Monday, November 10, 2008

Georgia Was Not An Innocent Victim Afterall - Faces War Crimes Allegations


It looks like I was right about the Georgia-Russia War, while John McCain, Joe Biden and Barack Obama got it wrong. I hope this doesn't represent the start of a pattern for Obama/Biden in terms of being on the wrong side of history.

Just as I suspected, reports are now providing confirmation and consensus for the fact that Georgia was the instigator in its war with Russia over the Summer. With the meddling of the U.S. (co-instigator), the Georgians felt emboldened enough to start a war with the Russians. Beyond foolish!

Investigations by the New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others are providing a completely different picture from the one painted by Georgian President Saakashvili, John McCain, and even Barack Obama. McCain and Obama portrayed Russia as the aggressor and vowed to stand by Georgia; even though most reports at the time suggested that Georgia, with the backing of the U.S., instigated the war. This is one of the problems I have with Barack Obama. He is far too quick to jump onto the pro-war bandwagon, in an effort to look like one of the good ole boys. It's no surprise that he is already screwing up as President-elect. I'm already regretting my vote, and it hasn't even been a full week since election day.

It now appears that Georgia lied about the events that led to the war and their eventual defeat.

Listen to a brief story from Public Radio International (PRI).

From The New York Times

TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Georgia moved forces toward the border of the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Aug. 7, at the start of what it called a defensive war with separatists there and with Russian forces.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.


See more from the Daily Kos and from the full New York Times article.

Meanwhile, the Georgian public has begun to turn on their President. We can only pray that they decide to remove Saakashvili from office before his government is able to start anymore wars with the Russians. Saakashvili tried his damnedest to deliberately drag the U.S. into a direct shooting war with Russia. He used the U.S. for what he thought would be his own political gain. Even more troubling than that, the Bush administration actually seemed willing to oblige him, up to a point. Unfortunately Obama supports the typical pro-war Republicrat view of this conflict and pretty much signed on to the Bush administrations Georgia policy...vowing to continue it once he takes the oath of office.

Barack Obama should put an end to the efforts to include Georgia in NATO and he should put an end to NATO expansion altogether. I don't expect him to do so because he is nothing but a puppet at the moment, taking direction from Clinton era advisers who were advocates for NATO enlargement. This was also the policy of the Bush administration. Obama has already indicated that he plans to continue most of the Bush administrations foreign policy initiatives, despite running on a platform (a questionable platform) of "change".

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See previous posts on Georgia

4 comments:

PamalaLauren said...

LOL! Sorry but you're disappointment is a bit funny to me. So we give up on the people we elect after one "mistake" when the situation wasn't clear to begin with.

I can say I knew Russia wasn't the aggressor in this instance and people said I was wrong, but you know what the information in general was so screwed up and you couldn't tell who was lying and who wasn't so I don't blame anyone for thinking that Russia was to blame.

Brian said...

Pamela,

I can agree with you up to a point.

The best thing Obama could have done under these circumstances was to say that both sides should end the violence (which he did), but he should have refrained from a full blown co-signing of Bush policy by suggesting that Russia was to blame and was the aggressor and that Georgia was an innocent victim. He compared this to the Soviet invasions of eastern Europe in the 60's and 70's. HE WAS DEAD WRONG ABOUT THAT. He should have refrained from this before all of the information was in.

This is not the first time that Obama has done this. He is far too willing to jump the gun and sign on to the same foreign policy that he railed against when he was running for President. He's doing the same thing with Iran...accepting the Bush view instead of doing his own assessment and asking for a new review from the IAEA and the Intelligence Community before making a judgment. I don't think he understands the energy crisis in Iran (that despite having oil, Iran has to import its fuel because it does not refine enough of its own resources... and that this may be why they want civilian nuclear energy). Instead he accepts the pro-war viewpoint right off the bat. You can't have it both ways....you can't rail against these policies one minute, then co-sign them the next.

Either he stands for real progressive principles or he doesn't.

This wishy washy "i'm going to be another centrist" bull... isn't going to work for me. I will be on his case just like I was when Clinton was in office.

Kassandra Troy said...

So, how do we 'know'? Seems to me you are a bit too willing to trust your sources. Kos? NYT? Hardly the heroes of independent journalism. What happened to the law suit at the Int'l Court of Justice in The Hague? I'm trying to get trustworthy confirmation, but good old dialectic kneejerks are definitely at work in this matter.

Brian said...

Cassandra,

Yes, I will trust Public Radio, and organizations like Human Rights Watch and the BBC over the propaganda from John McCain, the Republican Party, and Faux News. I'll even take the New York Times over the pro-war propaganda from Republicans AND Democrats.

The Daily Kos link is not actually a primary source, it's simply a Dkos readers blog entry which linked to the actual New York Times report. I wanted to give credit to that diarist.

Human Rights Watch and other organizations are continuing to gather information about what took place in Georgia.

HRW is a non-partisan international organization that is respected around the World...They are often cited by governments as a source for information. Even the Bush Administration has cited HRW (of course when it has benefited the Bush administration).