medvedov guy? They have overwhelming support in russia, aren't they? Georgia is a deeply corrupt nationalistic state that suppresses opposition and minorities. They started this war and got right into the russian trap. They ran scared and dropped the weapons that the russians have to secure and now scream about it. Now they will be buying a lot more weapons - you will see, from American firms.
Sakasvili is American puppet, that is all. He works for the US military-industrial complex and Big Oil, just like Bush and MaCain. They lie to us to continue the arms race and pocket the hundreds of billions of our money. And that is while we all wave stars and stripes and sing patriotic songs. And some "men and women in uniform" die for them in Iraq. Why so few people can see this?
Because they are too ashamed to see the truth.
Some people think that russia:georgia war helps McCain to be elected. This is likely to be true. Most likely this Mr. Blast-From-The-Past will become the new leader of the Free World. There is also an argument that the russians made a mistake by allowing this to happen. I think that Putin and the KGB actually WANT McCain for the same reason the Bush and McCain want Russia to be the bad guy. Both sides want to go to Cold War-2 because they could control the dumb majority of their populations by simply frightening them by the other side. Furthermore, McCain will continue the Bush/Big Oil energy policy, which guarantees high oil prices and the petrodollars will keep flowing to the Kremlin as well as the American Big Oil. Therefore McCain is Putin's best friend and best bet. When I look in Putin's eyes - I see "I don't give a f... about G-8 as long as you guys keep the oil price above 100 bucks per barrel".
If Obama was elected, - "cooperation, partnership, dialog... " who wants all that liberal crap?!? I bet Bin Laden is rooting for GOP too! It is harder to jihad a dude whose second name is Hussein!
McCain too could only thrive talking on the phone at 3 am. And then sleep all day while the US future goes down the toilet.
seriuosly the us is week they cant do shit let russia be cause i know americans arnt that stupid to go up toe to toe with a returning super power when there army is almost nothing tell me what are the big bad stupid americans gunna do
and another thing ( i posted above) orignally russi is doin what the us did .When georgia orginally wanted to split america flexed muscel now south ocessia wants to split mosscows flexing muscels u people are hippocrites russia is well within in its rights
Another anonymous user...
Lord Kitchener, what do you mean Hardass response? This wasn't a hardass response. By making a choice, she was just following their orders. "You want me to choose Mr.Bear? Tee Hee, OK. Umm...Georgia!"
A hardass response would have been to surface a stealth nuclear submarine somewhere near the polar cap and then play hide-and-seek with their outdated ironhorses in and around the Russian territories until Bush leaves office.
Such a hardass military embarrassment would definitely keep the Russians out of Georgia.
I'm gonna move to Georgia.. I'd like to be anywhere where our government is actually "helping"... I know I'll get blown up though... the price we pay...
Ooops. I forgot what happens when you link to CNN stories! You end up linked to from the CNN "What's on the Blogs" function, and suddenly you get more (mostly anonymous American) hits then you'd normally get in a week!
Three points I'd make. One, just for the record, I should say that I'm not at all worried about my tax money sending Rice to Georgia, 'cause I'm not an American. So, that's a perhaps legitimate objection that I just don't share because it doesn't effect me. (Though I would point out, she is SECRETARY OF STATE. If you weren't paying for her to go to Georgia you'd be paying for her to go somewhere else. It's kinda her job).
Second, I think Georgia is constantly referred to as "democratically elected" because people are a bit afraid the Russians plan on overthrowing their government (The Russians STILL haven't ceased fire yet as far as I know. They still have troops in Georgia well beyond the disputed territories). If Georgia was attacking Russia, and there was some fear that their plan was to overthrow the Russian government, I'm sure the news would be referring to the endangered Russian government as "democratically elected" all the time too.
Finally, I TOTALLY agree that Georgia grossly overreacted to the shelling from South Ossetia (while it was comparatively very minor, let's remember that the initial attack was artillery fire from South Ossetian separatists on Georgian villages that killed 10 people) and if the Russians hadn't done what they did, I'd be totally on side with some limited Russian response. Like sending more troops into South Ossetia, or even forcing the Georgian troops out of the region perhaps. However, Russia's response to Georgia's attacks was WAY more out of proportion than Georgia's response to the South Ossetian attacks was. Two wrongs don't make a right, but in this one, I think I line up against the country that committed the larger and more recent wrong, and that's Russia. What the South Ossetians did was wrong (and perhaps calculated), what the Georgians did was significantly worse, but what the Russians did was way worse still. The Russians are in the wrong here, imho, because they piled escalation on top of escalation. The South Ossetians lit a match, and the Georgians threw it into a pile of paper... but the Russians are the ones who threw on the gasoline.
Oh, and on the hard ass thing, I didn't mean that Rice's response was particularly "hard ass" just that I wouldn't mind seeing a hard ass response (though I mean "diplomatically" hard ass, not "Let's send the 10th Mountain division to Georgia" crazy hard ass). I mean things like insisting on an INTERNATIONAL peacekeeping force in South Ossetia (no Georgians, no Russians). Trying to see if we can get Georgia's (and almost more importantly Ukraine's) NATO membership path back on track (I'd bet the Ukrainians REALLY want into NATO now!). And for Pete's sake, kick Russia out of the G8 (though, I've thought that from just about the second we let them in to the G8... nothing to do with Georgia really).
I think Putin's Russia is much more dangerous than a lot of Westerners realize, and if this latest situation in Georgia doesn't wake people up to that, I'm worried about just what Russia needs to do to scare people.
I'd be very nervous today if I were a Ukrainian political leader.
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