Georgia conflict 'is a neocon election ploy.'

[jayhawk]

So says this dude.

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government, ending his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. Iraq invasion.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which clearly was expected to produce a Russian counter-reaction. It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain's presidential campaign.

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia's membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Scheunemann is at the center of the neoconservative cabal that has come to dominate the Republican candidate's foreign policy stance in a replay of the run-up to the war against Iraq. These folks are always looking for a foreign enemy on which to base a new Cold War, and with the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, it was Putin's Russia that came increasingly to fit the bill.

Yes, it sounds diabolical, but that may be the most accurate way to assess the designs of the McCain campaign in matters of war and peace. There is every indication that the candidate's demonization of Putin is an even grander plan than the previous use of Hussein to fuel American militarism with the fearsome enemy that it desperately needs.

McCain gets to look tough with a new Cold War to fight while Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, scrambling to make sense of a more measured foreign policy posture, will seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, the dire consequences of the Bush legacy McCain has inherited, from the disaster of Iraq to the economic meltdown, conveniently will be ignored. But it will provide the military-industrial complex, which has helped bankroll the neoconservatives, with an excuse for ramping up a military budget that is already bigger than that of the rest of the world combined.

What is at work here is a neoconservative, self-fulfilling prophecy in which Russia is turned into an enemy that ramps up its largely reduced military, and Putin is cast as the new Joseph Stalin bogeyman, evoking images of the old Soviet Union. McCain has condemned a "revanchist Russia" that should once again be contained. Although Putin has been the enormously popular elected leader of post-Communist Russia, it is assumed that imperialism is always lurking, not only in his DNA but in that of the Russian people.

How convenient to forget that Stalin was a Georgian, and indeed if Russian troops had occupied the threatened Georgian town of Gori, they would have found a museum still honoring their local boy, who made good by seizing control of the Russian revolution. Indeed five Russian bombs were allegedly dropped on Gori's Stalin Square on Tuesday.

It should also be mentioned that the post-Communist Georgians have imperial designs on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. What a stark contradiction that the United States, which championed Kosovo's independence from Serbia, now is ignoring Georgia's invasion of its ethnically rebellious provinces.

For McCain to so fervently embrace Scheunemann's neoconservative line of demonizing Russia in the interest of appearing tough during an election is a reminder that a senator can be old and yet wildly irresponsible.

Source.

How can someone this paranoid and angry even sleep?

[efoolution]

If it weren´t meant serious, I´d be quite the satire ...

[Momentum57]

it does illustrate how we need McCain

[SuperStalin]

Why do you constantly feel the urge to discard anything remotely complex as "conspiracy theory"?

No corporation on this earth displays all it's cards, no smart businessman will tell you all his plans in advance.
Hell, not even your nextdoor grocer will tell everyone that he intends to open up another shop.

So, why do you think that things don't happen "behind the scenes" in politics?

Politicians do a lot of stuff which is in no way honest or fair, they have loads of money and influence,
why do you think they'd shy away from doing something "bad" in order to increase their power?

You think it's impossible that USA had their hands in the Russia vs. Georgia conflict?
Read up on history. That's the way the British Empire used to work, that's the way Romans used to conquer half the time, why do you think modern empires are somehow more "fair"? Because they talk a lot about human rights? Yeah, right(s)!

[Scott]

I heard this whole idea on a few left wing radio shows over the last few days, but the way they present stuff generally makes me want to stab someone in the eye. When I get a few more minutes I want to read up on this and see what is out there. I guess I could see how this is possible, but it really doesn't make all that much sense to me.

[SuperStalin]

Read this first:http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-sou...eams/#more-270

[LeVeL]

I disagree with this theory. Just for the record, Putin personally hates Saakashvili and has been looking for an excuse to show him who's boss. He has been fueling the flames long enough and it has finally worked. Why do you think any resident of South Ossetia can get a Russian passport so easily? Why do you think they are allowed to come right over the border into Northern Ossetia?
These theories are just plain stupid 99% of the time. I bet I could link this conflict to Hitler if I really wanted to... or to aliens... or to Jesus. This is pretty far fetched.

[SuperStalin]

You honestly think politics are about personal likes or dislikes... and that sounds more realistic to you,
than the possibility that Saakashvili attacked South Ossetia because of some less known reasons. Funny.

btw. to explain the situation a bit. There once was SSSR, a huge multinational country which often divided
and subdivided its provinces for weird reasons. When people without sense made those borders, they weren't expecting for SSSR to fall apart. The province of Georgia had it's sub-provinces like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even though these areas are ethnically non-Georgian. South Ossetia is almost completely populated by Russians and Ossetins ( who are an Iranian people btw. ).

Imagine what would happen if the USA suddenly fell apart. Some states with more Latino population would want to seceed, or merge with Mexico, but the WASP populations in those states wouldn't like that, they would effectively try to merge with some predominantly WASP state.

Here's a map of the ethno-linguistic division of the caucasus region.
You can clearly see that some areas within Georgia aren't ethnically Georgian.



US states aren't neatly ethnically divided.

[LeVeL]

Originally Posted by SuperStalin

You honestly think politics are about personal likes or dislikes... and that sounds more realistic to you,
than the possibility that Saakashvili attacked South Ossetia because of some less known reasons. Funny.

It sure sounds more realistic than McCain staging the war to help his campaign

And yes, there are other reasons for this conflict, most of them financial.

[SuperStalin]

It's probably a mix of various interests. As I hear, the Russian army began modernization,
which will probably mean the US army will also modernize and increase, which will mean good things
for US economy etc. etc.

[un-dee]

Originally Posted by SuperStalin

The province of Georgia had it's sub-provinces like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even though these areas are ethnically non-Georgian.

That's not quite right, Abkhazia was more than 50% Georgian back then, but most of them (~250.000 Georgians) were driven out of the region during the past conflicts.

[SuperStalin]

Yep. Similar things have happened here in the Balkans. That's why there were/are around 600.000 refugees here in Serbia. The communists drew silly maps, and as a result the Croats, with the help of USA and Germany expelled
over 300.000 Serbs from their ancestral homes in Krajina ( today a part of Croatia ).
Similar things happened in Kosovo, basically USA armed Albanians in Kosovo and helped them by bombarding Serbia and Montenegro. Then set up a military base Bondsteel in Kosovo, just so that the Serbs lose authority over the
historically Serbian province of Kosovo.

Now, Russia is playing the same role in the Caucasus, the USA/NATO played in the Balkans crises of the 90's.

[Censport]

Originally Posted by jayhawk

How can someone this paranoid and angry even sleep?

Medication. And judging by his theory, the writer has forgotten to take his.

[jayhawk]

Originally Posted by SuperStalin

Imagine what would happen if the USA suddenly fell apart. Some states with more Latino population would want to seceed, or merge with Mexico, but the WASP populations in those states wouldn't like that, they would effectively try to merge with some predominantly WASP state.

Hmm...didn't hitler also use this same mindset when he invaded Czechoslovakia, that he wanted to reunite ethnic Germans?

I will answer myself: Yes he did, along with other countries.

[phuckingduck]

Jayhawk - Godwin.....

I'm too lazy right now, as I'm heading out the door, to find the article, but the Russians are pointing the finger at America too. Take it for what you will, but it's not just crazy leftists saying it's American Neo-Con meddling, it's our fun and eccentric crazy right Russian buddies too