South Ossetia War

[SuperStalin]

What's the point. Some people here think "Russia = evil" therefore "Whatever Russians do = evil",
and of course "USA = good" and "whatever USA and it's sockpuppets do = good".

In the same year, USA helps Kosovo break away from Russian ally Serbia,
and then whines when South Ossetia breaks away from US ally Georgia.

Besides, South Ossetia only ended up inside Georgia only because the Bolsheviks glued it to Georgia for some reason. It didn't matter while they were all inside the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990's.

On the other hand Kosovo. Kosovo is the founding area of the first medieval Serbian kingdom.
The Turks settled a lot of Albanians there, so they became the majority, and drove the Serbian people out.
Then came the USA and bombarded Serbia until it gave up Kosovo. Then the NATO peacekeeping forces let
the Albanians destroy all the medieval monuments, massacre Serbs. USA of course did everything to help the Albanians declare the independence of Kosovo. So basically, USA helped steal around 15% of the teritory of Serbia.

Then, only months later, there's USA whining about how the Ossetian people should not have a right to self-determination, only because the Ossetians are pro-Russian ( like the Serbs ), and Georgians are pro-USA,
(like the Albanians).

Fair?

[jetsetter]

To some, China's muscular domination of the Olympic medal table is a powerful allegory of the shifting balance of global power. A far better and more literal testimony to the collapse of the West may be seen in the distinctly weak-kneed response to Russian aggression in Georgia by what is still amusingly called the transatlantic alliance.

Once again, the Europeans, and their friends in the pusillanimous wing of the US Left, have demonstrated that, when it come to those postmodern Olympian sports of synchronized self-loathing, team hand-wringing and lightweight posturing, they know how to sweep gold, silver and bronze.

There's a routine now whenever some unspeakable act of aggression is visited upon us or our allies by murderous fanatics or authoritarian regimes. While the enemy takes a victory lap, we compete in a shameful medley relay of apologetics, defeatism and surrender.

The initial reaction is almost always self-blame and an expression of sympathetic explanation for the aggressor's actions. In the Russian case this week, the conventional wisdom is that Moscow was provoked by the hot-headed President Saakashvili of Georgia. It was really all his fault, we are told.

What's more, the argument goes, the US and Europe had already laid the moral framework for Russia's invasion by our own acts of aggression in the past decade. Vladimir Putin was simply following the example of illegal intervention by the US and its allies in Kosovo and Iraq.

It ought not to be necessary to point out the differences between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Mr Saakashvili's Georgia, but for those blinded by moral relativism, here goes - Georgia did not invade its neighbours or use chemical weapons on their people. Georgia did not torture and murder hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Georgia did not defy international demands for a decade and ignore 18 UN Security Council resolutions to come clean about its weapons programmes.

And unlike Iraq under Saddam, Georgia is led by a democratically elected president who has pushed this once dank backwater of the Soviet Union, birthplace of Stalin and Beria, towards liberal democracy and international engagement.

The Kosovo analogy has a more resonant ring of plausibility to it and has been heavily exploited by the Russians in defence of their actions. But it too is specious. It is true that South Ossetia and Abkhazia, like Kosovo within Serbia, are ethnic-minority-majority regions within a state that they dislike. But that's where the parallel ends.

Unlike Serbia, Georgia has not been conducting a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the people of these provinces. In the 1990s Serbia had firmly established its aggressive intentions towards its minorities with ugly genocidal wars against Croatia and Bosnia. And in any case the two Georgian enclaves have been patrolled by Russian “peacekeepers” for the past 15 years.

We need to be morally clear about what is going on in Georgia. Perhaps Mr Saakashvili was a little reckless in seeking to stamp out the separatist guerrillas. But to suggest that he somehow got what he deserved is tantamount to saying that a woman who dresses in a miniskirt and high heels and gets drunk in a bar one night is asking to be raped.

If shifting moral blame won't relieve us of our responsibilities then surely defeatism will. Whoever is right or wrong, the critics say, we can't do anything about it. In the past week, the familiar parade of clichés has been rolled out to explain why it is all hopeless. The Russian bear, pumped up by all that oil wealth, is reasserting power in its own backyard. The US and Europe, their energy sapped by endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can only stand by and watch.

There's something odd about listening to European governments speak about the futility of diplomacy. They are the ones who usually insist that military force alone can achieve little and who say that diplomacy must be given a chance. But now they seem to say that, since we can't stop Russia militarily, there is nothing else we can do.

But we can make life very uncomfortable for Mr Putin. Russia is not the Soviet Union. Its recent (relative) prosperity depends on its continuing integration into the global economy. It sets great store by the recognition that it gains from a seat at the high table with the great powers in the G8. It wants to elevate that status farther by joining the World Trade Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Punitive measures will hurt us too, of course: Russia could cause trouble over Iran and holds an alarmingly large quantity of US official debt. It could play havoc with the West's energy supplies.

The Europeans don't much like the idea of any of this. So this week they demonstrated the same sort of resolve that they showed in the Balkans in the early 1990s, when they stood by as genocide unfolded on their own continent.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, in his capacity as head pro tempore of the EU, came back from a trip to Moscow and Tbilisi, waving a piece of paper and acclaiming peace in our time.

But the one-sided ceasefire that he negotiated was more or less dictated to him by Mr Putin. It not only left the Russian military in place in the disputed enclaves. It allowed them free rein to continue operations inside the rest of Georgia.

That disastrous piece of European diplomacy finally seems to have stirred the US into tougher action. Goaded by John McCain, who has been brilliantly resolute in his measure of Russian intentions over the past few years, the Bush Administration at last dropped its credulous embrace of Mr Putin and upped the ante with direct military assistance to Georgia and threats of tougher diplomatic action.

But we should never forget what Mr Sarkozy and his EU officials got up to this week. There can be no clearer indication of the perils that threaten the West if the EU gets its way and wins more clout in the world.

This, remember, is the same EU that wants to take over foreign and security policy from member states, an institution that is always eager to pump itself up at the expense of democratic institutions in those member states, but which crumbles into puny submission when faced with authoritarian bullying overseas.

It was a great Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympic movement on the famous principle that “the important thing is not winning but taking part”.

The EU today seems to have adapted that slogan to fit its own desired global role - the important thing is taking part and not winning.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle4534358.ece

[SuperStalin]

Sure, Jetsetter... whatever your propaganda tells you, you must believe,
because RUSSIANS = EVIL, and with them SERBS = EVIL.

The ethnic cleansing campaign Serbs did in Kosovo was so effective,
we've had some 200.000 non-Albanian refugees in Serbia.

During the 1999. NATO bombing campaign, there were even Albanian refugees,
hiding in Serbia from the NATO bombs and UCK trying to forcedly draft them.

Today, Kosovo is almost completely ethnically Albanian, thanks to the joint US/Albanian ethnic cleansing campaign.

Whenever USA accused Serbs of "ethnic cleansing", soon hundreds of thousands of Serb civillians were killed or expelled from someplace.

But, no, you "know" from your TV that Serbs = Evildoers, and USA = humanitarians sacrificing themselves for good in the world.

Then again, you watch a lot of crap. There was a 1999. CNN report with Christiane Amanpour probably filmed somewhere in Turkey or Central Asia, with a bunch of central-Asian looking people crossing some mountain border on foot.
CNN presented that as a border crossing between Kosovo and Macedonia.

Again, this year, CNN showed a report about the demonstrations in Belgrade. The only problem is that half of the footage clearly showed Hungarians demonstrating in Budapest, but it was expertly mixed with footage from Belgrade.

[un-dee]

I am a bit annoyed by all the serbs whining about the Kosovo war. Serbs are fully responsible for the genocide in Bosnia, and from that point on you are not really believable. A lot less happened in Kosovo - very good, seems like the NATO campaign was successful.
I know some guys who were in Kosovo as one the first evidence teams from the german Bundeswehr (just think CSI without super-zoom), and some of them still suffer from what they've seen there.

And the russians making the Kosovo references is just cynical propaganda.

[H0nzik]

Yeah, the Kosovo independence is probably not the best thing that could have happened and it's certainly not a good thing for the Serbian minority in Kosovo. But it is just a consequence of Serbia wanting everything at all costs and ending up with nothing. If it weren't for the Yugoslav wars of the first half of the 90s, the Serbian negotiating position would have been very different when it comes to Kosovo.
I also see the South Ossetia situation more as parallel with 1938 Czechoslovakia - the Nazis have also radicalised the German minority/local majority and used the conflicts that have arised as an excuse to invade. But than again it's still not too sure what exactly happened in South Ossetia. I think I've even read that the Chechnyans have fought alongside the Ossetians (and Russians) agianst the Georgians. If that's true, then that just takes the hypocrisy of the Russian government to a whole new level.

[the Interceptor]

Originally Posted by argatoga

The people of Abkhazia and South-Ossetia want to be part of Russia, let them be part of Russia. Russia won't take the whole of Georgia, it isn't worth it for them. The Pro-Russia Abkhazia and South-Ossetia hate the Georgians, why force them to share the same county?

You're forgetting that almost 30% of the people living in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Georgians (according to Wiki). What happens to those people when these parts of Georgia become Russian?

[SuperStalin]

Of course, Americans and their allies will always think whatever Russia and its allies do is evil, and the other side are the good guys.

It's a tragedy that in the XXI century, people are still naive enough to believe
politicians and lying media. It's a tragedy people still can't for the life of them try to think beyond the black and white image.

After the Iraq fiasco, with GWB outright lying about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and lying about how Saddam supports Al Qaeda, there are still millions of naive Americans, Germans and others who believe every piece of crap
put out by the US government, CNN, FOX news...

[the Interceptor]

Haven't you posted that before already?

[Vambeer]

Actually it is the fourth or fifth time he says that...

[SuperStalin]

Nope. You just think my posts are repeating because you're not reading them.
I'm just that mad guy who says weird and controversial stuff...

"CNN and FOX didn't teach us that way..."
"please, make his differing views go away...."
"Russia is evil, please don't say otherwise, my brain hurts..."

[un-dee]

I've read weirder and more controversial. You just ignore our points, there's a difference.

[SuperStalin]

Thanks for the unsigned negative rep. to whatever cowardly douchebag who gave it,
and wrote:

Right, "everybody's wrong but us", brilliant! Just accept that your country committed horrible crime and lost the war that resulted from those.

Again, this is only what you've seen in your media. I understand it's confusing to you to even consider
that the TV stations and politicians you grew up with are lying to you, and that most information you get
is heavily censored. You get only the news spin you are allowed to see.

Don't believe me, try seeing some info you actually can check.
The Serbs were depicted as some sort of war criminal nation who's on a genocidal rampage through the Balkans.
Yet, before, during and after the war, there are around 30% of ethnic minorities living in Serbia, and their number has only increased in the last 20 years.

Did you know about a column of Albanian refugees who tried to escape from Kosovo to Serbia?
US aircraft directly attacked this column, killing hundreds of Albanian civillians only because it would look
bad for the media to see Albanian refugees actually running to the Serbian side.

Of course, you can find that report, but the media didn't spin it. Even if you do find it today on the internet,
the media are extremely apologetic, describing it as "collateral damage" ...

A NATO airstrike on a civillian marketplace in Serbia, that's called "collateral damage"... IF you ever get to see that in western media.

[Adunaphel]

Yet you believe everything the Serbian media feed you.... How ironic...

[SuperStalin]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

Yet you believe everything the Serbian media feed you.... How ironic...

Nonsense. Most Serbian media belong to German and US corporations,
you can imagine what they spin.

[vikiradTG2007]

Hold it! I guess that's just about enough flame war.


Nobody will ever have a completely unbiased view of these events. History is always written by biased people. Let's accept that.

[SuperStalin]

Originally Posted by vikiradTG2007

Hold it! I guess that's just about enough flame war.


Nobody will ever have a completely unbiased view of these events. History is always written by biased people. Let's accept that.

Exactly!

I'm sorry for going too much into details though. The first point of my posts is
that you shouldn't believe everything you hear on TV.

The second is that the South Ossetia war IS the Kosovo war with reversed roles. With Georgia being in the role of Serbia, and Russia doing the same thing USA did in the 1999-2008 period.

[argatoga]

Originally Posted by the Interceptor

You're forgetting that almost 30% of the people living in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Georgians (according to Wiki). What happens to those people when these parts of Georgia become Russian?

So the majority should be punished for the minority? If the 30% are clustered in a specific region then let them remain part of Georgia, otherwise they must make the choice to stay and be part of Russia or leave.

[the Interceptor]

Originally Posted by argatoga

So the majority should be punished for the minority?

That is an oversimplified view. I am under the impression that the 2/3rds of Russians in South Ossetia are / were living quite well besides the fact that they didn't want to belong to Georgia. I'm not sure if the 1/3rd of Georgians would find the same conditions if South Ossetia would become Russian. Therefore, It's just that tad too simple to say that the majority should rule.

Originally Posted by argatoga

If the 30% are clustered in a specific region then let them remain part of Georgia, otherwise they must make the choice to stay and be part of Russia or leave.

I don't know where those Georgians live in South Ossetia, but I suppose that they are spread throughout the area. If they were gathered in a little strip, I think South Ossetia would have returned to Russia a long time ago.

[argatoga]

Originally Posted by the Interceptor

That is an oversimplified view. I am under the impression that the 2/3rds of Russians in South Ossetia are / were living quite well besides the fact that they didn't want to belong to Georgia. I'm not sure if the 1/3rd of Georgians would find the same conditions if South Ossetia would become Russian. Therefore, It's just that tad too simple to say that the majority should rule.

I too don't know what the Georgians there would think of Russian rule, so I assumed the worse. In the event they could not stand Russian rule the majority should rule, as it is better to hurt one than two. Not completely fair but the best you can do.

[Shawn]

So while everyone's been busy with this Olympics there's been a war going on in parts of George. Now it seems the jig is up, and now we know why Russia was so eager to jump in.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Three days after Russia's recognition of South Ossetia as an independent nation, a South Ossetian official announced that the region would soon be absorbed into Russia.

Kremlin announces that South Ossetia will join 'one united Russian state'
August 30, 2008

The Kremlin moved swiftly to tighten its grip on Georgia’s breakaway regions yesterday as South Ossetia announced that it would soon become part of Russia, which will open military bases in the province under an agreement to be signed on Tuesday.

Tarzan Kokoity, the province’s Deputy Speaker of parliament, announced that South Ossetia would be absorbed into Russia soon so that its people could live in “one united Russian state” with their ethnic kin in North Ossetia.

The declaration came only three days after Russia defied international criticism and recognised South Ossetia and Georgia’s other separatist region of Abkhazia as independent states. Eduard Kokoity, South Ossetia’s leader, agreed that it would form part of Russia within “several years” during talks with Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, in Moscow.

The disclosure will expose Russia to accusations that it is annexing land regarded internationally as part of Georgia. Until now, the Kremlin has insisted that its troops intervened solely to protect South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgian “aggression”.

Interfax news quoted an unidentified Russian official as saying that Moscow also planned to establish two bases in Abkhazia. Sergei Shamba, Abkhazia’s Foreign Minister, said that an agreement on military co-operation would be signed within a month.

The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that agreements on “peace, co-operation and mutual assistance with Abkhazia and South Ossetia” were being prepared on the orders of President Medvedev. Abkhazia said that it would ask Russia to represent its interests abroad.

Georgia announced that it was recalling all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow in protest at the continued Russian occupation of its land in defiance of a ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy of France. The parliament in Tbilisi declared Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be under Russian occupation.

Gigi Tsereteli, the Vice-Speaker, dismissed the threat of South Ossetia becoming part of Russia, saying: “The world has already become different and Russia will not long be able to occupy sovereign Georgian territory.

“The regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia should think about the fact that if they become part of Russia, they will be assimilated, and in this way they will disappear.”

Lado Gurgenidze, the Prime Minister of Georgia, scrapped agreements that had permitted Russian peacekeepers to operate in the two regions after wars in the early 1990s. He called for their replacement by international troops.

Vyacheslav Kovalenko, Moscow’s Ambassador to Georgia, described Tbilisi’s decision to sever relations as “a step towards further escalation of tensions with Russia and the desire to drive the situation into an even worse deadlock”.

Russia attacked the G7 after the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan condemned its “excessive use of military force in Georgia”. In a joint statement, they had called on Russia to “implement in full” the French ceasefire agreement.

The Foreign Ministry said that the G7 was “justifying Georgian acts of aggression” and insisted that Moscow had met its obligations under the six-point agreement.

Having been rebuffed on Thursday by China and four Central Asian states, Russia will seek support next week from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) for its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The CSTO comprises Russia and the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The signing of the military agreement with South Ossetia will take place the day after an emergency summit of European Union leaders to discuss the crisis. The French presidency of the EU said that sanctions against Russia were not being considered, contradicting an earlier statement by Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister.

Russia told the EU that any sanctions would be damaging to both sides. Andrei Nesterenko, a Foreign Ministry official, said: “We hope that common sense will prevail over emotions and that EU leaders will find the strength to reject a one-sided assessment of the conflict . . . Neither party needs the confrontation towards which some countries are being energetically pushed by the EU.”

Russia also lashed out at Nato, saying that it had “no moral right” to pass judgment on the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Foreign Ministry said: “Further sliding to confrontation with Russia and attempts to put pressure on us are unacceptable, as they can entail irreversible consequences in the military-political climate and in stability on the continent.”

The US confirmed that the flagship of its Sixth Fleet, the USS Mount Whitney, would deliver aid to Georgia next week. Two other warships are moored off Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi, and Russia has ordered its fleet to take “precautionary measures”.

Mr Medvedev has accused the US of shipping weapons to Georgia along with aid, a claim dismissed as “ridiculous” by the White House.


Russian soldiers adjust a Russian flag in the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali
(Viktor Drachev/AFP/Getty Images)

Source

This is beyond messed up. This is how Hitler got started you know. Pretty much exactly how he got started.