Blowback From Bear-Baiting
By Patrick J. Buchanan
15/08/08 "ICH
" -- - 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 who 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.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of
Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost
Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the
West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and
"Where the Right Went Wrong."
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