1. SOUTH Ossetia? How did that happen? Simple. Stalin took a contiguous territory – Ossetia – comprising, mostly, a single ethnic group. They have been historically close to Russia for several hundred years, because the Russians saved them from the Muslims.
He deliberately tacked on a part of Ingushtia to the north, to foment strife. He made the north part of Russia, and the south part of Georgia. The north Ossetians relatively recently did ethnic cleansing on the Ingustians. The south as tried to reunite with the North. Georgia has, on three occasions, tried to use force to keep them in their own fold. Here, in the third time, Georgia attacks, and kills a lot of people. Seems quite similar to Serbia and Kosovo, doesn’t it? And in the latter case, against Russia’s protests, we enabled Kosovo to be a new independent country. Aside from Russia’s imperialistic aims, and further intent to control the last non-Russian pipeline of oil from central Asia, the Ossetians are doing exactly what the Kosovar’s did, and Russia is doing what America did.
If Georgia had not launched their killing attacks, Russia would not have had a pretext for invading. This is not, therefore, analogous to the abused spouse metaphor that the writer offers. Perhaps better is this:
You have a brute of a husband, and a harpy of a wife. He does and has beaten her. And she puts ground glass in his soup. One day, she begins to beat their child (a nasty brat, who has poked out the eye of HIS younger brother named Ingush), and she just broke his arm. So husband begins to beat her. And social services personnel, who encouraged the wife to be “free,” now wring their hands.
