Wretchard – Moscow will find that holding on to South Ossetia, whose inhabitants have no particular love for it, were they not out for independence, will be expensive.
It is rare that the well-travelled Richard Fernandez is misinformed on the status of a people, but in the case of the Ossetians, he is.
Russia has been the protector of the Ossetians since Tsarist days against Muslim depredation. Same with Georgia, Bulgaria, Serbia.
With the Ossetians, even more so since N Ossetia is an autonomous area within Russia and most S Ossetians hold Russian citizen passports. The N Ossetians were of course hit by Inguish and Chechen muslim terrorists at Beslan, and Russia redoubled its efforts as protectors of the N & S Ossetians after that.
Marine 83:
I have to say that in my eyes the Georgians are our allies. They are in Iraq and that is good enough.
That is a silly criteria to say we have obligations to provoke major power confrontation, because some chickenshit little country once fought with us. We “owe” Syria, KSA for fighting alongside us in the Gulf War exactly —- what? Iran was a steady WWII ally, as was the non-chickenshit Soviet Union…
John Samford – We need to do a little 4th generation warfare on the Russians.
The US Military will get a chance to fight an enemy with a logistics tail. Cut it off.
A war in The Caucasus will be an air war. A chance to get the F-22’s some live fire practice. Let the Russian tankers dodge RPG’s while hoping the fuel truck shows up pretty soon now. All the time with one eye on the sky, looking for those #$%& Jabo’s.
It won’t take long before the Russians reconsider their land grab. As long as there is no direct attacks on Russia itself.
Try not to be such a saber-waving idiot, John.
You are talking about direct attacks on Russian armed forces by US airpower, in an area Russia has controlled for 3 centuries, right across from the Russian border. That you claim you wish the F-22s not to attack targets within Russia, just their deployed forces…makes what you advocate no less idiotic.
