U.S. official: Russia's attack on Georgia is 'disproportionate'

[KSXNSX]

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A US girl from San Francisco goes to S. Ossetia to visit family, and is caught in the war. She comes back to report what happened.

When she, and her aunt report that Georgian's started the war (and that Russians were helping the S. Ossetians) Fox News pulls some questionable censorship (e.g. they have to go to commercial, the delays start acting up and they are out of time).

Basically they blame the Georgian govt., and you can here the interviewer mumbling with producers in the background and all of a sudden they are cut off.

Again, from what I read: Georgians invaded S. Ossetia first. S. Ossetia has an oil pipeline that is considered very valuable. S. Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. Some 1500+ were killed by the Georgian's in S. Ossetia including 12+ Russian peacekeepers.

Russia responded disproportionally, and some people report they attacked civilians.

 

[Hasdrubal]

If you guys are wondering what the root of the situation is over there, you have to think in terms of international politics. That's more than a little sad, because human pain and suffering is terrible, and few things cause pain and suffering like grinding civilians between the wheels of angry governments.

Russia has seen, since the end of the Cold War, a dramatic increase in NATO. St. Petersburg used to be 1200 miles away from the nearest NATO country- now the distance is 60 miles. They have seen the US begin to build airbases in a ring around their periphery, in countries that were theirs to rule with an iron fist not too many years past.

More recently, they have watched Angela Merkel and the EU declare that Kosovo would become independent regardless of Russia's wishes, thus violating perhaps the most important political fact of European life. Since the beginning of the Cold War, there was an understanding that the borders of European nations would be fixed, to avoid causing instability. That sort of blanket declaration tells the Russians that the West will in future encourage all sorts of breakaway populations to leave Russian control, and take with them whatever land, natural resources, and military bases they please to the West.

So, the Russians have basically made a statement in as dramatic and cruel a manner as they can, that if Europe wants to start redrawing borders, then so will they. Further, that they have the military strength to do so regardless of any protests from the international community.

This is just to say why I think the Russians did what they did. I wish they hadn't, I wish we had an extra five active duty divisions so we could have a credible reserve force to respond to things like this, but that's not the way things are. Politics rarely give good anwsers.

Nick

 

[WingZ]

Sigh just when you think we were using some common since This article does give a bit more insight.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1831352,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics&iref=werecommend