[kj] (OT)Why haven't the Left got Georgia on their minds?

[B. Oliver Sheppard]

fluke fluke wrote:

"Or perhaps not. Funny how the Not In My Name crowd always overlooks 
aggression by Communist or 'former' Communist regimes. There's no such 
reticence when it comes to portraying George W. Bush as the new Hitler 
or daubing swastikas on the Israeli flag. Look at the protests against 
the wars in Iraq and Lebanon."

=========

Pat Buchanan is hardly the kind of cartoon lefty you bloviate against 
above (he is Reagan's former speech writer, a self-described 
"paleo-conservative," etc.) and this is his take on the war -- that 
Georgia started:

------
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan93.html

Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games 
to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia 
must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the 
Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's 
blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing 
scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands 
fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 
48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of 
Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and 
John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, 
Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present 
the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this 
fight – Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide 
how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in 
response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed 
and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the 
United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to 
surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic 
claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which 
prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When 
Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from 
Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, 
whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for 
their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they 
advance the agenda of the neocons, many of whom viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid 
stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is 
not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's 
nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, 
dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, 
and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the 
Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our 
military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six 
Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are 
now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into 
NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over 
Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula 
and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile 
treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site 
anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against 
Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A 
Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in 
Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia 
to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly 
to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and 
tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as 
others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted 
out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of 
the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become 
subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the 
Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense 
radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to 
transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to 
Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers 
training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet 
republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such 
Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into 
Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of 
democratic imperialism have now come home to roost – in Tbilisi.

August 16, 2008

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The 
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including 
Where the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire. His latest 
book is Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.