As a cold war legacy the corporate wrath toward an unprostrated Russia can emerge in the corporate broadcast media. The west will not become more secure with a fully disassembled Russia, nor with Russia's ethnic voluntary affiliates forcibly given over unto perceived adverse nonRussian governmental power..
Russia and Georgia have different Orthodox Church autoencephalous hierarchies-without a priesthood of believers structured in an egalitarian way the primary Bishop and Eucharist sharing brings a different communal focus to respective localities-with the transition away from the domination of an atheist Marxist state in Russia and Georgia the Orthodox Christian reformation may not have had time to actualize much less experience a significant permutation or modernization to a priesthood of egalitarian ecclesiastical structure able to have locality and non-locality simultaneously for all people of faith. Without such church reform locality is necessary for the conservation of such personal liberties that exist-as well as a defense against adverse monolithic statism; the South Ossetian crisis was not at all dampened by a priesthood of believers non-locality of brotherhood and sisterhood in practical organizational affiliations.
Historically Russia may have developed an SR bond (stimulus-response) between authoritarian government domestically and invasion from without. With few natural borders of a militarily naturally defensible sort Russia developed a frontier defense policy of meeting adverse border hordes as far from their own backfield as possible politically and financially. With that policy following the invasions of the Mongols, Germans and others the defense of rump regions following the end of the Soviet Evil Empire and its vast assembly of concurred national prizes of the second world war the certainty of right of defense of political self and friends emerged again in the conflict over South Ossetia with Georgia.
-Some political phenomena concerning the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia first, followed by earlier items and commentaries of the crisis...
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/t_boone_pick ens.php
(from 2008 during the post-conflict period) Vice President Chaney became the proverbial crouching tiger, hidden dragon of Georgia visiting recently seeking to provide some succor to the badly led Georgian state that seemed to believe it was a good idea to kick sand in the eyes of Russia and invade the former autonomous Republic of South Ossetia. Kicking in a billion dollars to help rebuild the disaster created when the Russian kicked in the rotten defense door of the forces of the erstwhile Napoleon of Georgia (even the Haitians in gaining their independence from actual Napoleonic forces by 1804 had far better military leadership) seemed to make the Bush administration feel better about their future oil prospects. T. Boone Pickens is leading an 11 billion dollar wind power investment project in the Texas panhandle and other Rocky Mountain slope areas-its good to have intelligent leadership sometimes) demonstrating that's its a lot easier to get to a good destination by taking the right course than a wrong one . The Bush bellicosity and depleted state of intelligence on the Georgian crisis was remarkable.
Sure the United States should support democratic political self-determination abroad, yet that includes determination for peoples in traditional areas. Expanding political boundaries or flooding in m millions of illegal aliens to provide voters for a hostile takeover isn't a right procedure at all in South Ossetia or Arizona. A billion dollars for an Arizona medical insurance system could have been more useful than another investment to secure oil reserves for oil corporations in Asia. What happens when some blond woman with Arizona ancestry needs to have that uterus removal, ovary deletion, liver bisection sort of surgery before going find a job and needs to get in line behind all the recent Mexican immigrants for medical assistance? Politicians supporting globalist corporate elites may like to flood the U.S.A. With cheap labor, yet one wishes they did not also own the broadcast radio networks that influence public opinion too much.
V.P. Chaney was hidden in Georgia for too long, perhaps ordering the installation of missiles in Poland at the height of the crisis requiring the Russians to test launch an I.C.B.M. Capable of hitting Washington D.C. In order to determine if they still could. Polish anti-ballistic missiles that could also be used to defend against Russian attacks on Washington violate the accord that was the M.A.D. Policy so effective the past 50 years. One wonders if endangering the security of the United States is the last of the Bush policies founded on a less-than-brightest-bulb basis. Installation of the missiles with Polish approval should have been done in a very different and more mutually trustful political atmosphere. After all the Bush's are leaving office with Iran incapable of building 20 or more nuclear warheads annually for at least two or three years. Way to go Dick-are you also against free expression and political dissent for U.S. citizens on expressions potentially restricting oil company hegemony?
Russia shouldn't drop another bomb on Tblisi-that's an unnecessary escalation and not useful for assertion of Russian interests. It is also a bad moral precidence that could backfire. Going for the opponents capitol should not be the first goal in a conflict with peripheral issues not comprising total defeat of the opposition force.
http://www.ossetians.com/eng/
A democracy is premised on rule by the consent of the ruled...it isn't simply rule by those powerful enough to oppress others as in a mobocracy oppressing minorities. When the Soviet Union under Joseph Djugashvilli from Georgia continued rule of a region within Russia since 1801. When the Soviet Union broke apart there was a new deal and in some ways the sorting out of the pieces and peoples continues. The United States must be cautious in throwing support behind Georgian claims of political power over South Ossetians expressed through military coercion...obviously the South Ossetians don't consent to be governed by Georgians and prefer independence or alliance with Russia-is that so bad?
When the Muslims of Kosovo sought relief from the Serbian Government the United States supported them, what is so different from the S. Ossetian desire to be free from Georgia? Is the United States just pursuing a rather meat-headed policy of being in opposition to whatever the Russians like? Is the United States administration policy simply to support those susceptible to giving up their oil resources to global corporations while Russia seems to have an opposite opinion on the topic of global oil corporations taking over Russian national oil resources? Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia is ruled by the independence movement. What has made the United States decide arbitrarily against South Ossetian independence when 99% of the South Ossetians voted to support independence? When borders are redrawn after the end of an empire (maybe even an evil one) is it good policy to support the repression of large numbers of people by an adverse Georgian Government because Georgia is nominally democratic generally-whatever that means in this era of corporatism and global media brainwashing of the American public?
The United States does tend to support the concept of self-government by the people in democracy-yet a real democracy requires freedom of self-determination and the consent of the people ruled to support the government in power. When large nations break up the reorganization into several smaller new states make take time and justice isn't achieved simple by support of the first geographical area to elect someone educated at George Washington University. The United States must be certain that it really does support democracy in new nations rather than just its own narrow self-interests determined by less than statesmen.
America's political challenges aren't always as obvious as Anderson Cooper's 360. In Alaska one political challenge is that of conservation of the threatened polar bear habitat. With shrinking sea ice polar bear futures are down so the state of Alaska is working against conservation efforts in order to get some dumped oil revenue futures from drilling in polar bear habitat that might be prevented with the recent federal upgrade of polar bear doom recognition. Meanwhile President Bush is making statements from Beijing China about the Russian defense of Russian culture in two sections of Georgia as unacceptable' as if it were a plate of bad borscht he could send back to the kitchen to have the Chef spit in it and returns it. I suspect that the Russian might feel President Bush is a little lap doggish in China's favor-Russia's main potential war rival, and that President Bush is building up Chinese business interests because he gets some scraps tossed his way in the quest for unstable globalism.
The conflict of interest President Pork Fried Rice has in China aside, sure Russia has taken a beating since the end of the former Soviet Union. Evidently because Russia changed radically to get rid of communism and China did not President G.W. Bush favors cozying up to the Chinese. I think he should not make anti-Russian statements from China, and should wait until he rediscovers the U.S. capital is in Washington D.C. with a half a million jobless compensation filings in the U.S.A. last week before putting on his disgruntled customer hat.
Offshore drilling is a bad idea because world fisheries are in steep decline and the oceans produce 1/5th of the planet's oxygen from trillions and trillions of little bacteria that make oxygen; even so it may continue in the Chuckchi and Beaufort Sea areas. Polar bear out-of-the-water' safe islands should be constructed for polar bear and Arctic voyagers, with separate yet equal refuge areas of course, on the model of tiny oil platforms without the drilling equipment. Some of the platforms might rise and fall with the waves, yet the bear should be able to get away from the water and find a place to build a winter cave. The number and density of the platforms required to create an artificial archipelago of polar bear survival is hard to say-it would require at least two weeks of intense research with some good food and peace and quiet. To return to President Bush and the Russian crisis.
Vladimir Putin should realize that it is not in his favor to have Russian aviators seem like the Nazi Condor legion in Spain at Guernica pummeling Basque separatists for the benefit of Spanish fascists. Since the Clinton support for the Muslims in Bosnia reduced Orthodox Christian culture associated with Russia and Serbia concurrently with the loss of vast tracks of former Russian dominated territories, and subsequent Muslim terrorism globally continuing in to the Bush administration Russians must be a little skeptical about where their national interests stop loss-Bush's Olympic noises from China aren't too helpful perhaps. Fortunately Obomba is concentrating on getting himself in to the White House instead of making utterances about international affairs and not troubling the waters presently.
What can be done is an immediate cease-fire and a chess match held between the best of Georgia and Russia with the winner having the right to provide pizza to injured civilians the next five years and to provide financial compensation for the civilian dead. The winner can be said to have won' the conflict and both sides can withdraw to let the Ossetians police themselves with equipment provided by the winner.