The answer to what the Russians plan to do with Georgia has been given. They plan to conquer it. Russian troops took the key town of Gori after the Georgians fell back on Mtskheta, a town only 10 miles east of Tbilisi. Reuters reported that “Russian forces had captured the Georgian town of Gori, 60 km (35 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, but Russia denied it and Reuters witnesses saw no troops in the town.”
Two Reuters reporters in Gori said they saw no evidence of a substantial Russian presence in the town. One said he saw Georgian soldiers leaving in convoys.
The second reporters said: “We are right now driving through the town and I see no trace of troops or military vehicles. It is absolutely deserted.”
The reporter said he later saw a Georgian armoured personnel carrier on fire east of Gori on the highway to Tbilisi. A long convoy of Georgian military trucks was heading away from Gori towards the capital.
Georgia — under its old borders — has effectively been lost to Russia. Moscow now sits aside the transportation links joining Tbilisi to the Georgia’s Black Sea ports. A Russian column has also reached the Senaki, at the western end of Georgia’s main flatland, the Kolkhida Lowland. The heartland of Georgia is now split in two. But the Georgian army remains apparently intact.
But the Russians have repeatedly failed to “bag” or encircle the Georgian Army, whose losses appear to be relatively light. The Georgians may have decided to avoid a ruinous battle for Gori, preserve their army and keep their state alive — even at the cost of abandoning their Black Sea ports and Kolkhida Lowland — in favor of a withdrawal behind the second of their major mountain ranges: the Lesser Caucasus.
The Lesser Caucasus runs parallel to the Greater Caucasus range, Georgia’s border with Russia with the Kolkhida Lowland between them. It is about 600 kilometers long. To use the metaphor of Rorke’s Drift, it is the inner “bags of mealies” wall. In the comments section of an earlier post, I wrote:
“The Poles were encircled and cut off from each other by a forward defense strategy that emphasized controlling their borders. The difference in this case is that Georgia has a border with Turkey and a second mountain barrier — the lesser Caucasus. If Georgian forces falls back south, behind the lesser Caucasus, which runs parallel but south of the major range, they would have the Turkish border to their rear. Imagine if Poland had had a border with France. If Georgia refuses to surrender and holds out in the mountains it could drag Russia into a wider war. The choice not to die quietly is not Russia’s: it is Georgia’s. Of course it would mean giving up Tbilisi and every major city.”
Another commenter (RAH) describes the new defensive position the Georgians have established to defend Tbilisi. “There is a ridge and river crossing from Gori to Tbilisi at Mtskheta that would make a good defensive position . The mountains to the south would prevent Russian tanks and a bridge over a river makes a narrow defile to defend. ” But in the end Tbilisi will be taken, and if the past is any guide, the retreat will continue. Those who want to look at the map can examine this link for themselves. A clickable thumbnail is also provided on the left margin of this post.
The Georgian strategy is born of military necessity. They appear to have chosen to abandon a major part of their country in order to stay together as a nation. As the Georgians move around the Lesser Caucasus, falling back on the Armenian and Turkish borders — the only borders not controlled by the Russians, they have among them about 130 US advisers. According to the American Forces Press Service:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2008 – The U.S.-assisted redeployment of Georgian troops from Iraq to their home country should be completed today, a Pentagon spokesman said.
American military aircraft began shuttling the brigade of Georgian forces yesterday, as clashes with Russian forces intensified since fighting broke out last week in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia, a former Soviet republic.
The U.S.-provided transport of the 2,000-strong contingent adheres to an agreement that U.S. and Georgian government officials arranged before Russian tanks and troops crossed Georgia’s border on Aug. 8, Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said today. …
Meanwhile, some 130 U.S. military personnel serving as trainers to national forces in Georgia will remain in the war-torn country, Whitman said. He added that all U.S. trainers there are safe and accounted for, and that presently there are no plans to remove them from Georgia.
The Georgian refusal to surrender and fallback to their south potentially means they are raising the stakes. If the Russians continue to pursue, they will inevitably risk crossing the Turkish and Armenian borders. But those possibilities are in the future. For the present, an intact Georgian army will delay the Russians at the Mtskheta chokepoint to buy time; time perhaps to get what they can behind the Lesser Caucasus and to whatever fate awaits. Georgian President Saakashvili laid out his war aims in a speech to his nation a few hours ago. He remains open to a negotiated settlement, but not at the cost of surrendering Georgian sovereignty. His goal is simple: Georgia must survive.
I want to say with full responsibility, we should save our country ourselves. Nobody else will be able to do it. Of course, international support is important, international diplomatic involvement is decisive, but if we are not very mobilized, if we do not show heroism, if we do not resist this huge brutal force, without our dedication Georgia will not be able to stop this confrontation. …
But we will defend the freedom of our country, the independence of our country – with our teeth, to the last drop of blood. God bless each of us. God bless the freedom of Georgia. God bless our soldiers, our heroes. Long live Georgia.
Tip Jar.
For a different perspective check out these two articles at atimes.com
“Russia bids to rid Georgia of its folly
By John Helmer
MOSCOW – One word explains why the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union have obliged themselves to sit on their hands, while Russia’s defends its citizens, and national interests, in the Caucasus, and liberates Georgians from the folly of their unpopular president, Mikheil Saakashvili. That word is Kosovo.
Russia sent troops into the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia to take on Georgian troops that had advanced into the territory. Four days of heavy fighting have seen thousands of casualties and the Georgian forces withdrawing. Russian troops were reported on Monday to be continuing fighting in parts of Georgia, including around the capital Tbilisi.
Eight hundred years of Caucasian history explain why Saakashvili has brought such destruction and ignominy on his countrymen over the past few days.
snip
For all Russians, not only those with relatives in Ossetia, the near-total destruction by Georgian guns of Tskhinvali is a war crime. The deaths of about 2,000 civilians in the Georgian attack, and the forced flight of about 35,000 survivors from the town – the last census of Tskhinvali’s population reported 30,000 – has been described by Russian leaders, and is understood by Russian public opinion, as a form of genocide. Ninety percent of the town’s population are Russian citizens.
To Russians, the Georgian attack of August 8 looks like the very same “ethnic cleansing”, which the US and European powers have treated as a crime against humanity, when committed on the former territory of federal Yugoslavia.
But Russians view the international war that broke up Yugoslavia as a practice run for breaking up the Russian Caucasus, first by arming the Chechen secessionist Dzhokar Dudayev; then by financing anti-Russian terrorism in the Russian provinces of Chechnya and Ingushetia; and now by the Georgian military thrust against South Ossetia.
Since the US and the European Union have so recently compelled Serbia to accept the Albanian takeover of Serbia’s Kosovo province, the overwhelming Russian view is that this will not be allowed to happen again. “Ossetia is not Kosovo” is a widespread refrain in Moscow today.
“If [former Yugoslav president] Slobodan Milosevic should be put on trial, the opinion here is – so too should Saakashvili,” says a leading Moscow analyst. ”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag02.html
“Saakashvili overplays his hand
By Brian Whitmore
In an effort to prod the West to Tbilisi’s side in its rapidly escalating armed conflict with Russia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is invoking the ghosts of Cold War battles past – Moscow’s suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979.
The Georgian leader’s strategy is clear. Tbilisi’s small army is no match for the Russian military machine. Saakashvili’s only chance of success in his bid to regain control of the Moscow-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia, therefore, is to globalize the conflict and turn it into a central front of a new struggle between Moscow and the West.
“What Russia has been doing against Georgia for the last two days represents an open aggression, unprecedented in modern times,” Saakashvili said in a televised address on August 8. “It is a direct challenge for the whole world. If Russia is not stopped today by the whole world, tomorrow Russian tanks might reach any European capital. I think everyone has understood this by now.”
So far, the West has not taken the bait.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag01.html
Things are not looking too good right now for the Georgians. I wish NATO would have said FU to Russia and let them join NATO.
It is good that Georgia did not join NATO. Russia would have crossed the frontier anyway, and I suspect that there would have been much splitting of hairs in the chanceries of Europe, especially in Berlin.
The Eastern Front does not bring happy memories there.
A Lesser Caucasus Redoubt could keep Georgian hopes alive and and provide drop zones for deliveries to the maquis of necessary items.
There are people at Panzer Kaserne who can do this.
Hell, if Georgia is being carved up, the Turks should flood into Ajaria–how could the Russians object?
I know, I know, too “risky.”
Brings to mind an earlier post here about nuclear blackmail and how the threat is greatest to second-tier powers that cannot defend themselves and are not important enough to provoke a US response. The lack of a US response in Georgia has to be encouraging to every terrorist with ambitions of getting a nuclear weapon. Watch out Singapore or Germany, you might be next. You now know you really can’t count on the US to come to your defense.
I am beginning to think that the Turks probably would not allow us to use Incirlik to provide military help to Georgia anyway. They flipped us the bird prior to the invasion of Iraq. Turkey is NOT our friend. Turkey is always triangulating and right now if it looks like Moscow and Tehran call the shots in that region, Turkey will oblige.
If we can’t save Georgia, we sure can destroy the Mullah’s toys, destroy Iran’s navy, bomb to smitereens the Revolutionary Guards, and decapitate the leadership. Won’t be much left for Moscow to work with.
So, doing Iran will put it to Putin, right where it hurts.
how practical would it be to rapidly supply the Georgians with unmanned drones. iirc many of the controlling stations are well away from the combat zones, even some in US, while controlling drone actions in Iraq.
I’m ashamed of President Bush. He asked Georgia for help in Iraq and they answered. Now, in their time of need he’s grab-assing at the Olympics. He thrown away our name as a nation. I am very ashamed of him.
These are just first impressions, and while I think we’re getting news updates fairly quickly which are probably fairly reliable, there’s still a lot we don’t know.
It’d be very useful to know the true state of the Georgian forces, especially their morale, organization, and discipline. They could be retreating pell mell and are already beaten psychologically, but it doesn’t appear to be the case, as far as we can tell (especially if our advisers are coaching them). I’d love to know more about the Georgian general in command, his past record and so forth. The Georgians don’t have the room to play defense in depth for very long, but the lesser Caucasus does look nice, tough ground for armor. It could also be tough for Russian aircraft, especially if the Georgians are giving them a bloody nose with their SAMs. If they draw this out, exacting high Russian casualties, it could turn into political sentiment for Georgia (for what it’s worth). If the Russians planned this to start with the Olympics, they might very well be hoping for a quick victory while the world is distracted. A Rourke’s Drift last stand could be a Georgian military gold medal, sung to “Men of Harlech.”
Hopefully it won’t be posthumous.
Stay-behind.
Having failed utterly to keep our ally from being invaded and dismembered, we could muster the testicular fortitude to make the invaders pay.
We’ll see what happens, but I think the Russians have just knocked over a big hive.
Indeed, the Georgians will not grapple like bears: they will sting like bees. I further suspect the American trainers–many, if not all, of whom have undoubtedly served in Iraq or Afghanistan…or both–will be major force multipliers for the Georgians if they do remain in-country (and they likely will). I can easily envision the trainers morphing into an ad-hoc OSS.
IED’s anyone? How about complex ambushes? Is is night-fighting more to your taste?
If the Russians do try to occupy Georgia, they will quickly discover that Chechnya was a relative cake-walk compared to what they’ll be encountering up-close and personal against a populace that has long memories of Soviet occupation and repression, and which is almost universally united against them.
Fred,
Enjoy your comments, very good, but in this case, knocking around Iran could be satisfying, but I can see that playing into Putin’s hands. I doubt he cares about the Middle East except as a distraction from Eastern Europe. In the short term, hitting Iran would also drive up the cost of oil. Tehran could be a decoy to keep us busy while Putin re-lives nostalgia in Eastern Europe.
Turkey may very well help us. Remember, Russia historically protected Georgia from the Ottoman Turks. The Turks carry a long hatred of the Russians, and I doubt they like the idea of sharing a border with them all of a sudden.
These are more conjecture than anything else admittedly.
Let me echo previous posts about how much I appreciate BC during periods like this when there is no other worthy coverage.
Can someone comment on why we would not 1) put a defensive air cover over the remaining portion of Georgia which Russian forces do not occupy and 2) take out the tunnel after providing some nominal amount of warning in order to hope to avoid any casualties? I realize that all of these carry risk, but we need to do something to instill ambiguity in the minds of the Russian leadership.
May come off as a very naive question but I’m just trying to understand what options we have if our leadership decides to act.
j-rog,
Putin very much cares about Middle Eastern affairs. Remember Russia now has a base in Syria and is using it now for its Med fleet. Russia is also arming Iran and has been substantially helping with their weapons’ grade enrichment program. Also, running political cover for the Mullahs. Oh, Iran is very much a strategic partner and not a distraction at all.
Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing are the three amigos who are not sparing any efforts to get our missile defense program stopped. They have an interest in getting Obama elected, since he has vowed to end the program.
Steeple,
It’s the kind of question we must resign ourselves to asking over and over again, wishing for the days when the country was proud, united, and courageous.
We now exist in an atmosphere where none of the above apply.
Instead, we will listen to innumerable reasons why we can do NOTHING.
Welcome to the John Wayne-less world, where the cavalry does not come to the rescue.
This is the change we’ve been waiting for, now’s the time for NATO and EURO to man up.
Putin has a point, US did just transport Georgia’s most seasoned combat battalions directly onto the battlefield, putting Georgian forces in the field in what … 48, at most 72 hours?
Boots on the ground diplomacy? Notice the US troop flights went unmolested, though loudly protested.
Wretchard,
Linked to you at “Power and Control” and “Classical Values”.
The key elements of the US response are leaving the 130 trainers in country and the American flights carrying the Georgian troops back to Georgia.
If a few “extra flights” can be maintained to start and then extended to resupply the Georgians and provide them with advisers the Russians may back off.
Fortunately the Georgians are retreating causing Russian blows to land in the air. Something the French, Polish, and Germans didn’t do well in WW2 making their armies brittle.
Don’t the Russians have a Motor Rifle division in Armenia?
By refusing to surrender the Georgians have done two things. Changed the subject and invited Putin to bet his presidency and even his regime on what he does next. This has long stopped being about South Ossetia and is now about the territorial integrity of Georgia. Second, entering into this high stakes Casino will mean that Putin must effectively bet his political shirt, Russia’s international reputation, it’s gas contracts, the whole ball of wax, to play.
If I were Putin I’d declare victory and go home. But I’m not Putin.
I’m with MarkJ…this is going to get protracted with our “130″ leading the effort. I think Wretchard has outlined the path this will take…the bulk of the Georgian military still in the field, retreating to a “national redoubt” in the Lesser Caucuses. Afghanistan circa 1979 redux. Game on…(the Bush subtext)It is after all, the Olymipic season.
Highland Peat
Rich Lowry at the Corner (posted in full):
Fred Kagan has been following it closely, and here are a few points from his latest take:
*
Numerous reports suggest that Russian forces have moved beyond the boundaries of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Georgia proper. The Russians have de facto confirmed that they have occupied Zugdidi, a town on the Georgian side of the Abkhazian border. They deny that they have occupied Gori, a key transportation node west of Tbilisi and south of Tskhinvali, but Georgian and press reportage suggests that they have.
*
It is known that Russian aircraft have bombed all of these and other areas, including the port of Poti, which some Russian sources claim has been destroyed. The Russians also acknowledge that they issued an ultimatum to Georgian forces in Zugdidi to disarm.
*
Russia has also announced a significant reinforcement of its forces in Abkhazia, and it has announced plans to increase its forces in the region generally in response to the return of Georgian troops from Iraq.
*
The Investigative Committee convened by Dmitrii Medvedev on Putin’s “suggestion” has reported that it will investigate crimes committed by Georgian troops under the articles for mass murder in the Russian Federation law code.
*
If, as reports suggest, Russian forces have occupied Zugdidi, Senaki, and Gori, then they have not only invaded Georgia in violation of any possible international legal justification, but have also taken possession of Georgia’s only means of communication with the Western World. If the Russians hold Gori, then Georgia’s only land-sea lines of communication run through Azerbaijan to the Caspian Sea or along secondary, mountain roads to Batumi and/or Turkey.
*
If the Investigative Committee proceeds as seems likely, it will most probably indict Saakashvili and other members of the Georgian government for crimes committed under Russian law, and Russian can then presumably demand their extradition in exchange for opening the Tbilisi-Poti road.
*
Alternatively, Russian forces are in an excellent position to take Georgia if they chose to do so.
*
The likeliest outcome at this stage is that Moscow insists on the departure of Saakashvili and other high members of the Georgian government from power and from the country, and then returns to its positions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia with significantly increased force presence. In that scenario, Georgia will be helplessly under Russian domination.
I think it my have been this post’s author who, elsewhere, pointed out that Russia was making a mistake staking a claim to the Arctic on the basis that Russians in a submarine had delivered a plaque up there on the ocean floor. This was because, by the same logic, America could be said to own the moon.
Russia may be making a similar mistake here, in justifying an invasion as a defense of ethnic Russians in a neighboring state’s territory. Each year Russia’s vast Far Eastern provinces have fewer ethnic Russians inhabitants and more ethnic Chinese.
This is easy enough to fix. Bush merely has to call Putin and give him 5 minutes to explain why the US shouldn’t give Georgia a handful of nuclear weapons and delivery systems capable of reaching Moscow. They could threaten to do likewise with various bad actors but I don’t think even Putin is stupid enough to down that road when the easy way out is to just pull back.
Right now the Russians hold all of the cards and the west is begging them to act against their interests and totalitarian instincts. The only card Georgia could possibly hold that would change things on the ground would be a nuclear one. The psychological inversion of Putin having to be the one to beg for a different outcome would be very instructive to him.
Putin is a narcissistic, psychopathic, serial killer who can’t bear even the slightest of criticisms. He murders his enemies without regard to borders or status and now he has decided to rearrange the political roster of a neighboring country. He will have to be dealt with sooner or later and the only language he understands is force. Better now than later.
There is no use in risking men and treasure. The Georgians can make the decision on when and if to pull the nuclear trigger. It’s not like the Russians have been exactly helpful in keeping other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. Had they been helpful to the free world in any way regarding proliferation or the war on terror then things might be different. As it is, there is no reason why many of the former Soviet possessions shouldn’t be similarly armed… and we are just the people to make it happen.
We really don’t have many other other options. We can fly an air cap over Georgia if we can find bases or we can threaten Russian possessions such as Cuba but none of these are as effective as giving the victims of Russian aggression the proper means of defending themselves.
We can’t be the world policeman… but we can be the armory of democracy. There are certainly plenty of people in Moscow who have been actively arming the other side.
The Armenian army is stronger on paper than any other in the Caucasus. The Russians maintain have the 102nd Military base in Armenia in which the 127th Motor Rifle Division is based.
I don’t buy any of the arguments for doing anything in Georgia. Their bimbo government killed russians and the russians want that government gone. You can say great these russian citizens were in Georgia territory. so therefore the georgians had the right to kill them. who cares. they didn’t have a right and the russians don’t have a right. now where are you.
All of this area is solidly inside russia’s zone of influence and has been for centuries.
I would much prefer that the USA use its military to secure our borders than have them flying all around central asia.
So, do we expect the 127th Div. to strike from the rear?
Very interesting to see the commenters who seem to so readily conclude that all is lost.
Reminds me of the folks who insisted Afghanistan was a quagmire just days into the conflict. Or people who still insist Iraq is a quagmire, as if merely stating it makes it so.
Though it may disappoint Ash to no end, we may be playing a very smart hand in an extremely difficult situation. Admittedly, however, I’m hoping like crazy that I don’t wake up in the morning to very bad news.
Got to disagree with giving working nukes to the Georgians, the Chechens, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Ukrainians, maybe even the Finns,etc. Somehow I think this would end badly.
Wow, yeah the Armenian military looks *far* better equipped than the Georgians. Benefit of a wealthy diaspora, I guess (compared to the Georgians)!
If Russia agrees to a truce in the next 24 hours, they will want to hold the ground that they have conquered and make the west snivel and beg for them to exit Georgian territory. This could take years of negotiation and they would hold all of the cards including the BP oil pipeline. This is all about who controls the energy and Russia wants to beat the Chinese to it.
Armenia is refered to as “compliant,” esp as compared to Georgia.
Anyone able to flesh out what that would mean in the present situation?
So, do we expect the 127th Div. to strike from the rear?
If the Armenians let them, the Russians could potentially move a force north deep into the Georgian’s rear. It would be a fatal blow, one which I don’t think the Georgians have any conventional response to except to disband and wage irregular warfare, perhaps from sanctuaries along the Turkish border. Given the proximity of Turkey and the history of the region, it would also be a very dangerous move. Like I said, if Putin goes into this Casino, he bets the farm. He could win, but he could start a huge war.
I’m friends with my neighbors and have a loose pact that if there are robbers casing out their house I will respond… probably call the police. But that doesn’t mean that if my neighbor provokes a fight with others, possibly one with SWAT that I will stand by their side. This, “we are friends so that is a commitment to fight to the death against all enemies” is nonsense. President Saakashvili made a provocative move against the South Ossetians who have something stronger than a helpful friend in Russia. They have a true alliance dating back for two hundred years or more. The Georgians had real grievances but that wasn’t enough to keep the Russians from trying to save their sense of pride and honor. Many have died for less. Saakashvili has bet on real politic to stay the hands of the Russians and he has bet wrong. Funny thing, the Russians bet that the US would not put troops on ground in Iraq not too many years ago. Looks like bold acts of war are not yet obsolete.
I’m not a betting man but I’d be willing to bet that the Russians at this point will be satisfied with nothing less than “regime change” as they have said. I do not like the implications but when you have legitimized regime change and nation building what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Saddam, Milosevic, others. Saakashvili is going to be the first piece traded in this game of chess. There are no pawns to sacrifice.
We should at least be weary of setting new precedents for new presidents.
Looks Saakashvili is going to play the siege game, ala Sarajevo. The world loves a victim and nothing better than making the Russians look like the Serbs in the mountain tops snipping at civilization.
This was a classic case of ‘bait and draw’ and had nothing to do with Ossetia. Shit, with the number of Israeli and American advisers there all they had to do was migrate to Ossetia and they’d end up being the majority.
I don’t think it takes a thousand advisers to instruct a military on burning villages and hightailing.
Looks like the whole war was about saving Saakashvili’s arse. With recent public opinion waning and the Russophiles gaining strength, the only way to keep the Russians at bay was by welcoming them in.
Good ol’ classic psych ops, get a hostile population to back the tyrannical leader by inviting in an even more tyrannical outsider. The rational civilians are backed into a corner, nationalism or betrayal.
On that basis this is going to be loooong and drawn out, nothing like making the civis suffer to gain public opinion……..
Yosemite Sam:
I’m ashamed of President Bush. He asked Georgia for help in Iraq and they answered. Now, in their time of need he’s grab-assing at the Olympics. He thrown away our name as a nation. I am very ashamed of him.
Yeah, because it would be so much nobler to have Americans rush-mobilized and assuming any Euro nation wishes to get drawn into conflict with Russia, allow US flights from their bases to kill Russians.
George Washington wisely recognized that just because one nation helps another, the gratitude should not end up being an obligation by entangling alliances to be joined at the hip with such “special friends” on their adventures. Gratitude towards France for helping us win the Revolutionary War did not translate into tens of thousands of Americans dying for Napoleon’s adventures. No obligation in blood.
Indeed, until recently, when ideas of Empire and Hegemony swelled neocons heads with scant worry that their own children would ever have to risk their lives in military service, America was exceptionally cautious about signing treaties committing us to defend with our lives other unstable nations – or lands we had no compelling vital interest in.
Now we live in days when powerful lobbyists for foreign lands seek to bind US lives and treasure to defending lands far outside our strategic interests – because they claim the nations are “special friends” like Israel or Georgia, or human rights emergencies like the Congo or Sudan or because “we owe the people” of such lands a committment to go to war for them because “they are noble freedom- lovers”.
Washington, who fought and sufffered in war, knew more about safeguarding the American people by avoiding blood debt to foreigners for various ideological or ethnic solidarity reasons than the neocons who want other American’s children to fight their battles.
Well, Charles, I’d love some border security. Thing is, you don’t provide security against illegals with F-22s. F22s can, however, ensure the Russians don’t screw over Georgia.
Russia showed they can and will knock off and CONQUER a US ally. That’s what’s notable — how much a paper tiger the US really is. Limited to impotence against Russia. No matter how we knocked off Saddam, they can easily and brutally conquer Georgia.
I told you so. Putin HAD to crush Georgia and occupy it.
The smart play is to up the ante, directly, by doing the same against Iran. Knock out all the infrastructure in Iran, and move with deliberate speed from Iraq into Iran, to occupy and create “autonomous” zones of Azeris and Baluchis and Arabs in the oil-gas rich zones.
That two can play Putin’s game.
Unlike Georgia, we have forces there. Iraq is stable enough (and Iranians would be far too busy fighting our troops in their own nation) to make that move. It’s part of why we SHOULD be in Iraq. Our Navy can launch decapitation strikes against Iran’s missile and air and naval forces. We can start grinding Iran’s infrastructure into dust. Our engineering guys can construct pontoon bridges and such, Iran cannot.
Show that if Russia can crush Georgia, we can crush (and will) Iran. Make the US FEARED just as Russia is now FEARED.
Bush Accuses Russia of ‘Brutal Escalation’ in Georgia Conflict
John McCain: “NATO’s decision to withhold a Membership Action Plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision,” he said.
Right on the money! It is still very, very possible that Russia has severely overplayed its hand.
The Russia Blog has a map of the pipeline and it runs south of the Lesser Caucasus and into Turkey — the area into which Georgia is now retreating. But really, the Russians can eventually secure the entire route up to the Turkish border given enough time. It might take till spring, but Georgia can’t hold on to the area south of the Lesser Caucasus indefinitely.
If would make me very happy to learn those flights ferrying Georgian troops home were also carrying unmarked boxes of stinger and javelin missiles. Then we’d see how effective Russian air and armor are against someone with the weapons to fight back.
@RattlerGator
“We may be playing a very smart hand”
Can you provide indicators that support that conclusion? Because it seems, to me, that US was duped by Russia and now Bush doesnt have the balls to respond.
Here is the support for this:
1) Putin assured Bush at the Olympic games that the operation was only about enforcing order in SO. Bush accepted it, this is indicated by the mild US statements during the first 2 days of Russian operation. State Dept. was even partially blaming Georgia.
2) Pentagon announced that it was surprised by the speed of Russian advance. Apparently, they didnt expect for Russian troops to go into Georgia in the first place, which brings us to the third point.
3) Intelligence failure. Without a great deal of preliminary preparations, Russia is unable to field a force of this size. Despite huge investments into military by Putin, it was in such poor conditions previously, that even now any rapid-response actions by Russia is very limited (it couldnt even seal of the area during Beslan), thus operations have to be prepared way in advance. It seems unfathomable that US through sat imagery and sigint did not get an advance warning of Russian plans, given the amount of forces involved.
4) From various indicators, like Israeli war games in mideterranean and joining of 5 CSGs from US, UK and France, it appears that West was about to make a play for Iran. If that is the case, then Russia has seriously undermined that plan. In fact, this could put off action against Iran, rather than bringing it about as many here predict.
So anyone (and especially RattlerGator) care to explain or at least speculate what is the cards we’ve got on hand, because it seems to me that Bush is still looking at his cards, while Putin grabbed all the chips from the table and ran out the door.
This is Prussia confronted by France in the Napoleonic Wars. We must all read our Clausewitz very closely now. A defensive war of survival by a nation-state with an aroused populace, an army-in-being, and sympathetic neighbors who can provide sanctuary is among the most dangerous of wars. The greatest enemy of the Russians right now is time. They need this to end in the short or medium term, but cannot let it drag on into the long term, or the Georgian protracted war of attrition that will result will wear the Russians down into the most bitter and dark of wars. It will not escalate overtly, but it will covertly and sharply, if that comes to pass.
To be sure, the Georgians need this to be over in the short term too if their nation is to survive with the least amount of damage. But if the Russians are not going to have it be over shortly, then the Georgians have to gear up for a long, dirty drawn out war that will cost everyone a lot in blood and gold.
@sigintel
Russia does yet control the area where the pipeline is, but that’s beside the point, as the idea is to prevent it being used, rather than control it. The problem with the scenario you describe is that Russian troops will be killed by thousands, if they try to hold onto any Georgian area for a long time, hence Russia does not plan to stay there even months.
“It seems unfathomable that US through sat imagery and sigint did not get an advance warning of Russian plans, given the amount of forces involved.”
That’s for sure…given the size of the Russian forces, the highway from Russia into SO was easily observed and monitored by our “Spys in the Skies” plus the US listening stations in Turkey had to pick up mucho sigint so US intelligence (CIA if not G2)knew that the force was massed to invade SO. Bush knew what was up “before” he went to China…which means he’s complicit in letting his old buddy Vlad have his way with the Georgians.
The US is saying that Russia lied to it about its intentions; gave false assurances of their objectives and planned this assault for a long time. Official Washington, rightly or wrongly, seems about to regard this as a major act and treacherous act of aggression. Bush is now saying Putin lied to him in Beijing. Deliberately.
It’s no longer about what Russia has done in a small Caucasian enclave like South Ossetia. It’s about the signal that has been sent from the Kremlin to Washington. Bush has a few months to go in office. One of the things he can do, and which everyone ought to consider very carefully, with the utmost gravity, is whether to respond in a manner that will commit his successor, whoever it may be to a definite course. This is structurally like the Cuban Missile crisis, only Bush has many fewer options. All the options now available to GWB mean entering the same high stakes casino Putin’s actions have set up. It means betting a lot, more than we can even calculate.
If you look back at my earliest posts on Georgia, I had the idea of deploying air superiority nearby quickly to send a signal. To keep it from getting this far by dissuading the Russians from doing something stupid. Unfortunately, Bush chose to believe Putin, who was playing, we now see, for time to carry out his plan. But the Georgians have had their say in this drama too. I think the Russians didn’t expect five brigades to be able to delay their army and yet stay together as a fighting force. The Russians are throwing in more and more men. It’s a race still, but whether to oblivion or to security — we’ll see. Hold on to your hats.
I don’t see why Russia would be wary of crossing over into Turkey. Turkey is allied with Iran and Russia in a pan-Islamic, anti-American alliance. Both Iran and Turkey, traditional enemies, are united in opposing American influence and pushing Islam as the solution to all problems in the area. Russia is their ally and protector.
Turkey would be happy to have Russia crush and control Georgia, an enemy (Christian) on their border, and prefer Russia as it’s patron against Israel, various other nations. Particularly since the Kurdish problem exists only in Iraq, not Syria (after they forced Syria to hand over one of the chiefs of the PKK).
Russia does not face any SERIOUS consequences Wretchard. None at all.
What, the EUnuchs and UN will draw up a sharply worded letter of regret? Obama will give a moving speech? Please.
Putin grabs up a nation at little cost, and can then move to pick off the remaining ones, one by one. Ukraine, Moldova, Belorussia, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. along with Greece, Austria, perhaps Germany.
It’s not like there exists any serious military force to oppose them.
The world largely disarmed and this is the result — easy pickings for even a WEAK military power, and Russia is still weak.
Heck, Russia and Turkey could divide the Balkans and the Islamists could end up ruling a great deal of the Balkans again. It’s not like NATO is anything but pieces of paper.
neolex wrote:
“So anyone (and especially RattlerGator) care to explain or at least speculate what is the cards we’ve got on hand, because it seems to me that Bush is still looking at his cards, while Putin grabbed all the chips from the table and ran out the door.”
LOL!
The upside to this, from our POV, is that once Russia settles in to the long occupation they’ll have to deal with the rebels. These rebels, irregular army folk, may prove to be just as pesky as the ones we’ve found in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Ruskies may be forced to deal with the slow bleed as well.
If we promised to stop with the missile system, would Putin promise to pull out of Georgia?
If I understand correctly, Russia needs Georgia to link up with Iran. Why exactly they’d like to do that at the cost of going to war with the West I don’t know but I am sure that military planners have considered any move on Iran would precipitate a counter move by Russia. Maybe this counter move predated the move. Preemptive war anyone?
As far as being duped by the Ruskies… I think that even the State Department didn’t fall for that one. But the realpolitik is interesting to watch. US fleet on the move and next thing you know is the Russians are invading Georgia and Iran is calling for “talks”.
Brilliant.
@NahnCee
This is beside the point. Appeasement will not work against Russia. Even if Putin promised that, he would still violate his promise at every corner, while spitting at you and telling you it’s raining.
In response to Fred,
I see your point (r.e. Iran), and hadn’t considered the Russian base in Syria. But as a strategic partner to Putin, Iran is not an imminent threat (meaning the next several months, assuming our intelligence is accurate, so no bets there), more within the 2-3 year range at least. We can probably draw this diplomacy game out for a long time.
But in the short term, responding to Georgia, sending a message by bombing Iran probably won’t pull Russian troops back from Tblisi, and would impede any active efforts of assistance to Georgia. If we can stop the Russians now in Georgia, we could very well be setting their strategic goals back a few years, giving us breathing space to continue tightening the screws on Iran.
Russia does not face any SERIOUS consequences Wretchard. None at all.
There’s always a snapping point for everything. Even Neville Chamberlain found there was a point beyond which he could no longer retreat. Chamberlain declared war on Hitler, eventually. But we the public can’t say where the snapping point should be. But it’s the duty of statesmen to draw that line clearly to prevent any misunderstandings. And when they draw the line, they should mean it, not because the particular piece of ground has any value, but because the line is there.
In January 1950, Dean Acheson’s gave a speech before the National Press Club that seemed to say that South Korea was beyond the line and that American support for the new Syngman Rhee government in South Korea would be limited. The invasion followed. And historians debate whether Acheson’s speech contributed to the Korean war to this day.
I don’t know whether the line will be in Tbilisi, in Georgia, at the Turkish border or on the White House lawn. But there’s a line somewhere. And it’s good policy to decide where it is and tell Putin its location.
Armenia has a HUGE population in the United States, especilly here in Los Angeles. I think there’s just about as many Armenians in LA as there are left in Armenia. They get gazillions of dollars each year donated to them from their U.S. relatives. If they do anything stupid to piss off the U.S. that cash flow would certainly shrivel if not come to a screeching halt. I wonder how much money Armenia gets from Russia.
Thanks for the credit Wretchard. I did guess that defense tactic after looking at topographical maps the day before. It is the obvious choke point.
The active male population of Tbilisi should be mobilized and the non-effectives evacuated to the mountains or Armenia. Infantry can defeat Russian armor. Armor is less effective in mountainous terrain. It is important for morale for the Georgian government not to be trapped and he will have to move to safe cover. Satellite phones may be his only way to communicate.
I had noticed and anticipated that the US trainers would stay to assist in command and communications, especially since the Russians are destroying the communication radio towers. I also heard but not confirmed that there are about a 1000 US forces, not the trainers, still in country from the exercise of last month. Please note that this exercise was done in the southern forests and encompassed training in evacuating civilian and wounded. That was a very effective exercise since that is what happened the very next week for these troops.
My guess is that there are about 50 Georgian tanks left and they are getting in defensive positions to guard the Tbilisi approach. However I am sure that with 18,000 troops at least 5000 are in the east for guerilla operations with some artillery and armor. US satellite phones will provide communications. I still do not know if they gave the 131 Humvees that the Georgian troops were using in Iraq. Those Humvees have communications that surpass the Russians and other electronic goodies.
If anything is going to happen watch the Turkish navy, they have access and Russians will think twice before involving them. They are full NATO and control the Straits
Apparently the Russians enraged Erdogan for refusing to take his calls when the invasion took place on the August 8th. It took four days for a lower echelon flunky to call back the Turkish government.
If we get air rights to fly from Turkey we can provide air cover for Georgia. The Russians are no match for American air force that has been fighting for 5 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
NahnCee -
If we have a Democrat in office this time next year, you’ll need a memory card in your PDA to keep up with what we “promise to give up…”
It won’t have any effect on Putin. Or China. Or anybody else who decides to reach across a border and help themselves.
If Bush won’t act now, then it’s Free Lunch Tuesday all week long at the Thug and Dictator Bar & Grill.
****
Has anybody else noticed that all the Russian air at or over the FEBA has been fast movers or rotor gunships? It seems that all troop movement has been on the ground as far as I can tell.
I haven’t been able to follow the tactics very closely but it certainly looks like either the Rus mech folks don’t have much convoy discipline or they have a lot of faith in their air superiority.
They’ve got quite a bit of log burden forward, and if they do go for border to border invasion, that presents a pretty long tail.
Something should be done about that, I’m thinking. Could be, too.
While George is fiddlin’ in Beijing, Georgia burns.
We can’t draw that line Wretchard because we don’t know where it is, and because nukes change everything.
No one wants to confront Putin directly because of the danger of nuclear escalation. Because Putin is more aggressive and less domestically constrained he has the initiative and cannot be confronted in ways that risk nuclear conflict. His “message” to Sharansky was a threat to the US as well, through deniable proxies to hit the US. Nukes to Osama is his trump card. One the US cannot reply with, being constrained by legalism from responding in kind.
The “red line” is probably the Rhine. If that. Which would take decades to reach. Even then it would be chancy, that the US public would simply say it’s not worth it.
As a practical, not theoretical matter, Putin faces no risks whatsoever in crossing over into Turkey, expanding the war to Ukraine, and elsewhere. There is no real military force willing and able to withstand him. So even if he’s the equivalent of a recently retired man, his opponents are in wheelchairs.
Wretchard said “It’s no longer about what Russia has done in a small Caucasian enclave like South Ossetia. It’s about the signal that has been sent from the Kremlin to Washington. Bush has a few months to go in office. One of the things he can do, and which everyone ought to consider very carefully, with the utmost gravity, is whether to respond in a manner that will commit his successor, whoever it may be to a definite course.”
Putin is indeed a sly devil. He knows that the Bush administration is a lame duck, that the Democrats will not do squat and that NATO is toothless. I think Putin thinks he can hold onto half of Georgia and control the oil pipeline with a few divisions and air superiority. Meanwhile the Pentagon has to rework the war plan for Iran and time is running out on Bush’s term to act …so Russian wins this one and Iran continues its rush to get the Bomb…plus we loose face in all respects.
I have to disagree Whiskey, Turkey is an original NATO member and we have a large airbase there. We would defend Turkey. We have bottled the Russian navy there for 50 years and have the sonar lines in the water for tracking.
Fred
“Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing are the three amigos who are not sparing any efforts to get our missile defense program stopped. They have an interest in getting Obama elected, since he has vowed to end the program.”
Missile defense aside, I wonder where China stands on the Russian invasion right now. That this happened on the opening night of the Olympics was major – face is important to China. This was their event to remind the world of their rich history and how far they have come.
This event was major for them and the Russians spoiled it a bit.
But, more to the point, if Russia’s real motives were squashing Georgia and having more control in accessing oil, I would think China would awaken to this threat too. They are tied to oil worse they we are – they need it for manufacturing, they don’t have much in terms of their own resources, and they are heavily tied to the Walmart economy, which is based on cheap transportation costs.
I would have to think that they see the threat also. If leveraged right, we could reap the benefits of this long term by building ‘partners on issues.’ Access to cheap oil and non disruption could bring them into the fold to support the US against Russian aggression here, as well as Iran could be an issue that China works with the US on.
Just a thought
Whisky,
Russian incursions into Turkey would trigger Article V. It is unlikely that (a) Russia would attempt even that, and (b) that the Europeans and Canadians would allow a brazen attempt on a NATO ally to go unchecked. To not check it would mean the end of the alliance, completely and utterly, and that is a step too far for most of the members, doubly so in the face of a resurgent Russia (who was, of course, the principal reason for the alliance in the first place).
Bush should immediately announce a massive humaitarian airlift of aid to the people of Georgia. This should be announced as a joint effort of the free nations of the world. However, as with the tsunami relief efforts, the logistical support will be provided by the USA in the form of the USAF. Dick Cheney and representatives from Brittian, France, Germany, Italy and Japan will fly in to the Georgian capital to assess how best to provide aid in the comming weeks. The USAF will provide security and support for this humanitarian effort. Quick, someone call Bono and get this show on the road.
Ukrainska povstanska armiia
The number of non-Ukrainian UPA soldiers grew rapidly, and peaked in the late fall of 1943. They were organized into separate national units, the largest of which were the Azerbaidzhani, Uzbek, Georgian, and Tatar.
I dunno why someone hasn’t dropped a bomb on the Georgian side of the Roki Tunnel?
I dunno why we don’t loan a flight of Reapers to the Georgians? Or, even one? Wouldn’t be hard to bring a column of tanks to a halt with a Hellfire or two placed appropriately.
The Russians provoked this war, by egging their South Ossetian puppets to antagonize the Georgians… and they were ready to move in shortly thereafter. Coincidences don’t just happen, they’re the result of careful planning.
Letting Russia conquer Georgia sets a terrible precedent. How much easier would it have been to defeat Germany in 1938….
Whiskey
“As a practical, not theoretical matter, Putin faces no risks whatsoever in crossing over into Turkey”
Really? Does he have that much control that he does not have to fear the economic repercussions of these actions?
What if things turned for the worse on the battlefield? How much did Iraq cost the US – can the Russia absorb these costs? Would people who had much to lose – i.e. the kleptocrats turn against him?
They seem to be basing much of their power on controlling energy which relies on existing markets. If this take a hit, so does their rubles. Would he still have support then?
Does he not have to consider such things?
We’ve been here before. A large force swarms across an international border in a surprise attack against a state run by a US educated President with good press in the American media. They have an overwhelming advantage in armor. The forces are driven back until they only occupy a small pocket. The US President has been caught off guard outside of Washington. He then crafts a policy which doesn’t escalate into full-blown war but nevertheless sends a signal that America won’t back down.
That is Korea, 1950. The President was Syngman Rhee. The “last stand” pocket was Pusan. The President Harry Truman, who was vacationing in Independence, Missouri. What followed was the Korean War. It was designed as a stalemate, a fact the commanding General, Douglas MacArthur didn’t understand. No matter. It worked.
Bush has fewer options. The Black Sea is a not open to US naval power. But America has a continuous corridor of allies leading from the Gulf (Iraq, Turkey) to Georgia’s border. That wouldn’t have been there if Saddam had been in power. My, how strangely history works. So Bush, while he cannot say, like Truman, “where are the carriers?” (And remember Truman was abolishing the Navy in favor of the Air Force at the time) has options.
What can we learn from history? One, that we must pick a realistic fallback position and hold. Two, that we must have calibrated patience. We must have strategic vision. We must also remember that we won’t have an easy time of it. The Reds were as active in the 1950s as they are today. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Wretchard,
What makes you think Turkey would be helpful to us? I honestly think they will triangulate between Moscow and Tehran, but if you see another angle to this your thoughts would be appreciated.
you wanna look back to history try pre WWII where the US and Russia had ample access to Oil and Minerals while Germany, Italy, and Japan didn’t. What did they do? They tried to seize it.
Wretchard: The answer to what the Russians plan to do with Georgia has been given. They plan to conquer it. Russian troops took the key town of Gori
Reuters: Two Reuters reporters in Gori said they saw no evidence of a substantial Russian presence in the town. One said he saw Georgian soldiers leaving in convoys. … “We are right now driving through the town and I see no trace of troops or military vehicles. It is absolutely deserted.”
Wretchard’s link at 6:27: US defense officials said they were unable to corroborate Georgian claims that Russian troops had pushed into Gori. “I don’t know why the Georgians are saying that,” said a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We don’t see anything that supports they are in Gori.”
Well, I invite neolex and ash to keep laughing. But if they think no wargame has been developed for what the Russians have been threatening for years, you’re crazy. Or perhaps you’re just like that Indian over at Orbat with all of his crazy snark.
One thing is certain: Russia is showing its hand. Another thing is certain — those folks represented by some on this thread who think this is Russia’s sphere are missing the point. Europe is their sphere, as far as they are concerned, or haven’t you figured that out yet?
So . . . to hell with what they think is their sphere. Bleed the MoFu’s. Bleed them dry.
And yes, that’s a hope, and obviously not based on anything strategic but my guess is most of what we’re doing here — even among those who think they have a handle on the topography and history, etc., is hoping and guessing.
signintel wrote:
“so Russian wins this one and Iran continues its rush to get the Bomb…plus we loose face in all respects.”
Yes and no. “Yes” in that Putin shows that overwhemling force achieves what it can always achieve in the short run. Russia wins. We are not getting into, and shouldn’t, a sudden war. “No” in that there is a longer term to consider. Bush looks prescient in arguing that democracies need to support one another and that you can’t trust despots. Europe is going to shiver, in several respects, this winter. It’s time to take sides again, if Europe has the guts. Which it doesn’t seem to have.
and
Armitage wrote:
“Russian incursions into Turkey would trigger Article V. It is unlikely that (a) Russia would attempt even that, and (b) that the Europeans and Canadians would allow a brazen attempt on a NATO ally to go unchecked. To not check it would mean the end of the alliance, completely and utterly, and that is a step too far for most of the members, doubly so in the face of a resurgent Russia (who was, of course, the principal reason for the alliance in the first place).”
Is “Armitage” handle and the treaty-esque comment an exquisite example of Belmont Club irony that is levels beyond the ken of even this overeducated readership?
Perhaps the British can advise NATO regarding how to provide the kind of intervention the UK provided in Basra? Guess that ‘soft power’ works better for carbon emissions capping than for stopping the bad guys.
If we cannot and will not do anything militarily against the Russians, I would like to see us do some things financially against them. How about freezing assets of Russians in the US? How about stopping all travel from Russia to the US? As it is, I’m tired of seeing Russian billionaires stumbling into their Hummer limos at JFK, along with their tatty, trampy women in garish tasteless clothes. What a crass bunch of low-lives.
Time to cut off their Amex Black cards, at the very least.
We might also want to start putting a beatdown on the Russian mob here in the US. God knows how many are here illegally. Some one way tickets back to Moscow would do nicely right about now.
Maybe we take this opportunity to send US fighter and attack aircraft to Georgia. And possibly go so far as to insert the 101st Airborne into southern Georgia. And just let them sit there.
That’s a justifiable move to defend an ally, and it sets a very hard line in the sand.
And we’ll also end up having Iran surrounded from all directions, with attack capability 250 miles from Tabriz….
The idea that Bush should have fled Beijing in a panic simply galls me. Fled home to do what?
This is no time for rash action or empty threats. It’s no time to get the Fifth Column leftists agitating against him. The Russians have obviously thought this out past the three days it takes to overrun Georgia.
We must be very careful not to play to their script. They need a pretext to move on Ukraine. No public potbanging is going to stop them from executing their plans.
You defeatists who relish the death of the West, I have nothing to say to you.
You defeatists who apparently don’t like what you’re seeing, however, should man up a little. Shame on you! I’m sorry that we haven’t turned all of the Russian forces into bone-flecked jam yet, but with a little more patience and a little less whining and crapping on Bush, you may yet see something you like.
Nobody has given up on Georgia yet – except you. If it’s all right with you, perhaps we can do this while also avoiding a wider war. Is that OK, or should we go right to nukes to show the hair on our chests? How annoyed you must have been when we didn’t move twenty divisions into AF in 2002.
Meanwhile, can a member of NATO be ejected? Tired of all this free riding. If only Poland weren’t between Germany and Russia…
Oh and c4, would you like me to point out your factual errors or would it only confuse you?
Turkey has had long historical antagonisms with Russia. They will triangulate up to a point, but they don’t want to see a dominant Russia. Their economic future is in the West. Turkey wants to keep Georgia in existence as a buffer state. It will probably do anything short of war to keep Georgia in existence. But Turkey needs cover. Therefore it must act in concert with NATO or the US to do something. What that ‘something’ constitutes is the whole nub of this problem.
Cold War Rule Number 1: no direct conflicts between superpowers.
Cold War Rule Number 2: proxy warfare is allowed.
Together they mean that the US is allowed to arm its proxies to fight a Russian occupation of Georgia. This is what the Sovs did in Vietnam when the US entered it directly. This is what America did in Afghanistan when Russia entered it directly. I submit that this is the obvious candidate of what America will do now that Russia has opted to invade Georgia. Russia will eventually occupy Georgia, but the Georgians will have a government in exile, perhaps in Turkey. And the fight will go simply because Georgia is a country distinct from Russia and has been through this before. During the time of the Czars, and against the Bolshies, I think, in 1921.
So in the short term we must persuade Russia not to take this drastic step. It’s stupid. But if the Russian assault continues, they will have yet another war on their southern marches and a new cold war on top of that.
Kingston, I actually like that idea. It seems to me the Russians would at least make an attempt to avoid hitting USAF transports. It doesn’t have the provocation of sending arms or forces, but does give the Russians something to think about. At this point, just about anything that will work to reduce the Russian political and strategic hold on the initiative is OK with me.
Mike Sylvester,
Reuters: Two Reuters reporters in Gori said they saw no evidence of a substantial Russian presence in the town. One said he saw Georgian soldiers leaving in convoys. … “We are right now driving through the town and I see no trace of troops or military vehicles. It is absolutely deserted.”
Wretchard’s link at 6:27: US defense officials said they were unable to corroborate Georgian claims that Russian troops had pushed into Gori. “I don’t know why the Georgians are saying that,” said a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We don’t see anything that supports they are in Gori.”
Yes I read that too. But taken in the whole context of operations it only means the Georgians left before the Russians got there. An orderly withdrawal, not one in the face of the enemy in pursuit, which the Georgians could not survive. I would be glad to be wrong and not see the Russians in Gori, but I think they’ll be there. The question will be settled as fact in a few hours and then we’ll know.
The Russians have to get rid of Saakashvili for demolishing morale and the Georgian government. Then they can install their puppet, probably the guy that Saakashvili had imprisoned last year and then released without charges. If Georgia can hold out for two months the Roki Tunnel shuts down due to weather. Russians will only have what they brought into the east. These troops that have invested in Senaki, Poti and Abkhazia came over the rail in Abkhazia that they just repaired.
I agree the long tail is vulnerable and only one good road for heavy armor in S. Ossetia to the Roki Tunnel. They plan to resupply from Poti.
The port of Batumi is still in Georgian hands and is guarded by a Turkish frigate that I believe that the Russian have not challenged or bothered.
Russian does not have the army we have and it has older equipment. They have to have a fast resolution. If that is denied then Stingers and Javelins can help a lot taking out Russian armor and air cover.
The Russians are not as strong as they were 20 years ago and we have the best fighting army today that is battle tested. Our equipment is light years above the Russians. However it was too expensive for Georgian’s to purchase and we are not that charitable.
The anti aircraft that Georgians had is probably ineffective since the Georgian radars were bombed. The Russians knew those exact locations. So it will be shoulder and truck fired weapons left to use.
imo Georgia is playing reasonably smart right now. They are giving up territory like Gori to preserve their fighting capability. The may also be trying to get the propaganda upper hand by drawing the Russian into Georgia proper, thus changing the perception of this being about South Ossetia and more about Russia invading Georgia. Perusing the news outlet will confirm this. As already stated, they will shift to fighting a defensive guerrila war alone, hoping to be resupplied and reinforced by the West.
The tide of battle will rapidly change if they can take out the Roki tunnel.
BBC is now reporting that the Russians have withdrawn from Gori.
I must admit that I have been impressed with their tactical flexibility. They avoided a pitched battle at Kodori gorge, raided Senaki and Zugdidi, and don’t seem interested in holding the ground at Gori.
Their linkage of kinetic action with the information war seems to be aimed at the purely political goal of toppling Saakashvili. The clumsy bear is showing a surprising agility.
They seem perfectly aware of the dangers of a protracted counterinsurgency in the Caucasus and appear to be confining themselves to probing attacks.
I would not be surprised to learn that the Railroad Troops have returned to finish the last 35 km.
Did Russia Employ Communist PKK Ahead of Georgia Invasion?
Well, if the Russians do activate an invasion force from Gyumri, Armenia, they will be truly throwing gasoline on a brush fire. Gyumri is about 50 miles from Kars. Kars, now in Turkey, was in an Armenian Democratic Republic until the Turks took it back. Before then it had been bouncing around between Ottomans and Russkies.
That ought to get Turkey’s attention, like totally, you know? The one major rail line between Kars and Tbilisi comes out of the Lesser Causasus to visit Armenian Gyumri before crossing them again to the Kur valley and on to to Tbilisi. Russian armor on that plain would have a flatland shot along the Kur river to Baku, Azerbaijan.
We should be very concerned about the Russian & Persian empires divvying up the little guys of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is, like, what they do, you know? Century-in; centuries-out; rise and fall; rise and fall; snore… compulsive little sh*ts, aren’t they?
The USofA has a compelling and legitimate interest in keeping a doorway to the West open through the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Our mortal enemies, the Persian Empires and the Russe, have long been the mortal enemies of the small fry who make up the peoples of those regions. Those people’s need strong Western support to have a little hope to prosper from their own labors.
So, if Ivan Stinky-Bear goes Ape over Georgia’s East, well, that pushes the Turks and the Azeri’s into active confrontation, like it or not. At that point Armenia is going to look like a very big mistake.
Anyone want to bet that, if they use their Armenian bases, them thar Russkies will end up keeping Abkhazia but the rest of Georgia will be restored (S. Ossettia will be forgotten), and Armenia will lose half its territory (plus Naghorno-Kerabakh) to make Azerbaijan into one contiguous shape.
And whoever commented about the Armenian diaspora, well, you actually know any Armenians in the diaspora, do you? Racist.
Mr. Vlad the Inhaler Putin really ought to declare victory and go home.
I’ve seen no angle yet along these lines:
For one: Russian troops have been in South Ossetia for years as ‘peace keepers’.
For another: the South Ossetians have had their own army. This was largely started by the South Ossetian army running raids in Georgia and the Russians responding when Georgia decided enough was enough.
And on top of that: Russia has been playing the nation of South Ossetia as a puppet state long before this has occurred. They have had billboards posting Putin as ‘our president’. Note they say they act in protection of ‘Russians’ instead of ‘South Ossetians’ as if South Ossetia was part of Mother Russia from the beginning.
This reminds me of Korea before the Korean war. This is nothing new. The Chinese/USSR using the North Koreans as a pawn to attack the Republic of Korea, then countering when China was in ‘danger.’ This is why I worry so much for Georgia. If anything, I wish the best for their army, and hope privately we have the balls to do something. We may not even have to send troops or planes. If they hole up in the Lower Caucasus we can do a repeat of Afganistan sending arms and armaments under the table (they seem to do the same thing). Heck, I’m all for sending nukes if need be (the chinese have done it. Putin’s done it with Iran. You bug our allies with profliferated nukes, we bug you with ‘em too). I personally think we already have nukes in South Korea.
BBC is now reporting that the Russians have withdrawn from Gori.
I must admit that I have been impressed with their tactical flexibility. They avoided a pitched battle at Kodori gorge, raided Senaki and Zugdidi, and don’t seem interested in holding the ground at Gori. Their linkage of kinetic action with the information war seems to be aimed at the purely political goal of toppling Saakashvili. The clumsy bear is showing a surprising agility. They seem perfectly aware of the dangers of a protracted counterinsurgency in the Caucasus and appear to be confining themselves to probing attacks.
The Russians are performing better than in the old days. But still, they’re only up against a few brigades. They have the air, they have the sea. They have the numbers. But they can’t bag the Georgian Army. In the information warfare sphere, the Georgians are whittling away at the Russian meme that this is all about South Ossetia. If the Russians don’t withdraw this will be about Georgia.
Taken together, the performance of both sides has created an opportunity. If the Georgians had collapsed or if the Russians had run an old style Kursk-type campaign, things would be far worse. Think of it as two fighters in a ring, both of whom can plausibly claim victory. You can get them to shake hands yet. Putin’s best move, as I wrote above, is to declare victory, beat his chest and go back into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But is Putin like that?
Time is running out for a US/NATO military response. Its been 72 hours plus and the Russian tank column is still moving south. Gori has been preemptively evacuated and the Georgians are pulled back to the capital 35 miles away. If the Russians are going for it, then they’ll be rolling toward Tblisi during the cover of darkness tonight. If we see the Russians outside Tblisi tomorrow morning,its all over. If the Russian halted their column outside of Gori,and stay put for the next 24 hours, then there may be a way out for everybody.
Protect your friends, destroy your enemies.
I have nothing valuable to add. However, I would like to say that I am getting an excellent education at the Belmont Club tonight.
Oh, and Wretchard…change your url anchor in your comment posts to reflect the relocation.
I’d like to say that I’m shocked and amazed of the number of posters on this forum and others who treat this as some sort of internal dispute between a bully (Saakashvili) and an ethnic minority, with the Russians in effect doing a very bad thing, but probably the only thing they could do.
It’s the FSB/KGB playbook – period. Or, it’s the pre-WWII isolationist playbook, avoid foreign entanglements, and the such. Take your pick. Neither describes the real world as it is.
Then there is the absolute fantasy (no insult intended) of perhaps giving nucs to Georgia, of rushing the 82nd Airborne in to key points (followed by what? their reduction via 500 Russian tanks and local air power?), of blowing Iran to hell just because it might make Putin feel bad, or of miracle resupply of superman SOCOM operators changing defeat to victory overnight. It’s not happening, folks.
And of course, there’s the obligatory “it’s all about oil.. oil is bad.. oil causes war..”.
Let’s get serious here, people.
1) This is well planned, naked Russian aggression. The situation on the ground in S. Ossetia was and is irrelevant, and particularly so to Putin. The Russians identified Georgia as a strategic goal on their shopping list for national expansion, and they’re just going to take it. They want the black sea naval base, they want the oil pipeline, and they want the strategic military road network (Southern terminus of the Sukhumi Military Road, the Georgian and Ossetian Military Roads).
2) Putin is a man of great ambitions. He has already set Russia on a course to restore the USSR. If Gorbachav and Yeltsin were the authors of the USSR’s demise, Putin will be the father of a new Union. The FSB is back in full force. Putin has eliminated by force every potential political opponent as well as the free press. He has set a path of confrontation against the U.S. for the past five years, and has returned to the prior Soviet strategy of working to isolate and divorce American from Europe.
3) Energy: Again, lose the left-wing Al Gore storybook fantasy. Natural resources are a strategic concern, and oil is the top concern – bar none. He who controls the world oil supply (if it can be done), controls the world. Oil is not evil. Oil is freedom for America and the West. Those who would deny America access to oil only strengthen our enemies. Those who are enemies of “oil” are also enemies of freedom.
4) We need to view the current Russian campaign and a potential Georgian capitulation in the long view. My heart goes out to the Georgians, but as Saakashvili said, it’s in their hands now. Air superiority, 500 tanks a 5:1 advantage in troops trumps anything the Georgians will put in the filed. Much as France and Eastern Europe were lost in the early days of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, Georgia may very well be lost to Russian. It’s is vital for the future of Georgia that the nucleus of their leadership and military not share the fate of the Polish military officers and families in the Katyń Forest. They are not fighting for territory, but for survival.
The world cannot wish away tyrants. While America might be able to ignore an insignificant little dictatorship minutes from her shore (that would be Cuba, folks), we cannot ignore a reinvigorated, rearming, territory-hungry Russia, a man of continental ambitions such as Chavez, or a lunatic such as Iran’s Ahmadinejad.
The first lessons I learned and took to heart during my Navy officer training was America’s position in the world as an island nation, the importance of “free sea lanes of communication”, and the value of power projection versus playing defense from one’s own back yard. We need to recognize Putin’s game. We would tend to think “limited excursion”, because the west simply could not fathom a nation state seizing control of another nation state by force. WE would not do it, not in Iraq, not in Iran, not in post WWII Europe, so certainly, no other civilized society would do so. Banish that thought from your FSB-confused little minds, and look at the facts as we know them.
Russian is making it’s move, and Putin will not stop unless stopped. He may not have the remilitarized society he needs to fulfill his ambitions, but he’s been moving methodically to put those pieces in place. A lot of planes, tanks, and submarines can be put into service in 2-3 years, if a country has the will to do so, and the petro-rubles.
We need to think in terms of a long term, military campaign. It may be a cold war, it will certainly be a hot one at times, but it’s not our choice and yet it’s coming. Whether Obama or McCain is the next President is now a pivotal issue. I really do not have a dog in that hunt, i.e. I can support neither candidate based on their history. However, at this point, the fantasy-world-view of the Democrats may prove fatal for America’s future security.
You want change that you can believe in? Well, ask a Georgian about the relevant value of change. It’s time to get real, America.
Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance
Tony Halpin in Gori
The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot.
As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half.
For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.
The retreat from Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, was as humiliating as it was sudden and dramatic. The Times witnessed scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, laden with soldiers, speeding through the town away from what Georgian officials claimed was an imminent Russian invasion.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4509692.ece
Wretchard:
“Yes I read that too. But taken in the whole context of operations it only means the Georgians left before the Russians got there.”
—————-
Or else it only means that the Russians did not enter Gori.
How far from Georgia are the pumping stations for Russia’s oil and gas pipelines going to Europe?
Give Russia a firm but nonspecific warning to get out of Georgia. If they fail to do so, supply the Georgian military with cruise missiles targeting each and every pumping station. Time their launches so they strike their targets within seconds of each other Russia has, after all, gone after Georgia’s pipeline. This would only be tit-for-tat. And it would cost them tens of billions of dollars.
This attack has disturbing parallels. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, G. K. Chesterton warned that the future peace of Europe depended on helping the small countries of Eastern Europe resist German aggression. In 1932, he even warned that if nothing was done the next war would begin over a border dispute between Germany and Poland, precisely what happened seven years later.
This is precisely the same situation, merely displaced southward, as Russia attempts to push its power toward the oil-rich Middle East.
–Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
Jerry @7:51 pm
It’s a bit more like: Support your friends, encourage your enemy to destroy themselves.
Well, my part will be played whenever I attend every NHL and AHL hockey game. I will loudly boo and heckle every damn Russian player on the ice. No mercy from me. I don’t want them here. Just like the Muslims, send the savages packing.
I don’t care how talented they are, I don’t want Russian hockey players in North America anymore.
This is almost like tribal warfare of the American West, or, if you prefer, the Caucusus.
Putin has quite chastised Shaakashvili. (Funny how we aren’t speaking of Russia’s president … ) His best move WOULD be to declare victory and call it quits. More images like the victims of the Gori apartment blocks would make the Russians pariahs for a long time.
“The Russians provoked this war, by egging their South Ossetian puppets to antagonize the Georgians… and they were ready to move in shortly thereafter.
Coincidences don’t just happen, they’re the result of careful planning.”
—
ObiJohn, get w/the program!
The story is, all responsiblity is Georgia’s, none the new proto-Soviets.
…and it isn’t only the left that says so!
buddy, you asked what more Bush could have said. Both McCain and Obama gave much better responses to the Georgian situation than Bush:
McCain
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/mccain-calls-for-halt-of-violence-in-georgia/
Obama
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/obama-emerges-to-talk-about-georgia/
fred, do you think the events of the weekend will affect NA players contemplating contracts in the KHL? Are there any other sports in Russia that hire non-Russians?
And stop taking stupid pills. You want to turn off the lights in Western Europe? Now THAT’s a way to make friends and influence people.
Now, Russian REFINERIES would be a valid target.
This war could flip as fast as the Russian adventure at the other end of the asian landmass did just over 100 years ago, The Japanese eliminated the Russian Navy in 45 minutes. The Russian Black Sea fleet with troop transports could vanish just as fast. If it becomes a shooting war I expect the first shots will be the disappearance of Russian submarines followed by surface ships desperately and hopelessly running in panic. The Turkish government and their military are deciding which way to jump right now. Could they allow a Russian triumph? Yes but how could that be in their interest? Even if it came with a German promise to support EU membership it would not be worth having in Putin’s world. Better for the Turks to line up with the East Europeans and Americans and the real pro-American Sunnis of Iraq. The Iranians may be more likely to find allies among the Kurds.
Here are some excerpts from an article published by the Jamestown Foundation today:
http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2373302
Moscow was disconcertingly taken by surprise with the sharp escalation of hostilities in South Ossetia last Friday. …. the Kremlin seriously overestimated its ability to dominate the situation in the conflict zone. The large-scale military exercises conducted across the North Caucasus in July were supposed to demonstrate Russia’s superiority in projecting power. In parallel, the withdrawal of the railway troops from Abkhazia in early August symbolized Moscow’s flexibility and responsiveness to the peace proposals advanced by Germany.
Putin was confident that his performance at the NATO Bucharest summit had effectively blocked Georgia’s Atlantic aspirations; several stern “warnings” should have ensured that Georgia would not dare make any pro-active move. … The issue for Putin was not only that he had never expected Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to launch a blitzkrieg in the opening day of the Olympic games, but also that the crucial stage in Moscow was left for Medvedev to perform. It was only at 15:00 local time that Russian Security Council gathered to consider the available options, and Medvedev was acutely aware that any sign of hesitation on his part would destroy the little credibility he had gathered during the first 100 days of his presidency. … By that time, however, the Russian massive armored column was already approaching Tskhinvali, and it could only be assumed that it was indeed Medvedev who had given the “go-ahead” order earlier in the morning.
In the highly stressful first day of an unexpected war, Medvedev had to disregard both the agreements that limited Russia’s peacekeeping role of monitoring the ceasefire (with no provisions for “peace enforcement”) and the domestic legislation that required a resolution of the Federation Council authorizing the use of Armed Forces outside Russia’s borders. …
The immediate task of the military operation was clear–to push back the Georgian troops that had captured Tskhinvali after heavy bombardment, but the heights around the city were taken only on Sunday. The key problem for the Russian troops was that reinforcements and supplies could be moved in only by one narrow road under fire from Georgian positions. The lack of quick demonstrative success prompted Moscow to opt for punishing air-strikes …. This disproportional response allowed Saakashvili to portray Georgia as a victim of aggression and generated international pressure for a ceasefire.
Medvedev, however, had to listen first to the generals who argued that control over Tskhinvali could not be secured without opening the key supply line to the north, which required storming several Georgian villages, from Tamarasheni to Kemerti. The population of this enclave had to be evacuated to Georgia ….
Prior to the war, Moscow had been very irritated by [South Ossetian] Eduard Kokoity’s corrupt regime, but now to all intents and purposes it owns South Ossetia and has not only to provide aid but to resolve the status issue. ….
bush should fly into Tblisi with an unopened executive order in his hand. hold a press conference and tell the world “this will not stand”, and announce a new airlift that he will direct from on-site.
WK, if I were a North American player I would tell my agent, if I don’t have an NHL or AHL contract I’m not going to Russia to play. But, I have no idea of how the NHLPA will deal with this issue.
Ovechkin and Malkin will hear from us. And I hope they get the message.
Well, Charles, I’d love some border security. Thing is, you don’t provide security against illegals with F-22s. F22s can, however, ensure the Russians don’t screw over Georgia.
////////////
Nice bravado.
Belmonters are some of the best informed around. but most needed some maps and history provided by wretchard to even find the area of contention.
we don’t have an ideological battle with the russians. that business is done.
there is zipperhead zero strategic or ideological interest at stake here.
From Reuters:
“Russia seized the Senaki base and invaded Gori near South Ossetia, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said by phone. Russian troops also took control of the main highway linking the east and the west of the country, Saakashvili was cited as saying by RIA.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in comments on CNN that Russia has “to attack Georgian military targets” to “protect the lives of Russian citizens.”(Wow a John Kerry moment!)
Russia has no plans to move on the Georgian capital, the Interfax news service cited a Defense Ministry official as saying.”
tick toc, tick toc …
and if the cia can’t covertly destroy those god damn russian oil fields, than re-direct 100% of their budget to offset the cost of fuel.
Point One: The war aint over till the fat lady sings.
Point Two; We have not yet begun to fight.
Point Three: This is not the Cold War, Cold War grand strategy was directed by fools convinced Americans didn’t have the balls to pay the price for taking out the Soviet Union, and Russia is no Soviet Union.
Point Four: Armenia and Azerbaijan are American allies. Armenian and Azeri forces have been trained by the U.S. Armenia and Azerbaijan can trust America to act as an honest broker. They cannot trust Russia.
Point Five: When the Philippines asked that we remove our bases from their territory, we did so. Countries such as Georgia and Armenia have asked that Russia remove her bases from their territory, only to get delays and road blocks.
Point Six: When your choice is between a distant country that treats you honestly, supports your efforts at economic development, and provides assistance of all sorts when it just seems like you might need it; and a neighbor who threatens you, engages in destabilizing your government, won’t remove it’s troops from your territory regardless of your actions, and wants your resources however it can get them; it would be a pretty stupid move to ally with the nearby bully.
@sigintel
It is unlikely that Russians will advance at night. They will be sitting ducks. They dont have the fancy night vision for every troop, and it is easy for Georgians who know their own terrain to set up ambushes. They will likely spend the night in a defensive perimeter in Gori, and have teams take out Georgian artillery in the hills, maybe thats why they hesitated to go in. This also gives them time to gather more info about possible Western response to adjust their actions accordingly.
It is important to recall a few things about the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afgh. in 1979 and the US response back then:
1) The US Prez was a DOVISH DEMOCRAT, and even he quickly signed off on a large-scale proxy war against the Reds. Oh, and he had 12 months to get it off the ground, not 4.
2) The entire Dem. Party (representing US doves) was solidly in favor of the proxy war against the Reds.
3) Afgh. had not been under Russian domination for 67 of the previous 84 years–Georgia has.
The points I am trying to make are:
1–There is not nearly as much strong, unbreakable US consensus in favor of confronting Putin in Georgia as there was for confornting Breshnev in Afgh. What is surprising is even the “hawkish” Repubs are being rather mealy-mouthed. The Dems, incl Obama, are predictably “pro-restraint” [paralysis]. So, us educated engaged folks here at the Belmont Club are effectively freaks, outta touch w/the media-numbed Joe Dokes who are against “Bush war-mongering.”
2–Russia is likely to bully back more nastily at “interference” in Georgia thand they cd for interference in Afgh.
The good news difference is that, back in 1979, Soviet military power was really peaking and in many ways on a parity or even stronger than ours. Today there is no comparison, and, as some have noted, our forces and infrastructure in Iraq and provide unique opportunities for force projection in the not-too-distant Caucusus.
BTW, I totally agree w/those who suggest this long-planned operation by Putin was designed as (1) an oil grab, and (2) a sabotage of any planned US move against Iran.
Forgot this one…
Point Seven: This war still has a bandage on its navel.
Earlier John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations now at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said:
“What is interesting about the US response is that you have the McCain campaign in one corner immediately understanding the significance of Russia’s aggression and in the opposite you have the Bush administration standing with the Obama campaign taking a much more diluted stance.”
Shivermetimbers: Missile defense aside, I wonder where China stands on the Russian invasion right now. That this happened on the opening night of the Olympics was major – face is important to China. This was their event to remind the world of their rich history and how far they have come.
This event was major for them and the Russians spoiled it a bit.
I was thinking about that, too. I wonder if this was the price?
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/china_russia_end_island_dispute
I have written in previous comments that we should spend a lot more effort analyzing the intrigues, manipulations and aspirations of the Ossetians and stop trying to attribute all developments in this crisis only to the Russians and Georgians. The Ossetians themselves have been driving much of these developments, because the Ossetians want to take control of their own nation’s future.
Here are some excerpts from an article published by the Jamestown Foundation on Thursday, August 7, a few hours before the crisis began.
http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2373294
Military tension in Georgia’s separatist region of South Ossetia has been building up for several months. In June … military clashes were happening on an almost daily basis …. Last week the tension escalated into clashes that left at least six Ossetians dead and dozens of Ossetians and Georgians wounded. ….
The latest outbreak of hostilities began on July 31 after two roadside bombs hit a Georgian police Toyota SUV near the Georgian village of Eredvi. Six Georgian policemen were wounded. …. The road leading to Eredvi was built by the Georgians to bypass Ossetian roadblocks near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. ….
The roadside bomb attack on July 31 was followed the next day by bloody clashes. …. The Ossetians admitted six dead and 15 wounded, many hit by sniper fire. The Georgians admitted nine wounded. ….
The Ossetians began an evacuation of women and children to North Ossetia, called for volunteers from the North Caucasus to join the fight against Georgia, and threatened to attack Georgian cities and to cleanse the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia. The South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity claimed that Georgians living in South Ossetia were begging to be “liberated” from the forces of the regime in Tbilisi.
Kokoity has announced that some 300 volunteers have arrived in South Ossetia to fight the Georgians and that more are coming. Most of the “volunteers” seem to be South Ossetians that were serving in police and other militarized formations in North Ossetia and were sent south as reinforcements. ….
Yesterday the Ossetians were reporting fierce battles with Georgian forces, while Georgian authorities and Russian peacekeepers reported only shooting incidents in which no one was injured.
The Ossetian authorities have announced the cancellation of a planned meeting with the Georgian side in Tskhinvali on August 7, while the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it believed the meeting had to go ahead. …. The Ossetians insist that it is getting worse. …..
A public gap has opened between the Ossetian and Russian authorities. The South Ossetian spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva has publicly expressed dismay: “War is coming, but everyone, including Russia, is turning a blind eye. Russian statements are not helping us.”
If the Ossetians succeed in provoking a major confrontation, they will be in trouble. Tskhinvali is semi-surrounded by Georgian positions and is virtually indefensible. To prevent the fall of Tskhinvali thousands of Russian troops with hundreds of pieces of armor must invade South Ossetia through the Rokki tunnel and be rushed forward. High casualties are possible and this would be a clear act of aggression.
Kokoity and other Ossetian officials seem to be bent on provoking a major Russian intervention, but apparently not everyone in Moscow is ready to plunge headlong into war.
@neolex …you may be right that the Russians are taking a breather, reloading and spotting the Georgian artillery tonight. The US/NATO needs at least another 24 hours to work the diplomatic channels. I doubt that the Russians will give it to them.
I’m still of the opinion that Saakashvili attacked into S Ossetia because he knew the Russians were getting ready to move in on him first.
What the other reason would he have to make that move ?
The Russian wargames, the special railroad repairs, the naval landings,a nd the dis-info campaign all point to a long planned invasion, most likely timed to start after the initiation of hostilities with Iran, to give the Russians diplomatic cover.
This was no intelligence failure, this is a very deliberate, well planned spoiling action, and the Georgians are conducting themselves magnificently, with just a *little* help from their friends.
There are tremendous benefits to the West in preempting the Russians, an important one being that now it is the Allies who will have political and diplomatic cover when the move comes on Iran.
The benefits to the Georgians… not many, keep them in your prayers.
Old Salt,
That was publishable. That was worth money. You said it better than I did.
Alexander Soltzenitzen died , maybe the last living conscience among the vodka addled Cossacks of Russia. A week later Czar Putin the Terrible says he’s going to try Georgian leaders for war crimes. That probably got a chuckle out of Stalin and Beria in Hell for the sheer audacity.
In terms of fallback positions, Armenia must be considered to be Russian territory on a de facto level. Armenia not only has a Russian military base, but it is strongly allied with Iran against Azerbaijan (due to the Nagorno-Karabakh war). For obvious reasons, Armenia will oppose Turkey for the next five hundred years, which presently means that it effectively opposes NATO as well.
This leaves Georgia’s border with Turkey as a base of support. Yet, this is tricky for Georgia because of the historic hostility between Orthodox Christians and Islam. Russia will almost certainly claim that Georgia’s president has become a puppet of the Turks, which is precisely why Georgia is so desperate for western aid. Even if aid is routed through Turkey, the aid must not be perceived in the Caucasus as Turkish in origin lest Russia gain an important propaganda point.
On the other hand, Romanian supplies and perhaps even Romanian troops would be very welcome in Georgia. The presence of Romanian help in Georgia would undermine any Russian attempt to use religion as a weapon, it would be helpful in its own right, and it would even be in Romania’s geopolitical interests!
If Georgia were clever enough, it’s possible that Georgia could raise volunteer brigades from Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece. Perhaps even Ukraine. This would be especially possible if Russia were portrayed as selling out Serbs in Kosovo after Serbia sold out its state oil company to Gazprom.
Regarding NATO and the consequences of a Russian thrust into Turkey, remember that not all NATO members agree on everything. I’m sure Greece wouldn’t mind seeing a little instability in Turkey. They might even set their sights on liberating Constantinople.
Yep, it’s all about flexibility. GWB specifically allowed Russia flexibility to pull out by saying “IF it’s true.” That’s why all of the denials about occupying forward towns by Russian diplomats vs. Putin’s “logical end” comment. US is not standing down. Russia will not advance beyond probing attacks, which are all about staking out a negotiating position. They can pull back from the probes and allow ‘victory’ for both sides. Putin wants a foothold in the Caucasus. That’s his goal. Saakashvili will make that a major pain in the ass though, with constant agitating, hence their wanting him out. They think he’s given up his ability to peacefully cede SO and AbK. I don’t think US is going to let them have Saakashvili.
LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Georgia is calling for a United Nations’ peacekeeping force to intervene to halt its conflict with Russia, a Georgian diplomat said.
“The statements and expressions of good intentions didn’t work. We need a very, very forceful action,” Giorgi Badridze, acting head of the Georgian Embassy in London, said when asked what Georgia wanted the European Union to do to try to stop the crisis over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
“We need troops (on the) ground,” he told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
“Let it be a U.N.-mandated international force, ideally EU,” he said.
R
A way has to be found to make Georgia a death trap for the Russian army. If that is not done, those troops are going to think they are better than they really are. Make it a place where they go to die and you break Russia’s army’s will to take risks and fight hard. Then, all they think about is just surviving.
@Sylwester
The Ossetians are pawns. Their leaders sold their own people as hostages to Russian interests, just like PA in Israel. Most of the government in South Osetia is composed of FSB appointees. I will provide a lot more details, if anyone is interested.
Everyone is missing the big picture. This is not about oil or Iran or even Georgia. This is about all of Central Asia.
For the last 15 years, Georgia and Central Asia has been building a rail and road system that would connect Central Asia to the West bypassing Russia and allowing Central Asian economy to be independent of Russia. Google TRACECE, the 14 nation project doing this since 1993. This was a transportation link from Romania to Georgia to Azerbijian, across the Caspian to Turkmenistan and then the rest of Centeral Asia.
By taking out Georgia, Russia has cut off this route entirely. All transportation routes now must go through Russia. This basically means Russia controls Central Asia’s economies again. Russia can now methodically reclaim its lost Central Asian empire without any infererence from the West.
neolex, that makes perfect sense.
If Russia can make anyone think they are serious about choking of an alternate transportation route, it’s just negotiating chips on the table.
Time is running out for a US/NATO military response. Its been 72 hours plus and the Russian tank column is still moving south. Gori has been preemptively evacuated and the Georgians are pulled back to the capital 35 miles away. If the Russians are going for it, then they’ll be rolling toward Tblisi during the cover of darkness tonight. If we see the Russians outside Tblisi tomorrow morning,its all over. If the Russian halted their column outside of Gori,and stay put for the next 24 hours, then there may be a way out for everybody.
One thing that appears certain: The Russians were observing and studying our line of attach during the initial Iraq assault. They’re not as interested in demolishing cities nor raping women (though there’s still time for that). They seem to be bypassing cities or places that can slow their advance. This looks more like a “thunder run” than a typical Russian assault. The logistics tail deserves a whole lot of attention; it will inform us on Russian intentions better than anything else. (I sure as heck hope the Georgian are destroying fuel depots and local filling stations as they retreat.)
Mike Sylwester:
I’m not so sure that the S. Ossetians would have acted so boldly had they not known that the Russians were willing to back them with substantial force. They ambushed Georgian police with IEDs and then called for volunteers from the North slopes of the Caucuses to help. Indeed, that was what Russia called their troops on the first day, as they moved through the pass. That rhetorical coordination should indicate the level of Russian involvement in this affair.
A good portion of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sortied within days of the Georgian incursion into S. Ossetia — ready to fight, and land troops no less. This is no small undertaking. Russia’s fleet has not been well funded since the Soviet collapse. This year’s deployment of the Kuznetsov carrier group was a milestone in Russian fleet readiness.
When I factor in the recent repair of the rail line into Abkahzia, the drone shoot-down incident earlier this year, and the PKK bombing of that famous Georgian pipeline a week ago (when was the last time the PKK operated outside of Turkey/N.Iraq/N.E.Iran?), it becomes clear to me that the Russian invasion was in the works for a good while. This was no sudden response to “war crimes” real or imagined. The fact that Russia now publicly labels the Georgian President a war criminal suggests to me that they will stay in Georgia until such time that Saakashvili is delivered to a Russian tribunal, and a Russian puppet takes charge in Tbilisi.
@ Konyok:
Ahah! yes, Saperavi is a great little dry red wine. Hearty and berry-fruity so it must go really well with Lamb, mmmmm. First thing this a.m. I went to Moskva-Tbilisi, a local Russe bakery and bought fresh Chebureki. They’re gone now but I bet they’d have been perfect with the wine.
I’ll tell ya, there ain’t NOTHING one-dimensional about Russian expats or expats of the various people’s they think they own. Their loss, our gain! God Bless America!
cjr,
Can you provide a link?
Meanwhile, Russians began an operation to remove Georgian forces from the upper Kodori Gorge.
This leaves Georgia’s border with Turkey as a base of support. Yet, this is tricky for Georgia because of the historic hostility between Orthodox Christians and Islam. Russia will almost certainly claim that Georgia’s president has become a puppet of the Turks, which is precisely why Georgia is so desperate for western aid. Even if aid is routed through Turkey, the aid must not be perceived in the Caucasus as Turkish in origin lest Russia gain an important propaganda point.
There are two contexts here. One is the Cold War. The other is the Great Game. Those rivalries will be pursued, now and into the future, no matter what. History will not stop. Russia will not cease to exist. Nor will China, Turkey, India and Iran. Nor will the United States. But their rivalries cannot jump the levees and plunge the world into a World War. We can compete without world wars.
Like 1914. Nothing the Georgians can do of their own accord will amount to much. But neither could events in the Balkans until the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated there. That pulled in one guarantor after the other and the Western Front ensued. There were miscalculations everywhere for two reasons. Nobody understood where the bright lines were and where they led. Second, policy makers got stampeded. Right now NATO is far further forward, much stronger comparatively and much better positioned than it was in the Cold War. This provides options. Allows patience. Let’s the West fight the Long Game. And the Long Game allows these things to be fixed patiently without recourse to 1914s.
@ konyok, et al:
By the way, Kahketi District, the source of Saperavi wine, is the Easternmost District of Georgia!!! Why is that a good thing? Well…
IF Georgia retains control of the flatlands bordering Azerbaijan (everything East of Tbilisi), well, then Georgian wine–at least Saperavi–can continue to be produced and sold to gluttonous imbibers in America–like me, f’rinstance.
Bring it on, baby! DRINK GEORGIAN WINE! Enjoy winning the war against the Retrograde Empires. Yowzah!
Neolex
Sorry, got the name wrong. Google “Traceca”
This is the best summary:
http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr28/pdf/f50_gor.pdf
The 14 nation project started in 1993 and Russia was not pleased with it.
Aether:
“I’m still of the opinion that Saakashvili attacked into S Ossetia because he knew the Russians were getting ready to move in on him first. What the other reason would he have to make that move ?
The Russian wargames, the special railroad repairs, the naval landings,a nd the dis-info campaign all point to a long planned invasion, …. ”
———-
Certainly the Georgians likewise had been conducting wargames and preparing their infrastructure.
Today’s Wall Street Journal describes the Georgians’ decision to launch its artillery attack on Tskhinvali as follows:
http://www.collegejournal.com/public/article_print/SB121834170757727521.html
—
Georgia’s President Saakashvili blames Russia for the clash. In the Sunday interview, he said Georgia’s Thursday military actions were a response to a heavy Russian assault near South Ossetia — and the news that 150 Russian tanks were approaching the region.
“Our military said the only option we had was to use long-range artillery” and move up to destroy a key bridge near the city of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital, Mr. Saakashvili said.
—
Assuming this is true, this long-range, inaccurate, reckless method of destroying one bridge was a fateful mistake. If the Georgians felt they should destroy the bridge, then they needed to use a method that did not cause so much collateral damage of Tskhinvali’s civilian population.
Also, what exactly is meant by Saakashvili’s phrase “150 Russian tanks were approaching the region”? Does that mean that the tanks were still in Northern Ossetia, on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains? Were the 150 tanks so close to the bridge that an immediate artillery barrage was essential? Or was there still quite a lot of distance, time and mountains between the 150 tanks and the bridge?
Here are some questions that Saakashvili should be compelled to answer:
Where were the 150 tanks located when Georgia started shooting long-range artillery at the bridge near Tskhinvali?
Was any other method of destroying the bridge considered? Was potential harm to civilians considered?
Describe the artillery attack on the bridge in detail. Beginning and ending times. How far away? What weapons? How many shells? How accurate?
Any targets besides the bridge? If so, what other targets? Describe all such attacks in detail.
OK, the Russian’s probing attacks are to clear a buffer between the entrenched Russian position and Georgian artillery.
Iran has, in effect, been threatening a regional war and Russia has made it clear that they will support Iran if it comes down to that. The Russians have been likely licking their chops figuring how they can reconsolidate lost territories in such an event to “protect” their interests. Russia has been posturing for this for some time as far as I’m conserned. It seems that they have jumped the gate on their plan though.
Plastic Snoopy:
“I’m not so sure that the S. Ossetians would have acted so boldly had they not known that the Russians were willing to back them with substantial force.”
————-
I am sure that the expectation of Russian support emboldened the Ossetians. That does not prove, however, that the Ossetians were not acting largely on their own initiative and it does not prove that Russia was causing all the Ossetians’ actions.
I am sure that the expectation of US support emboldened the Georgians. That does not prove, however, the the Georgians were not acting largely on their own initiative and it does not prove that the USA was causing all the Georgians’ actions.
@cjr:
By taking out Georgia, Russia has cut off this route entirely. All transportation routes now must go through Russia. This basically means Russia controls Central Asia’s economies again.
Spot on!
@wretchard:
And the Long Game allows these things to be fixed patiently without recourse to 1914s.
Which means drinking Georgian wine is sorta like buying War Bonds back in 1942, no?
Brother Fedya!
The Khvanchakara has also proven to be an excellent wine. It is intense with a cherry-like touch of sweetness. This must have been the fuel for Koba-Stalin’s all nighters.
Are Chebureki Georgian? I thought they were Crimean Tatar. Regardless, they are delicious! My mouth waters thinking about them.
Like most Americans, I am third generation expat. Volga German peasant on the high plains. Oddly, I learned Russian …
I urge everybody find some Georgian wine and try it. You’ll like it!
Russian PR at Work
SUKHUMI, August 11 (Itar-Tass) – The Russian contingent in Abkhazia is ready to repel a possible aggression by Georgia and will not allow repetition of the scenario of Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, a source from the headquarters of the Russian contingent said on Monday.
“The threat of Georgia’s attack against Abkhazia is real, and we take it into consideration. To rebuff it a powerful contingent has been created in Abkhazia, which will not allow combat actions ‘under the Georgian scenario’, as it happened at the initial stage of the intrusion of Georgian troops in South Ossetia,” the source told Tass.
He said the Russian contingent is over 9,000 strong. The bulk of it consists of units of airborne troops having over 350 units of military hardware and armaments with all necessary reinforcing means. “They are a powerful deterring factor against Georgia’s aggression,” the source emphasized.
The officer at the headquarters said the Russian contingent has implemented all tasks set by the present moment. “We have prevented Georgia’s planned armed incursion into Abkhazia, ensured protection of civilians and prevented a humanitarian catastrophe,” the source stressed.
Nothing more to watch here folks. Russia’s hunkering down in Abk and SO for the long haul and will rebuff Saakashvili’s attempts to bring in UN or EU negotiators.
OldSalt:
I’ve been thinking that the Russians must have studied very carefully our incursions into Baghdad. They have been paying attention.
It does make sense that they are attempting to clear the Georgian artillery away from their positions, but it really does seem that their tactical objectives have not been to gain territory, but rather to control it.
They have been successful in this strategy to the extent that we blog furiously our speculations, tell ourselves that the next 24 hours will reveal what is happening and then repeat ourselves 24 hours later still no wiser.
From Pravda…This is how the Russians see it. Sec.of State Rice is to blame…amazing!
USA approves Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia and Russia (Pravda) Aug. 11, 2008
US presidential runoff John McCain said that Russia should not interfere in the conflict in South Ossetia. The pro-Georgian propaganda in the US media testifies to the same opinion. It brings up the idea that the Georgian aggression against the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia has been coordinated with the US administration. Nevertheless, all arguments of US politicians and experts (Pravda.ru interviewed some of them) do not withstand any criticism.
snip
Apparently, McCain and other US experts believe that the extermination of thousands of innocent people and the destruction of their houses can be referred to as the retrieval of the territorial integrity.
It is worthy of note that Russia’s Air Force already prevented Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia a month ago. The situation aggravated soon after Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Georgia. It is not ruled out that Ms. Rice okayed the beginning of the war in the region on behalf of the US administration.
Taking McCain’s remarks into consideration, one shall assume that the USA has provided certain guarantees to Georgia. The Georgian troops would not have opened fire on Russian peacemakers otherwise. Such battles inevitably lead to a war against Russia. Georgia would not dare to proceed so alone, without the support from the West. Furthermore, Georgia asked the USA to withdraw its contingent from Iraq to redeploy the military men to South Ossetia.
The evidence to proof the USA’s hand behind the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia can be found in Western media. Western news agencies, Reuters, for example, have been distributing countless photographs depicting Russia’s supposed atrocities in Georgia. Such photos along with adequate headlines can be found in practically all US newspapers (The New York Times is the best example for it). All of them unanimously accuse Russia of aggression against Georgia, but they do not say a word about Georgia’s actions against civilians in S. Ossetia.
@Sylwester
Are you ignorant of the situation in the region, or purposefully trying to spread misinformation?
All of those questions are irrelevant. If 150 tanks were out of the Russian gates, what other questions can there be?
@ Konyok
Oy, товаришь Коняк (читаешь по-русский?) (who knows if Wretchard’s blog or your browser support Cyrillic? —
Well, now we’ll see: do you see my broken, pitiful “Russkie Yazik”, above? Heck, do YOU read “po-Russkie Yazik?”
We gotta do something to help them-thar Gruzinii, da, moi brat?
NATO is a dead institution. It has as much relevance as the Holy Roman Empire.
More to the point, to be clear, I don’t think Turkey will care much if the Russians move over their border temporarily to wipe out the Georgians. The Georgians are not their friends and Russia *is* a mutual friend (of Iran) as well as the big man in the neighborhood. If John Gotti leaps over your backyard fence to whack one of his underbosses, you suddenly have an attack of blindness.
Putin can rely on existing demand for oil which in the short term is inelastic. He faces long term risks, but relatively few short term ones. As long as he keeps the money flowing in to his thugs, he does not have any risk domestically. He’s immune to the pressures that undid George Bush. He kills his critics in the Press, he cares zilch about the international community, and pays off the only men who matter in Russia — his thugs. He can easily sustain 50% losses of his combat troops because he is a mini-Stalin.
Similarities to Korea? Not much — Russia has thousands of nukes and can hand off deniable ones to Osama. THAT is a trump card. So America in Georgia is impotent. But Iran can be made a counter-example of. Which would make statements and unmistakeable ones at that, while crossing off our own to-do list and eliminating an enemy.
It IS America alone. That much is certain.
[Doing "financial things against Russia" is like Canute with the Sea. Russia has oil. It's expensive. Everyone needs it short-term. Demand is not elastic -- you still have to get to work, ships/planes need to run. There will ALWAYS be willing/desperate buyers.]
“Their economic future is in the West.” — not true Wretchard. Turkey’s exports to Europe are declining, they will never be admitted to the EU, and their future is in the Gulf, particularly Iran which needs cheap Muslim labor and Turkish contractors. As Islamists, and therefore anti-Westerners, Turkey’s leadership will not allow any proxy warfare against Russia who they view as an ally against decadent Western consumerism, etc. Besides Georgia is collapsing faster than France in May 1940. There simply is not any will to fight. Westerners with any amount of money and modern life don’t fight — that’s the domain of tough, un-modern outsiders. Like Russians, Afghans, or the uber-professional US military, in many ways an outsider to Modern American consumerist society with it’s liberalist certainties. Fear and brutality are not everything, nor are they unbeatable, but they always win against liberal doubt.
Wretchard, I love ya but you’re just completely wrong here.
A pretty good, hard-to-argue-with analysis here at the JPost:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218104259471&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Brat Fedya,
The Cyrillic comes across just fine.
I read better than I speak, Russian is an unforgiving language for the foreigner.
Yes, we must support Georgia. Putin represents the dark Russia of the Black Hundreds and pogroms. He must be opposed.
And I agree. Right now, the easiest and most pleasant way is to DRINK GEORGIAN WINE!
Sigintel,
That is EXACTLY the same spin as “We put Saddam in power!” And the same people spin it …
Russians move 2 SS-21 Medium Range Ballistic Missile Launchers into South Ossetia
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2060310/posts
See link for pics of a spent one apparently used to deliver cluster munitions in Poti.
@Konyok:
Оы, ето правб, он можеть читать по-русский на блоге Речарда, да?
[trans. (forgive my excreble Russian) Oy, it's true, one CAN read in Cyrillic/Russian on Wretchard's blog, yes?] — Even if one HAS drunk 2/3 bottle of Saperavi–whoo hoo!)
NEXT: Where can I get those crazy cow-horn–can’t set them down–Goblets those crazy “Gruzinii” looo-ove to drink from???
PS: all I know about chyeburyekii is they are awfully doggone tasty. Me, I likes them fresh out of the fryer, mmmm-hmmm. But I also likes them awful darn good after they’se been sittin’ for a while.
Am I nuts, or whot?
Wretchard, your 7:41:
Your analysis has been spot on – not prescient – but spot on. Please speak to some of the disheartened Americans on this board, who by their constant hangwringing, defeatest “if only we had” rhetoric and hugely bad case of give-up-itis, have continued to jack me up.
To paraphrase Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: “We are Americans!”
@whiskey NATO may be a dead institution …but
BRUSSELS, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) — Russia is going to call for an extraordinary meeting with NATO so that the alliance can be informed of Moscow’s activities in South Ossetia, said Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin on Monday.
“We insist it happen tomorrow when NATO ambassadors are going to meet Georgian minister of foreign affairs,” Rogozin told reporters.
He wanted NATO to take into account information given by Moscow before the alliance makes any decisions or statements.
Rogozin wanted the meeting to be at the level of ambassadors.
Rogozin blamed Georgian forces for atrocities in South Ossetia after they entered the region on Thursday night.
He said 2,500 civilians have been killed so far and 18 Russian peacekeepers also lost their lives, with 14 others reported missing.
Rogozin said the Georgian forces committed genocide and ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia and that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili should be held responsible.
“We call that from the point of view of international law genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is no other definition,” he said.
Бля!, да здесь одни Русские
Ленин жил, Ленин живет, Ленин будет жить
@sigintel
Most likely Russia will convey to the West that it has found evidence of the Saakashvili war crimes and intends to pursue and prosecute him. Maybe arrange, for him to flee into exile, also announce that Georgia has done irreparable harm in its relationship with SO and so Abkhazia and SO should be given independence to prevent further ethnic conflict. Make those things the conditions of the pull out. Then, if West accepts and Saakashvili goes into exile, the new govt, with FSBs help will be much more pro-Russian, slowly coming under total Russian control, despite Western peacemakers, that will undoubtedly be sent into Georgia under OSCE, NATO, or UN auspices.
JohnR,
Lenin is dead, has been dead and will continue to be dead.
Slava Bogu!
(Sorry kids, I don’t have Cyrillic configured on this computer … it’s my girl friend’s
After extrapolating Russian War aims in Georgia (re-adsorbtion in Russian hegemony, installation of puppet government, control of Central Asian oil, intimidation of other former parts of USSR), what is the fallout of the eventual defeat and adsorbtion of Georgia?
1) Turkey is on the way to being “Finlandized”. Iran, aligning itself with Russia on one flank, Russia (now back in Georgia, and Georgia back in the US, back in the USSR!) on the other, and NATO exposed as an empty bag. If Turkey had been admitted to the EU, if Georgia had joined NATO, if, if…
But the world is spinning away from that now.
Europe is about to be punished for sleepwalking through the last 15 years. Who won the Cold War?
2) A lot of new pressure to be put on Iraq in 2009 by ….Russia! They were a client state before, and the bazaar mentality of the Arab will make them play off the US vs. Russia to get the “best deal” for themselves. Unhappy people, they will be if they get what they ask for. And al-Maliki and company are just stupid enough to do that.
I expect there to be quite a few very bitter Americans in a few years (including me) when we see what happens between the Iraqis and the Russians.
3) China is the wild card. Will they align themselves with Russia? Will the Russians be shrewd enough to guarantee them all the oil they want from the new oil ‘empire’ they are building? If the Russians try to put the Chinese over the oil barrel to get them to perform as they wish, perhaps the Chinese will remember that the US is a pretty good trading partner.
4) Western Europe is on vacation at the moment, and will decline to do anything of note here, except blame the US for ‘meddling’ in Georgia and provoking Russia. They will pay any price to keep the peace, as it were. And the danegeld will get larger every year, from here on out.
5) Hard to tell what Eastern Europe will do. Some of them have some backbone, but if NATO is well and truly emasculated, then they may all quietly make their Separate Peace with Russia.
The defeat of Georgia is a fait acompli. There is nothing the US could or should do now except try and minimize the brutality, bloodshed and the expected ‘ethnic cleansing’ of parts of Georgia by the ‘loyal allies’ of Russia. Withdrawing behind the rampart of the Lesser Caucausus with their brave but pocket sized army will do nothing for the thousands of civilians who will be behind the Russian lines, and subject to ‘cleansing’. It will happen, if you understand the Slavic mentality at all.
We need to get some kind of neutral ‘third parties’ on the ground to assess the situation and at least inform the world with some objective reporting, as the new Iron Curtain begins to fall over that part of the world.
Ленин
OK, JohnR who wants to brag that “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live…”
Is this not more accurate, commie pig?
Ленин,здох.
Путинь, будеть здох.
..а как ты?
TRANS:
Lenin, died a dog’s death…
Putin, will suffer a dog’s death…
…and what about you?
Can you believe it? Russians bragging about their anti-USA, pro-Commie attitudes? I don’t read Russian well at all, but I read you, assholes. And I think that a dog’s death is much too good for you. Just sayin’, y’know?
, здох
@MolonLabe
from WIKIpedia:
One of suspected uses of the OTR-21 Tochka in combat came on October 21, 1999 during the Second Chechen War. On that date U.S. military surveillance systems tracked a launch of five to six short-range missiles from within Russia that landed in the city of Grozny. The missiles struck a marketplace and maternity ward, resulting in at least 143 fatalities. [1] A Russian spokesman said the busy market place was targeted because it was used by rebels as an arms bazaar.
Currently there are no armed clashes anywhere in Georgia, Alexandre Lomaia, the secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, said at midnight.
He confirmed the Russian Defense Ministry’s announcement that the Russian forces pulled back from Senaki.
Meanwhile, PM Lado Gurgenidze said Russian forces were in port of Poti. The Russian side has, however, denied that.
PM Gurgenidze called on the Tbilisi residents to remain calm as there was no reason for panic. “No attack is expected on Tbilisi tonight,” he said.
I suspect it was simply a copy-paste on part of JohnR
Why is everyone getting so riled?
…Neolex excepted, of course.
JohnR, you are a troll pig and your Russian sucks more than mine…
“The defeat of Georgia is a fait acompli.”
I don’t want the fighting to go on for a moment more, but just academically, why is the Russian occupation of Georgia a fait accompli? When Russia went into Afghanistan it wasn’t the end, but the beginning. The Russians have advanced 18 miles from Tskhinvali to Gori. For comparison, it was 275 miles from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad and when US forces got there, everyone said it was going to be Stalingrad. Yet it’s clear that toppling Saddam was the easy part. FWIW, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began with an elaborate cover story, requests for “assistance” in “liberating” the inhabitants from an unpopular local leader. It took all of two weeks. But it wasn’t over.
I don’t know that the Georgians are as tough as the Afghans, who are pretty tough. But I don’t think they are dead yet. The Russians will have to keep at it a bit longer.
Well timing is everything….note the second to last paragraph regarding that the US is concerned “in defending the primary Persian Gulf oil sources of the West and the Far East”.
Three major US naval strike forces due this week in Persian Gulf
August 11, 2008, 10:37 AM (GMT+02:00)
New America armada around Iran
DEBKAfile’s military sources note that the arrival of the three new American flotillas will raise to five the number of US strike forces in Middle East waters – an unprecedented build-up since the crisis erupted over Iran’s nuclear program.
This vast naval and air strength consists of more than 40 carriers, warships and submarines, some of the last nuclear-armed, opposite the Islamic Republic, a concentration last seen just before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Our military sources postulate five objects of this show of American muscle:
1. The US, aided also by France, Britain and Canada, is finalizing preparations for a partial naval blockade to deny Iran imports of benzene and other refined oil products. This action would indicate that the Bush administration had thrown in the towel on stiff United Nations sanctions and decided to take matters in its own hands.
2. Iran, which imports 40 percent of its refined fuel products from Gulf neighbors, will retaliate for the embargo by shutting the Strait of Hormuz oil route chokepoint, in which case the US naval and air force stand ready to reopen the Strait and fight back any Iranian attempt to break through the blockade.
3. Washington is deploying forces as back-up for a possible Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
4. A potential rush of events in which a US-led blockade, Israeli attack and Iranian reprisals pile up in a very short time and precipitate a major military crisis.
5. While a massive deployment of this nature calls for long planning, its occurrence at this time cannot be divorced from the flare-up of the Caucasian war between Russia and Georgia. While Russia has strengthened its stake in Caspian oil resources by its overwhelming military intervention against Georgia, the Americans are investing might in defending the primary Persian Gulf oil sources of the West and the Far East.
DEBKAfile’s military sources name the three US strike forces en route to the Gulf as the USS Theodore Roosevelt , the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Iwo Jima . Already in place are the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea opposite Iranian shores and the USS Peleliu which is cruising in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Interesting article on Ukrainian role:
http://www.kommersant.com/p1010061/r_527/Ukraine_sided_with_Georgia_in_the_South_Ossetia_conflict/
Also, today, Yuschenko ordered a through inspection of all aspects of operation of Russian fleet in Crimea – utility payments, documents of sailors, environmental code, etc. Russian sailors without proper registration in Ukraine will be deported.
I have a question that goes way beyond the scope of this topic and goes to strategy and mentality. If Putin, Russia, and Tehran can take bold moves and freeze us, why are we not thinking of making bold moves that can put them in a bind? I don’t have any answers to my own question, because I don’t have the information that would suggest what a good gamble and bold move would be.
It seems for a very long time, well before 9/11, we have been stuck in a reactive mode to what those evil nations are doing. They seem to have a long range plan. Putin IS a better chess player than Bush. The Mullahs getting help with their nuclear weapons’ program and Putin also putting together this plan for Central Asian dominance and his moves to solidify his ownership of Europe.
Why aren’t we bold and why are we not doing something that THEY have to react to? In making your enemy react you make them prone to mistakes and being boxed in to a corner. Why in the hell are we not up the curve on that?
I’d say 5 US strike forces in the Gulf is a BOLD move.
Interesting reports from Information Dissemination Blog
As we have been surfing the Russian blogs, diaries, and news sources, some things have been popping up that have caught our attention.
- The Georgian Army has been disabled in terms of its communications. The military communication systems have been compromised. This has created a lot of confusion among the troops, often described as chaos. The Georgian Army is not trained to operate under conditions of communications disruption.
- Russia is keeping the International Red Cross and other such agencies from working within the territories their troops are operating in, including South Ossetia. There may be a number of reasons ranging from assuming ownership of the medical care of citizens for national reasons, but also to conceal casualty numbers both civilian and military.
- There is some complaining on the Russian side regarding Israel. While virtually all media blames the Ukraine for every weapon system that kills a Russian soldier or any civilian, there is some sort of anti-vehicle weapon that locals are suggesting is Israeli in origin, and it is apparently lethal. We searched arms databases for exports and couldn’t come up with anything, it may not be Israeli. There is a rumor circulating that some 50 armored vehicles and tanks have been destroyed by this weapon. The Russian UN ambassador was reportedly asked about it in the press conference today. I have not seen a transcript, but he reportedly did not answer the question.
- Russian military casualties appear to be high, and we note the number is being concealed intentionally. We are reminded of Afghanistan here. Georgian military casualties are very high, but they are spinning the numbers for political purposes. It will be up to international organizations to reveal the real numbers.
- There are a number of rumors circulating. POWs on both sides being executed is a popular rumor. There is a remarkable lack of reporting regarding POWs. There is a rumor in western Georgia that troops from Abkhazia have threatened to kill all Georgians wearing a uniform who don’t surrender.
The Russians have greater technical, material and human resources than the Georgians. Without Western help, the Georgians will be behind the technological Eight-ball and fall further behind the curve. Eventually, the Russians will get inside their loop. You can’t maneuver against the Russians under those circumstances. They control the air. The anti-vehicle weapon might a BAE manufactued weapon, which the Georgians were supposed to have taken delivery of in the 4th quarter of this year. But who knows?
@jwillie
Thank you, very interesting.
I wonder how Putin’s long-crafted plans would withstand $20 bbl oil? Pelosi’s just caved on allowing a vote for drilling. An irritated China need only cut back its imports a percent or two and the oil market will collapse. Not one shot need be fired.
America has many more arrows in its quiver than pure military might. Russians are good at the short game, but have neither the culture nor the intelligence for the long game. Thugs rarely do.
jwillie,
The Georgians should avoid a pitched battle with the Russians and focus on small operations of ambush and destruction of smaller Russian units. Make Georgia a graveyard for the Russian Army. And if I were the Georgians, I would take the guerrilla war to the Ossetians for their filthy collaboration with the Russian military. Destroy the highway through the Caucasus Mountains, so that the Russians have to rely on sea and air logistical support, which is very expensive. Get them weapons that can blow the Russian air assets right out of the sky. As for the Russian navy, sabotage of ships in berths would be the way to go. If Putin wants Georgia, then he must be made to pay the piper for it.
First, there is no NATO. It is dead.
Germany has border guards and a pretend military. Same for France which can’t even put it’s only remaining aircraft carrier to sea. Italy has paramilitary forces and some (good) Special Forces, that’s it. Spain a few naval vessels, MORE THAN THE UK, which has fewer naval vessels than the Belgian Coast Guard. The rest of NATO combined has a few thousand effective fighting men with NO zilch nada zip zero logistical capacity. NATO is the Holy Roman Empire.
Jerry Pournelle thinks it was a good thing we did not admit Georgia into NATO, I think we should have come to the formal and unmistakeable death of that institution now. Imagine if the League of Nations had been simply dissolved in 1932 and utopian dreams of liberals been wiped out early.
Wretchard — here is why Georgia is already defeated.
It has no means to resist, meaningfully, the modern, mechanized army of Russia. Fighting guerilla style is NOT for Westerners who live comfortable lives. To be a guerilla, one must leave one’s home, house, safe life, and live the life of a tribal nomad. Moving from place to place, sleeping rough, fighting, always living with the fear of death. For your average Afghani, or tribal Iraqi, this is normal life and no big deal. Second nature. But not for Georgians, or the South Vietnamese middle class, or the middle and working class Koreans, or the French under Vichy.
Most people will simply give up. Because to fight would require them to live and act like people they are not. Westerners are very, very good at mechanized armies because it plays to cooperative Western strengths. Westerners are very, very bad at guerilla warfare because it plays to tribal nomadic life which is totally alien.
This just in: Georgians are not Afghans. Nor are they tribal Iraqis. They live in houses. Perhaps not as nice as American ones, but Western houses. They do not sleep outdoors, carry on running, generations longs tribal feuds with monthly bloodshed with the neighbors. They are not intimately familiar with the AK-47 and smuggling routes to get more and ammo too. They are not familiar with killing and dying. They are comfortable middle class people for the most part who have been beaten and will submit willingly to whatever Putin decides to do with them.
These belmont war threads just take the cake for info & experience (and pleasant well-spoke folks) –what good fortune that so many of the region have found their way here, and in English. My humble gratitude & appreciation to all.
yea what did you jump on JohnR for, I think he was making a point that Lenin, and Stalin and not as dead as we have been lead to believe. Russian quote not quite right though, johnR, fix the meter.
Now the way I see it this war is strictly business (in Michael Corleone’s or Lavrentii Beria kind of way), Russia is delivering a smackdown to a particularly successful former subject of the empire who has been becoming an economic competitor in the oil/gas pipeline business and politically friendly with Turkey, US and Israel. A Khodorkhovsky kind of smackdown, to teach the community of kindred entities to toe the line. Putin’ll try to play to the Haag Tribunal, try to get the change of regime going on the basis of war crimes, try to set up a client state.
I am a little mystified as to how Saakishvili took the bait of the Ossetian provocations and shelled the entire Tskhinvali – that’s why some speculate that it was indeed his gambit to draw the Russians out but it seems to crazy a gambit…
“too crazy” i meant of course.
1. russian oil production is dropping now
2. they have confiscated several western oil company facilities; abrogated contracts — i doubt seriously that any new outside investments will be made or allowed to be made, there
3. russia has virtually no commercial manufacturing base
4. oil recovery technology is a u.s. and western europe (near?) monopoly
5. loose nukes are far ore dangerour to russia than the u.s.; re: Breslen, opera house, etc
6. our military capability is several generations ahead of theirs
7. we are strangling the shit out of iran’s economy and russia can’t so shit, so tell me whose “friendship” is sworthless.
8. ask saddam how toothless we are
9. russia is gutshot as a society and are dying steadily and continuously
10. putin is a garish buffoon, and will lead the russians over that final cliff eventually
to all the whiners and chicken littles: America is great with or without you; what are you without America?
to europe and russia: say hello to the etruscans when you get to the other side.
delenda est Ruthenia
@sarkis
OK, sarkis, if JohnR meant what you generously imagine he may have meant, well, fine, I apologise profusely, although I reserve the right to castigate him for not making it clear as to what he meant, i.el. that means making it clear to every newbie in the discussion, right? You don’t actually expect a newbie to read all previous posts on Belmont Club, do you? OK, then does not each contributor have to make his intentions clear in spite of the shortcomings of text file journalism?
What he did say, seemingly triumphantly, in Russian [so the imbeciles couldn't understand it], was “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will live [continuously]” Now, if you DON’T think that is Troll-assed bullshit, can you please explain to me why you don’t think it is so?
Or, are you just another one of who knows how many Russkie-Commie trolls posting here?
The extent of shelling of Tskhenvali by Saakasvhili is not a settled matter. In one Russian (!) newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, i think, it was reported that Georgia leveled a block of govt buildings in Tskhenvali, but damage to the rest of the city was minor. A panic started and everyone hid in the basements. Lack of graphic images from Tskhenvali and later portraying images from Gori as images from Tskhenvali on Russian TV would support that assertion.
Obviously, at this point the city is completely destroyed by Russian planes, who were trying to uproot Georgians from it, and probably killed many of the people in those basements, who did not get out. And then, by subsequent Georgian shelling. It will not be known with any certainty what Georgia did in Tskhenvali, as both sides will claim that other destroyed the city. The difference being is that Russia is more likely to be believed in this specific claim, which is necessarily reflective of the actual situation.
@fedya
It was my impression that JohnR is not a Russkie at all and was simply joining the party by something he could find in Russian. But my second version would be sarcasm, so I dont know how that phrase offended your sensitivities, but it cannot be said by most Russians with a straight face.
aaa cjm, and yet, and yet, their lies are so good that they have corroded pretty big holes in our noble hull.
The tenor of the Russian press is more strident than I’ve seen since mid-seventies.
Here’s a lovely tidbit —
http://www.inforos.ru/?id=21830
Saakashvili+NATO+USA = genocide and war.
* the bloody adventure Georgia started at the US (in particular Cheney and Rice) orders and with US training, intelligence etc. in order to a) compel Europe to agree to include Georgia into NATO and b) propel McCain to presidency, c) discredit Russia as an agressor etc.
* Western MSM are covering the crisis with a well prepared propaganda campaign, another evidence that the whole thing was planned; western lawyer Saakashvili gets plenty air time etc.
* Shows the real face of the regimes in Ukraine, Baltics and Poland supporting this partner of theirs in “blockade” of Russia, with Ukraine Yushchenko particularly bad news, supplying ground-to-air rockets, playing games with Black Sea Fleet etc.
* Russian voices of opposition to war are likened to bolsheviks of 1914 (!) who gave up huge chunks of motherland to the aggressor.
* end with “it is naive to suppose that the US or NATO can be ever talked into respecting Russian interests, they can be only forced to do so”. And a call to look for new allies at the Shanghai Organization for Cooperation (wtf is that?).
Nicely weaved eh?
cjm,
There is no doubt that long-term consequences of this adventures will be disastrous for Russia, least Putin’s regime. He might even get assassinated. However, the fact of US unwillingness to rescue a loyal ally remain, no matter how you spin it. Sure, the US will retaliate against Russia in the aftermath, but if Georgia is lost, it is a disgrace for US, and will make many of the not trust US one bit, and simply engage in real-politik, by playing both sides. Has there been a US president, who has made greater foreign policy blunders (as if this word is even appropriate to apply to what’s going in Georgia)?
SORRY FOR DOUBLE POST, fixed spelling
There is no doubt that long-term consequences of this “adventure” will be disastrous for Russia, or at least Putin’s regime. He might even get assassinated. However, the fact of US unwillingness to rescue a loyal ally remains, no matter how you spin it. Sure, the US will retaliate against Russia in the aftermath, but if Georgia is lost, it is a disgrace for US, and will make many of the countries in the region not trust US one bit, and simply engage in real-politik, by playing both sides. Has there been a US president, who has made greater foreign policy blunders (as if this word is even appropriate to apply to what’s going in Georgia)?
Aristide:
Meanwhile, PM Lado Gurgenidze said Russian forces were in port of Poti.
Cracked me up.
The Russians are in a “port-a-pottie” alright, or will be soon.
fedya your right to castigate I think is firmly reserved, and it’s not for me to say what JohnR meant or didn’t mean. The sentence he quoted meaning what you said is a quote from an early soviet poem that was plastered over and inside every public building, it seemed, in the 60′s and 70′s (along with “the people and the Party are one” and a few other pearls) and nobody would take it seriously, rather like Burma Shave.
I am not a Russki Commie, I am a tall blonde Scandinavian photomodel.
“We need Russia’s co-operation over Iran and derailing that over a localised conflict in Georgia makes no sense. We just have to hope that diplomacy prevails. The next necessary step is for Russia to respond positively to Georgia’s ceasefire declaration,” -anonymous US diplomat
No comments.
Obijohn:
You’ll appreciate this,
—
bobal said…
Georgia on our Conscience
Though the order “Lights, camera, action!” was given by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, the wartime drama now unfolding in the Caucasus was devised, scripted, directed, and produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki (or former KGB kleptocrats.)
For almost two decades Russia has sought to divide and destabilize the new independent states in its former backyard by helping to establish, finance, and protect “breakaway” ethnic statelets such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia within the sovereign territory of Georgia.
These statelets fulfill two important functions.
First, they provide the siloviki with country estates. Almost none of the officials in the South Ossetian government are locals. Most are high-ranking former KGB officials from other parts of Russia.
But South Ossetia provides them with a safe haven in which they can launder money, run smuggling operations, traffic in women, divert official funds into their pockets, and wage small but useful wars.
Those wars are the second function:
They help to destabilize independent states, especially pro-Western states such as Georgia, already weakened by division. South Ossetian “forces” have been bombing Georgian villages at irregular intervals for years, but recently more intensively. from NRO Article “Launder money, smuggle, traffic in women”
A nuclear armed criminal gang working out of country estates.
Article Here
neolex — if that’s how Russia’s playing us, Lord help us all.
Whiskey: Georgians are not Afghans.
Neither are they Southern Baptists or Buddhist monks – just as much nasty stuff going on there as anywhere else (e.g., Mexico?), although your point about tribalism is valid. Just don’t overextend it….
The following excerpt comes from Stratfor:
Georgia’s location between the heroin-producing countries of Central Asia and the heroin-consuming countries of Europe has made it a prime smuggling route for heroin traffickers. In 2002, narcotic smuggling in Georgia was a $1 billion per year industry; and in 2006, Georgian authorities recorded their first seizure of methamphetamines. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear smugglers targeted unsecured nuclear waste sites in Georgia at least once, stealing cesium 137 (an ingredient used to make radiological, or dirty, bombs from a military base. According to the Georgian Ministry of Environmental Protection, law enforcement halted four attempts to smuggle highly enriched uranium through the country between 2003 and 2005.
you know what’s shameful? signing a pact with hitler.
you know what’s shameful? having an army more adept at rape than at fighting.
you know what’s shameful? starving 24M of your own people to death.
you know what’s shameful? having 2nd rate vodka as the premier product your country produces.
you know what’s shameful? having your women be known as the biggest whores in the world.
you know what’s shameful? never doing one good thing in the entire existence of your nation.
let the scum of the world cheer their tin assed god, they are still scum, and he is still tin assed (and not a god).
fred – 10:21pm:
They are inside our OODA Loop. Spies can do that for you.
The X factor in all of this is still Bush. What’s he gonna do?
As the precious hours slip away after his pathetic news conference, there is still no indication that we are helping the Georgians in any significant way. CFM is right, we still can turn this around. A few UAV’s. stingers and Javelins could bloody the Russian’s nose enough to give them pause. However,
Whiskey is probably right if the Russians can eliminate the vast majority of Georgian military personnel there probably won’t be anyone able to fight a guerilla war.
That said, it was apparent from the news conference that Bush was still not as up to speed as Cheney was over 30 hours ago. He clearly had been fooled and lied to by Putin. Yet, there seems to be no payback yet. The State Department even issued a statement today to the effect that we would definitely not get involved, giving exactly the opposite impression that Cheney wanted to achieve. Bush still lets the State Department get away with that crap. W has surrounded himself with too many appeasement tools like Gates and Condi.
If W lets this go to shit, the enduring image for me will be W playing patty cake with US Women’s Volleyball doubles team at the Olympics while Russia is carving up our Ally.
If McCain really wants to lead, then he should suggest more specific forceful action right now, goading W into action. Our military can’t overcome bad leadership by our politicians all the time.
American Thinker Georgia The First Shot in a New Cold War
Apologists for Russia will soon surface. Already left-leaning pundits are blaming Georgia for provoking its own invasion and using the crisis for political ends.
“McCain took an inflexible approach to addressing this issue by focusing heavily on one side, without a pragmatic assessment of the situation,” …”It’s both sides’ fault – both have been somewhat provocative with each other,”
- Mark Brzezinski, a former Clinton White House National Security Council member and adviser to the Obama Campaign.
In the typically muddled, ill-informed realpolitik we expect from the left, we hear “It’s both sides’ fault,” a justification to do nothing. It is troubling how foreign policy elites can make such nonsensical statements, ignoring all the evidence, just to appear reasoned and measured. That credulous moral equivalence encourages the Putins of the world. Presidential hopeful Barrack Obama condemned the violence in general terms, assigning no blame and predictably calling for UN intervention. When decisive action is called for, dialing the UN does not cut it, not when the stakes are this high.
(“It’s both sides fault,” therefore Russia has a right to Rubble Georgia)
ht – al-Bob
Doug, that would be Mika’s brother, son of Zbig, I believe. He possesses the same foggy brain, if not the same family name.
Foggy brains and foggy bottom:
“The State Department even issued a statement today to the effect that we would definitely not get involved, giving exactly the opposite impression that Cheney wanted to achieve. Bush still lets the State Department get away with that crap. W has surrounded himself with too many appeasement tools like Gates and Condi.”
—
I too have acquired a severe distaste for Condi’s policies, Paul.
As you say, the Military is constantly put in the position of overcoming poor political leadership.
The 1000 US troops in Georgia, a group that just concluded training on Thursday, seems to still be there, at least according to Stars and Stripes. I wonder what role they’ll end up playing, if any?
@Paul: The X factor in all of this is still Bush. What’s he gonna do?
Of course his news conference was pathetic. Don’t you realize that the leftards are waiting for *any* stated position from Bush so that they can react to it in opposition? There will be no public hint of action from Bush on this crisis as it unfolds.
doug, paul from, if you put any credence in the reports beginning to surface, that five carrier battle groups are converging on Iran, likely with the intention of blockading, and likely to touch off a war in the Persian Gulf in the very near future, then that would explain the do-nothing in Georgia. All units assigned already, perhaps.
anybody heard anything new?
It is good that Georgia did not join NATO. Russia would have crossed the frontier anyway
Thats a troubling mindset. One I’ve heard repeated by many “diplomats” today. I’m guessing they would have advised NATO to submit.
Please tell me, when do we start defending our allies?
George Washington wisely recognized that just because one nation helps another, the gratitude should not end up being an obligation by entangling alliances to be joined at the hip with such “special friends” on their adventures. Gratitude towards France for helping us win the Revolutionary War did not translate into tens of thousands of Americans dying for Napoleon’s adventures. No obligation in blood.
So why did we bother saving Europe from the Nazi?
I believe what has been over looked in this thread is the importance of increasing American oil production in support of our friends and to hurt our enemies.
In some respects this war can be laid at the feet of Pelosi and the “No Drill” Democrats. Our troubles with Iran fall in the same category.
So why did we bother saving Europe from the Nazi?
Because it was in the American national interest; because if we didn’t stop him everyone would sooner or later have wound up inhaling Zyklon B. And that’s why this isn’t about South Ossetia or even Georgia. It isn’t about loyalty to the Georgians or gratitude for their service in Iraq. That’s incidental. It’s about whether it is in the Western interest to let Russia get away with this. Because plainly, this is just the beginning.
The defense of South Korea wasn’t about saving Seoul. The hell with Seoul. It was about keeping Stalin from going too far. Now in this case the question is: what is the appropriate way to stop Putin? The key words are “appropriate” and “stop”.
@buddy: then that would explain the do-nothing in Georgia
Actually it explains more: it explains Russia’s action in Georgia. The Russians knew action was imminent on Iran and launched their attack, perhaps prematurely due to wildman Saakashvili’s assault.
How’d they know? State Dept.
Will it frustrate planned action on Iran? Yes.
Fen, here’s another comment from WaPo, I believe:
“The real principle at stake here is whether the United States is going to continue being an imperial global policeman or whether we are going to return to the principles on which this nation was founded. ”
—
That one is getting VERY old, in that simple minds use it promiscuously as a Moron’s WMD, namely, either we do nothing, or we must involve ourselves stupidly, expensively, and wastefully.
Such Black and White choices ignore the many options that are often available.
—
Buddy,
Have you found any other sources other than that blogger reporting all that naval activity?
Russian Imperialism – It’s Back
If Georgia loses the current fight, and part of its territory, both of which are likely, in the longer term the main loser will be the United States and its credibility as a friend.
I read the linked speech. I just hope that the european countries sending humanitarian aid remember to include anti tank missles in the care packages.
”Have you found any other sources other than that blogger reporting all that naval activity?”
well, above, sigintel @ 10:13 pm, quotes a Debkafile –
whiskey,
“More to the point, to be clear, I don’t think Turkey will care much if the Russians move over their border temporarily to wipe out the Georgians.”
Have to disagree. If the Russians do that without overt Turkish blessing the Turks will *have* to care since that has bad future implications for their own sovereignty. The Turks might or might not think themselves too wimpy to do anything about it, but all the same they will care.
“This just in: Georgians are not Afghans. Nor are they tribal Iraqis. They live in houses. Perhaps not as nice as American ones, but Western houses. They do not sleep outdoors, carry on running, generations longs tribal feuds with monthly bloodshed with the neighbors. They are not intimately familiar with the AK-47 and smuggling routes to get more and ammo too. They are not familiar with killing and dying. They are comfortable middle class people for the most part who have been beaten and will submit willingly to whatever Putin decides to do with them.”
Yeah, look how submissive Tito and his comfortable middleclass Yugoslavians were back in WWII! With all due respect, what humans will or will not do is not always that easy to predict. Particularly in the Fog of War. If the West were all that bad at guerilla warfare neither Quantill nor Nathan Bedford Forrest would ever have had that much of a career.
DEBKAfile’s military sources name the three US strike forces en route to the Gulf as the USS Theodore Roosevelt , the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Iwo Jima . Already in place are the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea opposite Iranian shores and the USS Peleliu which is cruising in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
It should be noted that there are two kinds of carriers involved. In non-technical language:
The TR, RR, and AL are aircraft carriers. The IJ and P carry Marines and helicopters/landing craft.
So it is possible that this is not just a quick smash and run (bombing) operation. The Marines can take ground and hold it (for a while at least).
Putin IS a better chess player than Bush.
The biggest complain the Russians have about the US is that we do not play by our own rules. i.e. we dump the chess board, burn it and smash the pieces.
buddy larsen:
These belmont war threads just take the cake for info & experience (and pleasant well-spoke folks) –what good fortune that so many of the region have found their way here, and in English. My humble gratitude & appreciation to all.
Aug 11, 2008 – 10:45 pm
Amen brother, Amen.
”what is the appropriate way to stop Putin?” well, it blows my mind that he would take the chance he just took, unless he wants a much bigger war. Assuming his newly-prosperous nation has no special desire for same, then he took a seemingly unreasonable chance just now. Unreasonable, unless there’s some kind of understanding already in place. Debka hints at such –Caspian Basin for Russia, Persian Gulf for west and far-east. Deal impediments: Iranian religious-hysteric regime, and western corridor to Caspian –thru Georgia. Maybe he & Bush did some hoss tradin’? “Y’all-ta”?
Russia Goes Rogue
. . . AND AMERICA WIMPS OUT
I lack sufficiently powerful words to express my outrage over Russia’s bloody cynicism in attacking a small, free people, or to castigate our media for their inane coverage – or to condemn our own government’s shameful flight from responsibility.
”The Marines can take ground and hold it (for a while at least)” –that island –the Revolutionary Guards HQ, and the massive shoreline anti-ship missile bunkers –
Putin criticizes U.S. over South Ossetia
Putin, an opponent of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, repeated complaints from Moscow about what it says are double standards in the West over the conflict with Georgia, which wants to become a member of NATO.
He mocked the support given by the West to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, comparing him to former Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein, who was hanged in 2006 for war crimes.
“They of course had to hang Saddam Hussein for destroying several Shiite villages,” Putin said.
“But the current Georgian rulers who in one hour simply wiped 10 Ossetian villages from the face of the earth, the Georgian rulers which used tanks to run over children and the elderly, which threw civilians into cellars and burnt them — they (Georgian leaders) are players that have to be protected.”
Putin’s accusations about the actions of Georgian troops have not been independently confirmed.
I apologize for that crude speculation about a hoss-trade above — shitty thing to say, in light of what’s going on. it’s late and i’m gone goofy.
“People are disappointed. Everybody wants to have Georgia as a significant partner, but nobody steps in to help. The population thinks the West and the United States – they can talk, offer condolences, but nobody takes action. Next Azerbaijan, next Ukraine.
“There is no action, there are just words. When everybody needs Georgia, Georgia is there. But when Georgia needs help, nobody steps in. There will be no barricades. It will be done in a quiet way. They just occupy the city.”
news flash on CNBC ”worldwide exchange” asian stocks program –”Medvedev announces end of military operations in Georgia”. Report by Interfax and RTRS, just now. Russ mkts immediately turned up, says moderator.
You won’t even mind being goofy if we keep getting better news like that.
Will it frustrate planned action on Iran? Yes.
No. Russia is now tied down. Their freedom to act has just been reduced. You know: hold ‘em by the nose and then kick them in the ass.
The Russians now have what? 30K – 40K troops tied down and their attention concentrated at the cost of 1,000 Americans in the field + a few hundred advisers.
Americans are taking no casualties and the Russians seem to be bloodied.
The time for a counter strike at Russia’s wind pipe (the Roki Tunnel) is when they have fully extended. To make such a strike before that reduces the effect. As a commenter said above they have learned nothing from 1908. Evidently we have.
We will see how stupid the Russians are in the next few days. If they keep advancing while taking losses – i.e. they are goaded into ill considered action – they become more vulnerable every day. If they retreat they lose face. The Georgians need to keep retreating while fighting delaying actions to maintain limited contact and then cut off the Russian wind pipe. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx – stucco.
It is reported that Putin’s face turned to ash at the Olympics. Perhaps things got out of hand before he was ready to act. We have disrupted Putin’s timing. i.e. a spoiling attack.
In re: American politics. This is not going to help Obama with the muddled middle. Americans turn to warriors in dangerous times, not community organizers.
“But the current Georgian rulers who in one hour simply wiped 10 Ossetian villages from the face of the earth, the Georgian rulers which used tanks to run over children and the elderly, which threw civilians into cellars and burnt them — they (Georgian leaders) are players that have to be protected.”
Putin’s accusations about the actions of Georgian troops have not been independently confirmed.” (end quote)
Putin is most likely lying. Several thousand Israeli and US advisors integrated into a 22,000 man army, and our guys didn’t know about it? Or worse, our guys let that happen? No way, Vlad. Our people don’t do that shit. Your provincialism is showing you up. No-class Vlad. Tells lies to presidents, tells lies about presidents. You suck, shorty.
Russia’s government-owned media is full of pictures of frightened weeping South Ossetians pleading for God and Russia to come save them from the marauding Georgians. Putin is less than a week away from tying the bowknot on this entire incursion into Georgia, and will become even more popular domestically than he already is. And with great clarity, he will have shown that the bear still has its claws and is quite willing to use them. No one is now going to accuse Russia of being a ‘paper tiger,’ and all of the countries of Russia’s ‘near abroad’ are going to reassess Russia’s willingness to enforce its regional domination.
Much credit to Georgia for accomplishing whatever they wanted to accomplish by provoking the bear.
Buddy,
If that report is true the Russians know that they are in a very dangerous position militarily and may be beating feet to save their army. See my 2:01 above.
However, they miscalculated by not announcing in advance “limited objectives”. Now it will look like they have been defeated by a fifth rate power with American friends. Bad for morale. Bad for their world image. Having Putin at the Olympics at the start when the generals would be in control with orders to do nothing except to respond to attacks was a master stroke not an error.
Proving once again that Bush plays the game better than any one else currently on the world stage.
Note: no reported American deaths so far.
Them Georgians:
Source of all the ills of the World!
I am persuaded by Wretchard’s argument that Putin runs significant risks if he pushes this too far. And I don’t think it’s just a matter of what we do in response, but of how the plutocrats who keep their sham economy propped up react.
According to CNBC, Russia’s stock market was down yesterday — hardly a buoyant mood over the triumphant march through South Ossetia, or a vote of confidence in the war. I’m watching CNBC again right now, and Medvedev has just announced that they’re calling off the dogs for now — and the Russian stock market went up. If Putin presses the war, or an occupation of Georgia proper becomes an open sore like Afghanistan, the money men will not be happy, I think.
Also, if Putin wanted to goose oil revenues, it ain’t working. Oil down to $113 now. Gold lower than it’s been in months. The fear of global recession is trumping everything, and a new Cold War will only make things worse. Sluggishness in oil and metals demand will doom the Russian economy. Assuming that big-money interests have been signing off on Putin’s thuggishness, I’ll bet they turn on him if his clumsy imperialism spooks the global economy.
Georgians HATE Russians; they even hated them after the Bear gave them some trustee land for joining the short-lived Commonwealth of Independent States. Georgians breached the trust, in an orgy of neo-Stalinism and aid to Chechen jihadis. Russians don’t want HATERS on their doorstep. Kudos to them. See this letter between Georgia’s Stalin2 and the Georgian who toppled him in a dose of Realpolitick (Yah, Shevardnadze was the last Foreign Minister of the USSR).
http://web.archive.org/web/20010414023800/http:/www.geocities.com/shavlego/ZG_Letter_SH.htm
Georgia wasn’t a country it was a concept in Soviet Republicanism. Its Stalinist leaders – yes the statues still stand – wanted to become a NATO launch post. See ya, suckas!!!
Can the Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark rhetoric! That’s stale.
The Roman Emperors’ triumphal parades after a big victory included a slave in the chariot, standing just behind the hero, whispering in his ear something like, “you are just a man”.
In Putin’s parade, the slave will be whispering “all your former states are so impressed with your power, they are organizing and re-arming like crazy.”
Sniped by buddy larsen!
M. Simon:
I do think that Bush has been canny and patient, playing a bit of rope-a-dope. It’s not in our interest to turn South Ossetia into another Sarajevo. The Georgians are clearly playing for time, trying to use a little Caucasian akido on the Russians. There will be time to funnel TOWs and Stingers to them if the Russians don’t back down.
And, as you say, if the Russians do back down, it will be a serious loss of face for them.
”they miscalculated by not announcing in advance “limited objectives”. Now it will look like they have been defeated by a fifth rate power with American friends” –that has a ring of truth to it –jeez would that be a turnabout or what –to lose the meme war on the military front too –
buddy,
Just like old times at the Belmont Club, eh?
C4 has retreated to Althouse. A pleasant enough place (I frequent it), but not serious. He has just one post on this thread and as usual he has got it: not even wrong.
A one note Johnny.
how does it feel to be so spectacularly wrong?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080812/ap_on_re_eu/georgia_russia
M. Simon –yep –every crisis, the same crew reassembles over here –pretty cool, really –even C4 has value, johnny one-note but he’s how you find out what that one note is gonna be, on any given issue –heh –and he’s not anywhere near as –well, you know, that obsession that used to come over him like epileptic hydrophobia –
allied fleets converging on Iran
Ok, so did Putin want a regime-change-by-intimidation? He loses face if Saakashvilli stays, The US/Bush does if he goes?
Medvedev says he’s ordered the military to stop — but at the same time to destroy any “hotbeds of resistance”.
It remains to be seen whether Russian troops will withdraw from Georgian territory, or if its navy will cease the blockade of ports.
The Russians put a lot of effort into planning and preparing the assault troops. Are they really just going to stop now?
Not sure who was so spectacularly wrong, but here’s the link in English with the good news:
Russian president halts military action in Georgia –
I’ve always considered anyone with Evil in their name to be a hotbed of resistance, but that’s just me, Pootie Poot is another matter.
“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow won’t talk to President Mikhail Saakashvili and Saakashvili “better go.”“
Sylwester, Neolux
Good questions, the answer depends on who’s narrative you happen to believe, given a paucity of outside observers, I suspect it’ll be case of he-said she-said for quite some time… or until the victor writes the history.
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5568&Itemid=65
–snip—
FACT SHEET – RUSSIAN AGRESSION TIMELINE FOR AUGUST 8-9, 2008 (cogent passages):
10:20 The entire 58th Russian Army, located in the North Caucasus, enters the South Ossetia region. They are engaged in battle with the Georgian army in Tskhinvali, which is in the conflict zone and 92 kilometers northwest from Tbilisi.
20:30 After severe clashes in Tskinvali, Georgian forces start to withdraw from the center of the town, holding their positions at its southern outskirts. Russian tanks enter the eastern part of Tskinvali.
18:44 A motorcade of Russian tanks, armored vehicles and trucks loaded with different kinds of weapons reach Tskinvali by the Dzara by-pass road, 2 kilometers west of Tskinvali. The Russians opens intensive fire towards Georgian forces located in Tskinvali and on the neighboring heights. A second motorcade, which also came from Russia via the Roki tunnel, is stopped near the Georgian government controlled area of Dmenisi, 7 kilometers north of Tskinvali, and Russians open heavy fire toward Georgian forces.
18:32 Frone gorge, northeat of Tskinvali, is under intensive artillery fire by Russian forces. Villages Avnevi and Phrisi, in the Tskinvali region, are bombarded by Russian military aircraft.
14.15 Georgian government announces a ceasefire from 15.00 till 18.00 to let civilian population leave Tskhinvali. Separatists are also offered amnesty and humanitarian aid if they surrender.
13:00 Part of Thskinvali is controlled by Georgian army and fighting continues in the center. The civilian population does not resist. They are ordered to stay inside their houses.
8:00: First group of Russian troops together with Gufta Bridge are destroyed by a Georgian aerial bombardment. Later two more groups of Russian troops enter South Ossetia through the Roki tunnel, which connects Russia and Georgia, but could not cross the Gufta Bridge which was destroyed and moved by the Geri-Dmenisi road.
5:30: First Russian troops enter through Roki tunnel South Ossetia, passed Java, crossed Gufta bridge and moved by Dzara road towards Tskhinvali.
By 4:28: Georgian armed forces are in control of six villages in the Tskhinvali region: Muguti, Dmenisi, Didmukha, Okona, Akut and Kohati. It is also reported that Georgian forces entered the village of Khetagurovo.
—————- versus:
By early Sunday morning in South Ossetia’s Tskhinvali, heavy artillery fire – a feature of fighting since the war’s outbreak – had practically halted, according to a South Ossetia army statement.
Some civilians remained trapped in the city, most of whose buildings are now badly damaged or destroyed, witnesses said.
Corpses in some cases three days old still were lying in Tskhinvali’s streets, as artillery fire from both sides made burial impossible, the Interfax news agency reported.
Georgia gave its military losses as of Saturday at some 50 men dead and 450 wounded. Russia had admitted to 12 men dead and 150 injured.
Estimates of civilian dead in the fighting have exceeded 1,600 people. The Tskhinvali town hospital alone as of Sunday morning was treating 200 injured and had more than 50 dead in its morgue, according to the report.
It is estimated that more than 30,000 people have fled the crisis zone to neighbouring North Ossetia.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a Saturday visit to Russia’s 58th Army headquarters in Vladkavkaz said the Kremlin’s intention was to push out or destroy all Georgian forces in South Ossetia. He justified the Russian offensive as part of a peacekeeping operation.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili the same day accused Russia of conducting all-out war against Georgia, pointing to airstrikes and a naval blockade outside the South Ossetia region. ”
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1422910.php/LEADALL_Ceasefire_uncertain_as_Russians_control_Tskhinvali_available+Tskhinvali+attack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us&client=mozilla
–snip————-
Sywelester,
Perhaps it’s the Russians who destroyed Tskhinvali, trying to dislodge the Georgians ? Perhaps it was both armies? Perhaps it was the Georgians ?
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5568&Itemid=65
Wouldn’t be the first time. ie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995)
Events according to the Georgians (from letest to earliest:
—snip————–
10:20 The entire 58th Russian Army, located in the North Caucasus, enters the South Ossetia region. They are engaged in battle with the Georgian army in Tskhinvali, which is in the conflict zone and 92 kilometers northwest from Tbilisi.
20:30 After severe clashes in Tskinvali, Georgian forces start to withdraw from the center of the town, holding their positions at its southern outskirts. Russian tanks enter the eastern part of Tskinvali.
18:44 A motorcade of Russian tanks, armored vehicles and trucks loaded with different kinds of weapons reach Tskinvali by the Dzara by-pass road, 2 kilometers west of Tskinvali. The Russians opens intensive fire towards Georgian forces located in Tskinvali and on the neighboring heights. A second motorcade, which also came from Russia via the Roki tunnel, is stopped near the Georgian government controlled area of Dmenisi, 7 kilometers north of Tskinvali, and Russians open heavy fire toward Georgian forces.
18:32 Frone gorge, northeat of Tskinvali, is under intensive artillery fire by Russian forces. Villages Avnevi and Phrisi, in the Tskinvali region, are bombarded by Russian military aircraft.
14.15 Georgian government announces a ceasefire from 15.00 till 18.00 to let civilian population leave Tskhinvali. Separatists are also offered amnesty and humanitarian aid if they surrender.
13:00 Part of Thskinvali is controlled by Georgian army and fighting continues in the center. The civilian population does not resist. They are ordered to stay inside their houses.
8:00: First group of Russian troops
together with Gufta Bridge are destroyed by a Georgian aerial bombardment. Later two more groups of Russian troops enter South Ossetia through the Roki tunnel, which connects Russia and Georgia, but could not cross the Gufta Bridge which was destroyed and moved by the Geri-Dmenisi road.
5:30: First Russian troops enter through Roki tunnel South Ossetia, passed Java, crossed Gufta bridge and moved by Dzara road towards Tskhinvali.
By 4:28: Georgian armed forces are in control of six villages in the Tskhinvali region: Muguti, Dmenisi, Didmukha, Okona, Akut and Kohati. It is also reported that Georgian forces entered the village of Khetagurovo.
This Russian halt is tactically very, very stupid.
I don’t understand the rationale of a partial invasion, then trying to hold ground in a very hostile environment. What gives? They are gonna be bled out forever if they try to hold ground here.
Maybe they expected better Western propaganda support.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/russia.georgia
“Russian bully” – ouch. If you’ve lost The Guardian…
At least some of the Georgian weapons worked a bit TOO well…
http://williamamos.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/russia-warns-israel-to-stop-selling-weapons-to-georgia/#respond
People insist on misunderestimating George Bush.
neolex, perhaps you can detail all those blunders you casually mentioned earlier. The man has somehow managed to deal with a Congress full of punk ass surrender monkeys, and an even greater level of punk ass surrender monkeys in Europe, but all you see are blunders. Have I read that wrong? I hope so, but I suspect not.
What will Russia do now? What is Iran going to do? And their cheerleaders at Asia Times and Orbat — do they have their canned scripts?
Chess *is* being played by America. And sometimes we do crush the dadgum board and start all over, without blinking. That’s part of our genius.
So yeah, I think it was the Russians who were suckered here. And I’ll believe it until proven otherwise. Now we get to see if the Iranians and one of their associates can do the same thing to us.
This Russian halt is tactically very, very stupid.
I don’t understand the rationale of a partial invasion, then trying to hold ground in a very hostile environment. What gives? They are gonna be bled out forever if they try to hold ground here.
The generals got tricked into advancing while the boss was out of town. There was no rationale. It was ad hoc. Now they are in a militarily untenable position.
I tie it all together with a bow at:
Perhaps They Miscalculated.
Israel is in there, the Iran blockade, and the rest of the usual suspects.
And, ooops! More bad news for our Russian “friends.” May the news become much worse, and quickly, for them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSLA49309620080810
JB, in the non-kinetic portion of the Russo-Georgian War, the usual suspects in the Western media al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Madhi Army, Hamas, and Hezbollah all rely upon for propaganda support did not do much for Putin.
Perhaps they can’t resist an “underdog”.
Or perhaps the similarity between what the Russians have been shoveling and their ususal product became too glaringly obvious.
M. Simon
Nice evaluation… and I tried to post this earlier, but our Russian friends seem to be having a lot more “accidents” than is being reported. May the news become increasingly worse for them, and quickly.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSLA49309620080810
Dan,
Nice bit.
I think the General will be taking early retirement to spend more time with his family.
I’ll be damned! Looks like the bear got somehow whacked and neither he nor anyone else beside Great Whacker Being knows what exactly hit him!
I always admired Great Whacker Being, but he seems to have always at least one more surprise in his sleeve.
Legend:
Pooty by proxy -> Medvedev = Bear-y
Great Whacker Being = GWB
Surprise in his sleeve = oblique poker reference.
so maybe we knew vlad the self-impaler was planning a move, and we moved our timetable for iran up, and now he has given bush a pretext for moving to “protect western oil production”. perhaps vlad has fumbled away iran without receiving anything but burned out tanks and body bags in response.
wretchard talks about contact with the enemy forces to get information, and it looks like this was a very informative episode.
The Information Dissemination reported the following on the Russsian offensive:
1) The Russians are taking high casualties in their offensive, but have inflicted proportionately more casualties on the Georgians.
2) Russian military moves on the ground reflect good planning at least in terms of taking control of military supply routes.
3) The Russians have owned the Georgian communications networks.
4) There is some reporting of rumors regards an Israeli anti-armor weapon in Georgian hands that has destroyed 50(+) Russian armored vehicles.
5) There has been a remarkable lack of reporting on POWs by either side or of the fate of Georgians in areas over run by the Russians.
6) The Russians are keeping NGOs out of all areas they have over run.
See:
http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2008/08/obseving-russian-offensive.html
The one part of this equation that I am having the hardest time getting a handle on is Soros. If the Georgian government is a Soros funded and run operation then why would it align itself with American power projection into Iraq and Iran? We have Putin, the Chinese, Bush and Soros (he of the Invisible Empire) playing four way chess here. Clearly it is in America’s interest to see Putin lose but what else is a desired result? No physicist can model even a three body problem.
soros is a very small appendage of the russians. he can be factored out as noise. that leaves three players in a “Good, Bad, and Ugly” scenario. a small change in the environment, a seemingly insignifigant event, will produce a chaotic tipping point leading to a stable bi-polar power arrangement.
Wow. Funny enough I was a major reader of the Belmont Club from 2001 until 2005. It was mostly because of the Iraq War analysis that I came here. When it became clear that it was only going to be a mop-up operation and Bush was going to wait until the 2008 election to deal with Iran, I stopped reading.
But now I am noticing that the “compatriots” whom agreed with me that Islamofascists needed to be shot at and dealt with (by death squads or whatever), I am shocked that I see what appears to me to be a bunch of rednecks taking their cues from the left wing media about what is really going on in Georgia and asking suggesting that US soldiers KILL Russian men directly or indirectly!
That is insane. The Georgian government is NOT necessarily really democratically elected anymore than Hillary Clinton REALLY won the New Hampshire primary.
Think about it. Read the Russian blogs. That is unless you don’t read Russian…in which case you might consider taking advice from those of us Army veterans who DO read Russian and who might actually LIVE in Russia.
Now…imagine that you have a border dispute over a lake on the Quebec-Vermont border.
Suddenly the Quebec leader, egged on by an oil agreement with Vladimir Putin (and the presence of 130 Russian military advisors) attacks and kills 1400 Americans who live in a town by the lake.
Now 1400 Americans haven’t been killed by our enemy in any war except for on 9-11. The Nazis never tried to kill American civilians and look how ferociously we fought them to total surrendor and annihilation of German cities.
Don’t you still feel the white hot anger at Al Qaeda for what they did to civilians in the World Trade Center??
OK. Now. Step back. Let me ask you:
Dig deep down inside your brain and ask yourself…do the Russian people have the RIGHT to have the same emotions you have under similar circumstances?
If you can understand that, regardless of whether YOU think they have that right or whether you feel that you are SPECIAL because you are an American and Americans have manifest destiny to be the only ones who can act on a world stage to protect their citizens AS WELL AS TAKE REVENGE on the leader who caused the 1400 deaths, the Russian people really do not CARE what an Americna redneck in a trailer park thinks (or a Neocon policymaker who is on his way out the door in January and good riddance to him or her).
Do you have any idea how enraged Russian people are regarding the 1400 dead civilians in Tshinvali on Friday?
Americans apparently had the God-given RIGHT to bomb Serbia to free Kosovo. Bush horrifying rubbed all Slavs the wrong way in March by needlessly recognizing Kosovar independence.
Americans not only rescued their citizens in Grenada and Panama…they stuck around to make sure they established regime change.
Who gave the green light for shelling civilians in South Ossetia?
When the dust settles, Russia is probably not going to have tried to or wanted to take Tbilisi…unless the American advisors egg the Georgians into a guerrila war of some sort instead of a ceasefire and negotiations that will probably leave the Georgians out of Abkhazia and South Ossetia permanently.
There is more: If Negroponte trained death squads in Georgia to be used against Russians…what he did can badly hurt the USA and, when the Europeans investigate this, sink the US Neocons.
Death squads are OK against Islamofascists and Colombian drug dealers, but NOT against Russian citizens.
What the Hell would anyone be thinking to have disobeyed the laws of war against Russians?
Now I am hearing that the Georgian President, egged on probably by American neocons, just declared the territories where Russia has been for 16 years “occupied territories”.
In other words, the US Neocons WANT Russia to have no other choice but to remove this guy. That move is more than defiant. It says “I want war”.
Which makes me wonder what type of weapons the Neocons are moving in that they want Russian men to die from…when a simple agreement to non-use of force in the disputed territories was practically signed this morning in Moscow.
Forgot to note the most important point: Russia is now Europe’s largest consumer market. They bought more cars than Germany last year. The men are not drunks and the women are not whores (and there is not such thing as a “mail order bride” which is a feminist term for the competition they are using the US Congress to stop).
Anyone with a brain the size of a walnut in the White House would be trying to discuss the current situation fairly…showing a balanced point of view…BECAUSE OUR TRADE WITH RUSSIA CAN BE HUGE.
Any of you guys salesmen? Guess what: Bigger contracts available than if you just tried to deal with German firms.
Are you commies are what? You can say “but money isn’t everything and one has to do what is right”.
But when a lot of money is at stake…you might want to read up on the real situation before shooting your mouth off on Fox News talking points about the “Russian bear being the same as always wanting to play the great game and we have to play the great game as well and KILL them.”
Wake up and for your own sake…don’t identify yourself to the Russians as wanting to see Russian men killed.
I noticed this forum’s main blogger is being smart that way but some of the commenters act like they think Russia is a third country they would never want to visit, much less enjoy million dollar business relations with.
The movie “Get Smart” gives a good visual depiction of modern Russia (even though it was filmed in Quebec). There is a lot of money there now and it is spread out to a lot more of the population than the leftists at the NYTimes want you to know about.
Get on a plane to Russia and check it out…that is if you can still get a visa after making wild, knee-jerk 1914 style yee haw declarations of how you want to egg on an “ally” to the slaughter of Russian men.
Study up on August 1914 as well.
Jack, re Tskhinvali:
1) Georgian forces level several buildings of local government in central Tskhinvali and take up positions in town.
2) Russians launch a counteroffensive and carpet bomb practically the whole town.
The question then is, how many casualties were caused by Georgians and how many by Russians?
Do you think that Russian leadership would not grab the opportunity and claim that all the casualties were caused by Georgians? And how would locals actually be able to tell who is actually shooting?
Another point, Jack.
I don’t think anyone wants to see Russians killed. Especially not by Putin.
Military is another thing. If you invade a sovereign country, you may get killed.
You seem to be rather partial to the Russian side of the story.
But the fact is that both the “breakaway” regions are a hub of illegal activities and rackets, including stolen property (cars) drug and human trafficking. Fiefdoms for FSB echelons to have some fun and make a bunch of rubles.
For the last year or so, Georgian proper was under a constant stream of ambushes from S Ossetia. Mostly Ossetian elements, rather than Russians, but the “peacekeepers” seemed to enjoy wearing shades with to dark a hue to see anything.
Are you saying that Georgians are obliged to take it without a flinch?
See, there are always two or more sides to a story.
Good points.
But note that the Russian people are traumatized like we were on 9-11. They cannot believe so many Russian civilians were killed for the first time in a war since the Great Patriotic War 1941-45.
They are in shock and demand the blood of the Saddam Hussein kind of guy who would have done such a thing.
They may be getting propaganda, but Americans are getting a worse dose in my opinion. The American politicians and ambassadors are blatantly lying by being totally one-sided.
The French and Germans are being smart and honest: they recognize how Americans would feel if they were TOLD that 1400 of them were just killed (the media in Russia has upped that to 2000 since).
If there were 1400 corpses in a bombed out city that had not been evacuated because of the element of surprise, the odds are that they were mostly local civilians.
Also you can say that these civilians should have been warned by anyone who had an idea that the attack was about to happen Thursday night.
There were a lot of Georgian force corpses in South Ossetia and the Russian media has suggested that several dead black men were possibly Americans. Several dead members of a Georgian death squad were Ukrainian.
Also, word is that some surrounded Georgian forces in South Ossetia were executed after capture…which is why sporadic fighting still continues (the Georgians there do not want to surrender and will be hiding in the forests for awhile).
I am still in shock that someone strengthened Saakvashili to boldly tostick his middle finger up to the Russians just now with his throwing away the 16 year agreement on the territories and declaring them occupied territory.
That means prolonged war is DESIRED by this man…who, whether he was legitimately elected using US money for his campaign or not, is clearly taking his orders from the White House.
I would have thought that Bush would have advised him on how to end this right away with the non-use of force pledge that Sarkozy was getting Medvedev to sign today.
But many say that Bush wants this war to continue until the 3 carrier groups are in place to start the Iran War later this month.
French and Italian soldiers have been offered to hopefully stop the mafia operations. About human trafficking…be careful about discussing this feminist cause. Where there is smoke there is fire, but prostitution happens in poor areas.
I travel these areas a lot and I have never seen a beautiful sex slave for sale anywhere (and I am often the only one around who has the kind of money they want). The best looking women for sale from the CIS go to Istanbul on their own dime (no pimps) and bar owners make money from them by charging men $200 for a plate of dates and tomatoes.
You can Google feminism and sex trafficking to read the tons of material about how this scourge exists but is exaggerated 100x by NGOs that want lots of federal funding.
An example: All of their stats include the number of voluntary adult prostitutes as “sex slaves”. That is how you know they are lying. So, when they say 50,000 sex slaves in Germany…you know what they are really referring to and what their agenda is (to lie and get funding).
I lived on the Turkish Riviera. BBC stories about sex slavery on the Turkish Riviera mimic 1920s hype about white slavery in Turkey and titilating Victorian Era hype about innocent young white English women trapped in harems. The reality is different.
If you have compelling evidence of sex slavery in Abkhazia I can follow that up if you want.
The beaches of Abkhazia are normally filled, however, with beautiful young Russian women who paid for their own vacations because of the burgeoning Russian economy.
Interestingly, Russia just stated that Georgia’s leaving the CIS doesn’t effect Russia’s right to defend its airspace.
Dear Jack,
How much are they paying you?
Jack says: They cannot believe so many Russian civilians were killed for the first time in a war since the Great Patriotic War 1941-45.
Oh my! How about people killed during 1945-1953 period by Jo and his henchmen (disregard he was a Georgian by birth, has no relevance)?
Of course, when Grozny was boomed by army and several times over the amount claimed now was killed, it was fine. Those were just “dirty” chechens. I am not talking about jihadis, but Grozny civilians.
Who are, of course, Russian citizens. Right? Because Chechnya is a part of Russia. Right?
Oh, let us not tar a whole nation. They probably believe the propaganda they are being fed. All the Politsovskayas are dead, so who is left to tell them the truth?
Evil or stupid is always the choice. But can anyone be that stupid anymore about the Russians? You almost don’t blame them – a rabid dog cannot choose but bite. It’s almost our fault for neglecting the leash.
anyone who thinks we can “do business” with the russians is an idiot. stuff your neocon nonsense straight up your putin.
Give me a break. Half the world’s discussion on this issue shows both sides. It is quite a shock that the readers of Belmont seem not to have ever even seen reports on what the other side is even saying.
Try watching http://www.russiatoday.com at least.
Nobody (except Bush, Putin and Saakvashili) wants this war. Nobody wants to see Georgians or Russians hurt.
I love the idea that the Russians and Georgians are not going to clash at that bridge 17km north of Tbilisi.
All businesspeople know that Russia is Europe’s largest consumer market.
It takes a redneck to immediately jump to conclusions and repeat the hackneyed and inaccurate hogwash that “Russia has not changed” and forget that Russians are now anti-communist and a lot less socialist and radical feminist than US Republicans are.
McCain is 100% behind anything US feminists tell him to do.
I would rather have Putin as my leader than Hillary Clinton.
You are saying that anyone who reports on what foreign and Russian media are saying…is somehow “not with the Neocon program”?
The Dem sites are being reasonable on this.
Sorry buddy but I am with the anti-Islamofascist crowd but not the anti-Russian crowd.
Belmont Club, as I remember it, was into a dispassionate military analysis.
The particular one above makes it look like the blogger thinks its 1921 and the Bolsheviks are attacking, however (back then the Bolsheviks attacked from the east after taking Baku).
Russians wouldn’t give a damn if Georgian forces went south of that other mountain range to hide. They wouldn’t chase them.
They know that the American Neocons would whisk USAakvashili away on a plane even if the Georgian people rose up against him (the Russians say SSCHAakavishili where SSCHA means USA in Russian).
It is pretty bad for Americans looking to Europe’s largest market to hear the Russians naming their most hated Saddam Hussein type figure with a name that has USA in it.
Bush should care about this and ask this guy to settle the matter NOW.
But Bush doesn’t care about American business if it isn’t oil business.
Bush is going to be a $Billionaire when he is no longer president. Mark my words, Clinton’s unfair $100Million windfall won’t compare.
The issue at hand is what US-backed guerilla groups might do to Russian units that want to hold to a ceasefire but might not be allowed to.
Prolonged Neocon-backed pin-pricking instead of abiding by the French-backed agreement will destroy good relations between America and Russia, which (did I already say?) is the LARGEST consumer market in Europe moneywise.
The wolverine mentality can be childish at this juncture. If the Russians want to stop advancing, let them. If they want to pull back to just the territories, let them.
If, through guerrillas not abiding by the ceasefire, Bush forces Russia not to be able to say “OK, we’re done here” he will be misusing our military while severely damaging American corporations who deal with Russia.
And remember that the Georgians are suffering from a Russian boycott of their wine, which was ALWAYS a staple in the Russian diet. This boycott is the result of the rhetoric of the ulta-nationalist president whom the Americans helped get elected in 2004.
Imagine what would happen to Mexican farmers if Americans stopped buyign from them (I hear that, because of salmonella, Americans actually have stopped buying from Mexico).
Wolverine wannabees should either go fight themselves or, otherwise, hope that the Georgian farmers can once again sell their food and wine to their largest neighbor and economic power house (and largest market in Europe).
The mafia ambush angle can be handled…but notice that nobody besides 2×4 has been talking about that.
Saakvashili isn’t saying “We would like to let the territories go (which we never had in the first place and which were only made a part of Georgia by Stalin) but we want a promise from Russia to stop the mafia operations”.
[anyone who thinks we can “do business” with the russians is an idiot. stuff your neocon nonsense straight up your putin.]
The sad thing is, this guy’s entire salary might have been paid because I sold at lot of his company products to a reseller in Moscow.
The Russians do not want to be enemies with America.
You don’t have to agree with Medvedev on this war to know that.
Putin really was better for his people than Hillary would be for Americans.
I want to see some Neocon here defend a hypothetical Hillary presidency as something better than the current Mevedev presidency.
Include discussion of all the new Clinton-backed laws, some of which already exist, that regulate whether men are even allowed to say hello to women.
The Ukraine and Armeina both just announced that they will NOT join Georgia in leaving the CIS.
That would be economic suicide.
Which is what Saakvashili will be committing his people to if he stays out of the CIS and continues his ultra-nationalistic Milosevic-style policy of wanting to win back those territories militarily.
Richard Fernandez: Please do a blog posting comparing this to Kosovo.
The Russians said the exact same things about our attacks on Serbia as I am seeing from Neocons now.
Most bloggers outside of the USA talk about this being Kosovo in reverse.
So you actually thought — or just said you thought — that Russia would re-enact the grinding taking of Grozny?
No one who knows Russians would think that.
Saakvashili isn’t saying “we want a promise from Russia to stop the mafia operations”.
He was, many times, but apparently the recipient’s ears were dead. So he came to a conclusion it is useless.
territories go (which we never had in the first place and which were only made a part of Georgia by Stalin)
Are you obtuse by nature or is it deliberate?
Even Sochi that is now in Russian territory was a part of historic Georgia, let alone Abkhazia and S Ossetia, the second, BTW was set as a refuge by Georgian kingdom for Ossetians that were pushed out of their homeland on river Don by Ottomans.
It takes a redneck to -
Whatever your points, I stopped reading after you invoked that bit of ignorant bigotry. Replace redneck with nigger and see how it reads…
Wapo: The real principle at stake here is whether the United States is going to continue being an imperial global policeman or whether we are going to return to the principles on which this nation was founded.
Maybe. I’m more concerned that the US will allow a western-aligned Democracy to fall to the wolves so casually. The Munich Waltz weakened the lesser European nations that hadn’t already fallen to the Nazi. What will nations like Poland and Estonia do? Make a better deal with Russia once it becomes obvious that no one in the West will help them?
You are quasi right. In our lifetime and those of several generations of grandparents, Abkhazians have never felt part of Georgia. Stalin and Beria, however, made damned sure they stopped whining (Beria poisoned those who resisted):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Abkhazia
Caveat: Wikipedia is often worked over by left-wingers
Note that terrorist bombs have been going off in Abkhazia this year. One wonders who set those terror bombs off that kill civilians there.
A couple (man and woman) were killed on the beach there this weekend when they stepped on a mine laid by someone evil.
Who would want to scare the Russian people into not visiting Abkhazia for their vacations?
So 2×4: Do you really want to possibly start a nuclear war with Russia by insisting that Abkhazia be MILITARILY won back by Georgia with US Special Forces help?
Ain’t going to happen.
This is Kosovo all over brother.
Sarkozy just offered to send peacekeepers there.
[It takes a redneck to -
Whatever your points, I stopped reading after you invoked that bit of ignorant bigotry. Replace redneck with nigger and see how it reads… ]
But you would probably use the word “Mail Order Bride” to describe a woman from Russia or Georgia who wants to meet an American man, right? The US government officially calls women that (Google the IMBRA law) and I can tell you it hurts more than the word nigger.
But then the NOW controls both political parties in the US since 2005 so they aren’t going to stop insulting (by saying they want to protect) women from that part of the world anytime soon.
The Russians are not wolves. They are not the Soviets anymore but an anti-communist republic with a dynasty problem a little more serious than we have had with Bush/Clinton.
And nobody is sticking up for an American under Hillary Clinton as being better than the current Russia.
This stuff about Munich 1938 and wolves is spin. Try reading for a change. Investigate what the US has been doing to stir up trouble before concluding that it has only been the Russians making trouble.
Redneck really does apply to someone who does not recognize that:
1) Russia is Europe’s largest consumer market
2) There really are two sides to the story here
3) We are not talking about Islamic fascists but an ally in the WOT that may or may not be cooperating on Iran (you don’t really know if Russia is secretly cooperating and you are not being told).
So 2×4: Do you really want to possibly start a nuclear war with Russia by insisting that Abkhazia be MILITARILY won back by Georgia with US Special Forces help?
I am truly sorry, you may be verbose, but in that case you are a verbose idiot. Since you seem to use any fallacy known to man by default, I don’t see any point in further discussion with you.
It was the Nazis who tried personifying their enemies (people they wanted to go after) as animals.
We have enough on our plate with Islamofascists.
No need to be calling Russian men “wolves”.
This, shockingly, came in the same post that said the word redneck was hurtful to his sensibilities.
You can discuss the Georgia War without insulting a nation of good people who feel like 9-11 just happened (2000 dead in South Ossetia).
2×4: That was unnecessary.
Because I see both sides does not make me an idiot. Quite the opposite.
I obviously read more than one blog.
If you don’t support continued terrorism in Abkhazia and the childishness of continued claims by a demogogue that “we will militarily win back that land” than I have no beef with you.
It was one thing to say that we would never deal with Osama Bin Laden or any of his demands…but fight on forever until he and his supporters are dead.
But it is sick to have that attitude about Russia and this demand regarding Abkhazia.
Read up on Saakvashili before you back the man like he is a God (or your representative in the region).
A reasonable man would let Sarkozy send the French to lounge on those beaches (after which the French will enjoy more trade with Europe’s biggest economy).
Compliments to Jack Chambers –you’ve boxed the compasss there, Jack, on the Putin line. Comprehensive, and the lack of the usual degree of belligerency makes you readable.
I don’t know why you’re posing as an American, though.
That hurts your advocacy, since from the get-go there’s a hint of fraud. For one thing, your English is great but not American, and for another, your take of Hillary, feminism, neocons, rednecks, and liberals is all jumbled up and apprears to be academic –something you’ve read but not experienced.
Why not just identify yourself honestly as an educated Russian supporter of your own government? There is nothing shameful about supporting the Russian government, is there? So why the charade?
I say all this as a potential friend, depending on, you know, performance & behavior (starting with not pretending to be what you ain’t).
Jack, you just don’t get it, do you?
Why you feel such an urge to put words into my mouth? It is rather insulting.
Bigot said: It takes a redneck to -
Fen: Whatever your points, I stopped reading after you invoked that bit of ignorant bigotry. Replace redneck with nigger and see how it reads…
Jack Chambers: But you would probably use the word “Mail Order Bride” to describe a woman from Russia or Georgia who wants to meet an American man, right?
Thats quite an assumption. And you seek to draw equivalence to your bigotry by placing words in my mouth? Priceless.
This stuff about Munich 1938 and wolves is spin. Try reading for a change.
Start with Manchester’s Last Lion. Its not spin. The czechs had the 4th largest army on the continent at the time. When France and England abandoned them, the lesser nations in Germany’s sphere realized they too would be swept up without any resistance from the greater powers. That weakened the hand of all who would stand against the Nazi.
Redneck really does apply to someone who does not recognize that: 1) Russia is Europe’s largest consumer market, 2) There really are two sides to the story here
I’ve never asserted otherwise. Any other ignorant assumptions you want to make?
?) We are not talking about Islamic fascists but an ally in the WOT that may or may not be cooperating on Iran (you don’t really know if Russia is secretly cooperating and you are not being told).
Primakov. Sarandar.
But I love your logic – since Islam is our common enemy, I’m sure our allies won’t mind if we gobble up Mexico and Canada along the way?
Buddy,
Thanx.
But you can see Americans all over the blogosphere discussing both sides eloquently. I haven’t checked the Ron Paul and Bob Barr blogs this past few days (DailyPaul is often barely readable because so many of them are anti-war moonbats) but DailyKos and the Huffington Post are really going after the McCain lobbyist (Scheunemann) angle, etc, that the Neocon blogosphere is curiously ignoring.
Check out Instapundit dot com and you will see that his only link at one point today was to a great article that says that Putin should have been OUR president in the USA because he would have really dealt with America’s enemies.
You know that Instapundit is the backbone of the Pajamas sphere with Belmont Club a major satellite.
So it should not be a surprise, if you read Instapundit or even CNN and FoxNews, that someone might try to balance the belligerent Wolverine stuff here that reminds me of when I was 12 and the movie “Red Dawn” came out.
I am, of course, an American.
My English should be perfect, but I let typos go when I type fast in a comment section.
Since I live in Europe, I will sometimes write centre or defense in the British style.
Unfortunately, I am very attuned to US politics and will be writing a book soon.
You can google IMBRA and VAWA and Feminism to see that that there is a fledgling men’s right movement that I am part of. The Republican Party succumbed to feminists in 2005 when Senator Sam Brownback decided to adopt all the sex trafficking rhetoric of the Marxist feminists and make it into something that Christians want to stop. Then he went on Vatican Radio to defend the IMBRA law announcing to all foreign women that any man who would date them must be dangerous and “out to fulfill his sexual fantasies”. IMBRA forces all American men to be background checked before they are allowed to communicate with a foreign woman.
If that unprecedented betrayal of men by a Republican wasn’t enough, a Republican judge Thomas Rose denied a restraining order on IMBRA saying “There is no fundamental liberty interest in contacting a foreigner”. So much for the 1st Amendment Right to Assemble.
No American overseas is complying with that law by the way.
You cannot regulate Americans overseas…but Bush and Congress try hard to do so.
I was a Republican all my life until all this happened, after which I became a help to libertarians and libertarian republicans who are going to hopefully destroy McCain’s chances if McCain himself does not choose Palin or Sanford or another trustworthy libertarian Republican as his VP candidate.
I have lived in Russia for a long time under Putin. He never made a law that insulted or hindered me. He doesn’t make white males the least important constituency which is what Hillary or McCain would do.
He has a flat tax that isn’t bad.
I define “Neocon” as someone who likes the Nanny State and generally believes the news the left wing media reports…while having hijacked the Republican Party. I agree with the Neocons on Iraq and Iran…but I travel and can pronounce nuclear.
And I believe the US military should go on strike until IMBRA and VAWA are repealed and not just overturned (which they mostly will be).
I am busy keeping food on the table for hundreds of Americans by selling American products to Europe.
Bush’s behavior in Georgia (if he double-crosses the Russians by starting an unnecessary guerilla war) can DESTROY several important business deals that will employ a lot of Americans.
Hell..if Bush fails to show sympathy to the Russians for what they think is a 9-11 in South Ossetia (that many Russians assume he ordered)…it could hurt American companies badly.
When we Americans lost 3000 on 9-11, the Russians openly sympathised.
Of course, if Bush has some intel that Putin helped put Americans into a quagmire in Iraq, and wants revenge, then all bets are off.
I just hope all this does not happen.
Back to my “knowledge” of American politics, a good site to see on the American men’s rights movement would be http://www.mensnewsdaily.com…although it has been taken over recently by neocons who write feature articles about things not having anything to do with men.
Glennsacks dot com is a good site that describes very well how the Americans are overrun with feminist judges and politicians.
Unfortunately, I am very attuned to US politics and will be writing a book soon
Why am I not surprised.
I define “Neocon” as someone who likes the Nanny State and generally believes the news the left wing media reports…
Ha. Good luck with that book.
Bush’s behavior in Georgia (if he double-crosses the Russians by starting an unnecessary guerilla war) can DESTROY several important business deals that will employ a lot of Americans. Hell..if Bush fails to show sympathy to the Russians for what they think is a 9-11 in South Ossetia (that many Russians assume he ordered)…it could hurt American companies badly.
Yes. I was always curious – what kind of person would have bought soap and lampshades from the Nazi? Thanks for the window into that mentality.
Fen,
Neither Mexico nor Canada would attack a disputed border zone and kill more than 1000 people. That is what Georgia did to Russia…even if provoked by bandits and ambushes which Saakvashili is not talking about much…there was no excuse for killing those civilians.
If the Russians installed a Moscow State University graduate into the government of either Mexico or Canada and then started saying that they would militarily take back the Gadsden Purchase or the Upper Michigan Peninsula (using Russian military equipment)…we Americans would militarily conduct a regime change.
I am not saying this should happen, but please have some perspective.
This is not 1938. Nobody is talking about Lebensraum.
You don’t need to let an idea that this is World War Two just fester in your head after knowing about a news event for 3 days from Fox News.
Jack Chambers,
Oh, I get it.
s/neocon/jew/
Just wanted to say that the commentary here has been compelling. It keeps me coming back for more.
BTW: I gotta give an “Amen” to Old Salt for this:
“oil is the top concern – bar none. He who controls the world oil supply (if it can be done), controls the world. Oil is not evil. Oil is freedom for America and the West. Those who would deny America access to oil only strengthen our enemies. Those who are enemies of “oil” are also enemies of freedom”
Shades of “Dune” – “he who controls the spice controls the universe!”
If either McCain or Obama had the cojones to say this, and mean it, he’d get my vote.
Oh, and another thing: I’m with Fen & Buddy Larsen. That Chambers person lost me at:
“the Russian people really do not CARE what an Americna redneck in a trailer park thinks”
Very “Kossack” to me (ala Daily Kos). I can’t take Kossacks seriously. Sorry.
No. I am actually in Israel all this week fool.
One of the best websites with a balanced view is Israeli.
Check out http://www.debka.com
When I saw “balanced”, I mean it just says it like it is. You can be on one side or the other but, for God’s sake, know the facts.
The following blog is interesting. There is a link in the comments that is disturbing however. Russian blogs have photos of this ugly war.
http://www.russiablog.org/2008/08/discovery_institute_and_the_wa.php#more
Jack, two things:
1) Israeli & American advisors attached to Georgian units are apparently quite numerous, and would not have abided ‘ethnic cleansing’ in SO. Had they been with the Russian units next door in Grozny (back in the old days a few years ago, before the Russian government was so concerned with civilian casualties) they would’ve raised holy hell about the ”kill everybody” tactic.
2) You’re way overdoing the ”Americans just want to do business” theme –as if we’re Pavlov’s Dogs and only need the bell to start slobbering. Also, no anti-Hillary, anti-liberal, anti-feminist American would slur Fox News. I think you just couldn’t help yourself with that one, but it’s a revealing ‘tell’.
I’m just trying to help. I know you want peace.
Can you tell us more about Russia?
For example, is it a coincidence that both RBC Network and Putin are St. Petersburg affiliates, and does that explain why RBC is apparently government-protected –that is, does not get investigated over the numerous cyber-attack charges, including shutdowns of Georgian and Estonian government networks?
[“the Russian people really do not CARE what an Americna redneck in a trailer park thinks”
Very “Kossack” to me (ala Daily Kos). I can’t take Kossacks seriously. Sorry.]
Right. I guess I am a pro-feminist left winger. I understand.
So you are the type who cannot judge a concept on its own merits. I have learned that on the American blogosphere: it often matters what context something is said. I guess the context today at Belmont Club is that you aren’t even American and certainly not conservative if you even know about what the Russians and French are saying.
Smart conservatives, however, don’t follow a narrative fed to them by the left wing media.
Read the above linked sites.
So you are implying that the Russians respect Americans in trailer parks who want to blow them to Hell?
Try “very Bob Barr” except I support OIF and stopping Iran from getting nukes.
Kossacks are reporting both sides on this however.
We libertarian Republicans will take all power from the rednecks IF McCain choses Palin or Sanford as VP candidate. Bob Barr is just an instrument to keep the Nanny State McCain out of office if he choses a VP candidate incorrectly.
Remember that the US pollsters are hanging up the phone if people say they are neither for McCain nor Obama. Of the 20% of 2004 voters who are apparently hung up on, it will be interesting how many would have voted Republican if there was an actual conservative running.
Jack Chambers,
FYI? An American would not have referred to WWII as “the Great Patriotic War 1941-45″ as you did. That’s not your only giveaway that you’re not an American but I’ll give you that one for free because I believe in 2nd chances. And there would be greater limits to how tender you are on behalf of the Russians. You can go ahead and try to persuade us that you’re a native leftist suckup if you want but that will only serve to diminish any respect we might have for what you have to say.
In that light statements like “I am, of course, an American.” and “I was a Republican all my life until all this happened,” coming from you merely highlight the fact that Marxists of any variety are the sort of people who would lie to themselves for practice. ^o^
“It was the Nazis who tried personifying their enemies (people they wanted to go after) as animals.”
Actually? That has been everybody from the Dawn of History. If I were sufficiently bored I could dig up some choice quotes from the Russians in the past and prove by your “logic” that Stalin and Lenin were Nazis. So much for Stalin and Lenin! ^_~
“Kossacks are reporting both sides on this however.”
Jack- I’ll concede that it’s entirely possible that the Kossacks are the most brilliant thinkers I have ever come across, and by dismissing them I miss out on the wonder of their brilliance.
Oh well. My loss.
“…if he choses a VP candidate incorrectly” –Jack, Americans never apply ”correct” or ”incorrect” to choice of candidates. There’s simply an anti-authoritarian bias rooted in the dialect that steers the American mind away from the combination. Fascinating that you are picking up on the ”context” subtext, tho.
Barr is against USA involvement in the ROW (”rest of world”) so your support for him is easy to understand, but, why so strong on Palin?
BTW, breaking news on Fox, ”joint NATO/Russia maneuvers probably discontinued, according to US officals”.
jack: who won the world series last year, the dodgers or the rams?
LOL, cjm. next you’ll prob ask “what’s your hometown, jack? what street?”
Thing is, Jack, once you start out with duplicity, then everything you say looks fishy. THAT’s why you ought to identify your position straight up. Over here in the trailer park, we call it ”credibility”.
What would be wrong with, “Hi, I’m pro-Russia on this war, and I’d like to tell you why.”
The Red Sox.
You guys are fascinating.
I will take this as a compliment that I come across as some kind of Russian who writes English well.
But Glen Reynolds himself has a link to a balanced article.
Check out http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag01.html
Because the Russians called WW2 the “Great Patriotic War” and I was talking about WW2 from their point of view, I used their term.
It is fascinating that you say you caught me as a Russian.
Here is good proof that I am not Russian. I will write the above sentence in Russian using the Latin alphabet and you can ask a Russian friend if I have done so correctly (I guarantee that I will make a mistake):
Interesno shto vy napisali shto vy poimal menya kak Russki.
That is horrible Russian.
I learned in the US Army of all places.
I served against the Russians back when they were not our allies.
Buddy,
Russia and the Ukraine are doing well now.
The women are GORGEOUS.
The women in Georgia are beautiful as well. I don’t want any of their brothers killed in any war.
Only a total eunuch (completely castrated) or a very happily married man (getting it 5 times per week) would not want to visit for awhile.
That is another reason why any “male” here who wants Russia to be their enemy must be nuts.
I am not following who did the cyber attack but it probably came from SPB and the Georgian site is now hosted out of Atlanta.
[Also, no anti-Hillary, anti-liberal, anti-feminist American would slur Fox News. I think you just couldn’t help yourself with that one, but it’s a revealing ‘tell’.]
What? Fox News anti-feminist? Bill Oreilly won’t allow Marc Rudov to even mention the word “feminism”!
In fact, Marc Rudov has been told by Bill OReilly and Neil Cavuto that he is NOT allowed to mention any specific legislation that conservative men should get riled up about.
He is only allowed to complain about stupid stuff like men having to pay for dinner with a woman. He does get to slam the concept of alimony. On CNN he was allowed to complain about the billboard in Virginia that showed a man holding hands with a child and said “If it looks wrong report it” (people were phoning in and getting dads arrested for being with their own children).
Fox News thinks every US male is a sex offender in waiting. They want all US women to be paranoid of their constant parade of deviants.
In May 2006 Tony Snow, RIP, badly slandered all American men who traveled abroad and maybe dated foreign women. He called us “sex tourists”. Then Bill Oreilly piled on and lost my respect instantly after I had been a fan of his for years.
That is a big trait of a Neocon: in the end they eat their own.
This kind of anti-male thinking was always in the background of some older social conservative females…but MALES used to run the Republican Party (and Democratic Party).
Check out http://www.glennsacks.com and http://www.mensnewsdaily.com.
Did you Google IMBRA and VAWA like I asked above?
You would have been very angry reading about them.
What I think happened regarding the Bush Admistration and feminism was this (two theories):
1) After 9-11, a lot of the type of feminist who wanted to see male chauvinists blown to Hell…joined those of us who wanted to see Al Qaeda blown to Hell…via death squads or whatever. The Bush Administration noticed this. Around 2002 all Republican politicians stopped using the word “feminist”. You won’t hear any US politician use that word at all anymore.
2) Bill Clinton had sex with a 22 year old in 1997, which is what anyone married to Hillary (for convenience) would have done under the circumstances.
The strange type of religious Republican then ran with that, almost in synch with the movie “The American President”, and impregnated the Republican Zeitgeist with the radical feminist idea that a man does NOT have the patriarchal privilege of sleeping with a coworker and, worse, got the feminist principle that it is wrong to sleep with a YOUNGER woman into the Zeitgeist.
Those who remember what it was like to be a Republican in the 1980s remembers that the #1 issue on which to stop the feminists was their horrible idea that men should be sued for harrassment if they sleep with a coworker or employee. The feminists apparently achieved total victory on this when I was living in Europe in the 1990s.
At the time of the Monica Scandal, a lot of us were only so happy to get Clinton impeached and a Republican elected in 2000. So we let the criticism of Clinton happen, convincing ourselves that he was bad because he LIED about it all (it was really because older females of both parties felt threatened by the idea of a husband sleeping with someone 27 years younger).
Because a lot of Democrat males wanted to give Clinton a pass, a lot of feminists moved toward Bush because he did not want to give such behavior a pass.
I thought it was all an act. So I voted for Bush in 2000. I figured the guy was still the party guy he had been just 20 years earlier when he was sleeping with every stewardess in Houston.
I was wrong about Bush sticking up for normal male behavior…but those images from China show that the old guy probably wanted to pat that volleyball player’s butt (she is 40 years younger than he is).
Whatever theory is correct does not matter: the point is that Fox News and the Republican Party are not friendly to male interests.
They feel that they can’t be and still win elections.
CJM: That was brilliant by the way.
They used to catch draft dodgers entering Canada by asking them to spell Arizona.
If they did not say Zed the border guards knew they were American.
Truly, I mean truly, fascinating stuff, Jack. You have an extremely clear vision of what’s really behind the stuff that’s in front of the stuff behind it.
Often, people who see things so clearly get attacked by the common fools around them laughably claim that the visionary is certifiably insane and for his own good needs to be locked up in a rubber room. But they are fools who cannot see.
I wonder, do the guys around Putin understand these things? I hope so –maybe there’s hope for us men after all! But, i wonder, why Palin? Why would we want a woman VP for McCain? She has no qualifications at all, other than being the governor of Alaska.