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The conventional wisdom among my friends on the left is that Georgia is primarily responsible for their conflict with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. If G. Walker Bush condemns the Russian intervention, then the Pavlovian response must be that Georgia deserves what they get for being friendly with Bush. Oddly, they do not apply such logic to the genocide in Darfur, which Bush has also deplored.
The left-wing conventional wisdom is that Georgia launched an unprovoked military action in what is internationally recognized as their sovereign territory and they did so just for shits and giggles. Conventional wisdom further states that Russia was a disinterested, neutral party until this point and launched Operation South Ossetian Freedom for the sole purpose of protecting South Ossetians.
No word on why Russia continues to occupy undisputed Georgian territory long after the truce. No word on Russia's fairly explicit desire for regime change in Tblisi, including comments by the Russia's head of state referring to Georgia's president as a living corpse. No word on Russia's fairly explicit militaristic desires, which resulted in Russia's head of state bragging that the Georgian invasion showed that Russia was a country to be reckoned with.
To many on the left, occupying a sovereign country is bad when the US does it but someone else's fault when Russia does it.
Trying to impose regime change on another country is bad when the US does it but someone else's fault when Russia does it.
Militarism is bad when the US does it but someone else's fault when Russia does it.
I've heard outrageous apologias for the Russian aggression, such as "When you mess with the bull, you get the horns."
I can imagine R. Bruce Cheney saying the exact same thing to Saddam. (Sure, Saddam never did anything to America. But neither did Georgia ever do anything to Russia)
I've heard ethnic cleansing trivialized. The only bad thing about burning villages and expelling people, apparently, is that it's a waste of perfectly good lodging.
I can imagine Slobodan Milosveic saying this to his militias.
These deplorable comments were not made by far right militarists but by members of the left.
One of the consistent lines is that while Russia might have overreacted just a tad (a remarkably restrained definition of 'just a tad'), Georgia threw the first stone. So if Russia wants to emasculate Georgia as punishment, then Tblisi deserves what it gets. They deserve whatever Russia unilaterally imposes, because Georgia started it. After all, Russia has the right to tell its former colonies who they can and can't be friends with and what political and military alliances they can and can't join.
But this premise, that Georgia launched this unprovoked action in South Ossetia just for the heck of it, even true?
Not according to the man who was once a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia's de facto leader and architect of its new imperialist foreign policy.
Mikhail Kasyanov was named Russian prime minister, shortly after the Putin became president in 2000.
Far from Georgia being the primary aggressor, Kasyanov claims that Putin and Russia "relentlessly provoked the conflict in every way."
And when the Georgian leadership 'gave in' and took Russia's bait, the Kremlin, '"instead of fulfilling its peacekeeping mandate, started a large-scale war against the independent sovereign state of Georgia. Not only the disproportionate use of force, but in fact a full-scale war."
Putin's former deputy added that "it was obvious that the Russian authorities were amazed by the reaction of the civilized world... That is why it's crucially important that countries of the civilized world act in unison."
He also pointed out how Putin's regime is relentless whipping up nationalist hysteria to support its militaristic policies. "The propaganda streaming today from television screens and newspaper pages is, in a simplified way, calling on the nation to rally together and to protect the motherland. Hinting that war is on the threshold, that the enemies are knocking on our gates and that Russia is surrounded by enemies who want to break Russia into pieces... They want to cover the problems they've created in the last few years . . . by alleging that evil forces surround Russia and dream of its destruction."
Remember, these aren't the opinions of Mikhail Sakashvilli or of some Georgian nationalist or of some Russophobe. It comes from the mouth of the man who used to be the number two to Russia's current strongman. Maybe he's saying something worth taking into consideration.
The interview with The Los Angeles Times is a very interesting perspective from someone who once worked closely with Putin. The full interview can be accessed here
"Said Tsarnayev stumbled into a war.
ReplyDeleteA Chechen freelance photographer with the Reuters news agency, Tsarnayev arrived in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, during the day on August 7. Traveling together with a colleague, Tsarnayev said he planned to take photographs of the environment and natural surroundings in the area for a project he was working on.
Once in Tskhinvali, he discovered a virtual army of Russian journalists at his hotel.
Speaking to RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service, Tsarnayev, a resident of the Chechen capital, Grozny, said the Moscow-based reporters had been sent from various Russian media outlets days earlier, and were preparing to cover something big.
"At the hotel we discovered that there were already 48 Russian journalists there. Together with us, there were 50 people," Tsarnayev said. "I was the only one representing a foreign news agency. The rest were from Russian media and they arrived three days before we did, as if they knew that something was going to happen. Earlier at the border crossing, we met one man who was taking his wife and children from Tskhinvali."
Late that night, armed conflict broke out between Russia and Georgia..."
http://www.rferl.org/content/Russia_Georgian_Scripted_Affair/1193319.html
"Satellite photographs analyzed by United Nations experts show that only five percent of Tskhinvali was destroyed during the fighting there but that 50 percent of ethnic Georgian villages were destroyed in that region by Ossetian marauders behind Russian lines, a pattern that undercuts Moscow’s claims about what took place.
ReplyDelete...These pictures and the analysis conducted by the independent experts at UNOSAT show, Human Rights Watch told “Novaya gazeta,” that Ossetian units “burned and robbed Georgian villages,” as HRW people on the ground had reported in the face of Ossetian and Russian claims to the contrary..."
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/09/window-on-eurasia-un-satellite-photos.html
See this.
ReplyDelete