“They didn’t care if it was a house or a military camp…They bombed everything.”
When it comes to stories about Russia’s invasion of Georgia (such as this one which tells how Russia is trying to make formal what it’s been doing for a long time), reporters make one fundamental mistake that colors their coverage wrongly. I’ve made the same mistake in some conversations I’ve had about Georgia. The mistake we make is in saying that Georgia started the conflict and was trying to take back South Ossetia. Here’s how the msitake is often put:
Georgia and Russia fought a brief war over the breakaway region of South Ossetia earlier this month after Georgia sent in troops to try to retake the province by force. Russia responded with a massive counter-attack by land, sea and air.
As it happens, that is not correct. Michael Totten got the chance to speak to two of the best-informed men on the entire geopolitical situation in that area and they gave him an “idiot’s guide” to the history of the region since 1991. The truth is that the Russian invasion of Georgia has been cooking for a lot longer than we think and that the Russian government has been lying through its teeth the whole time. To be sure, the Georgian government has made its share of mistakes, but those were msitakes of diplomacy and not deliberate belligerence and conquest. An excerpt can not do his article justice, but this paragraph captures most of what you’ll find therein.
Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.
Please read the whole thing. It’s important when Russia makes its next move on another of our allies to remember what it did in Georgia. We need to have our facts straight so that when Putin’s puppets parrot the same lies as they have in the past three weeks, we can recognize them for what they are and act appropriately.
Other Posts of Interest:
- The Russian Bear is Roaring Again
- Russia Presses the Advantage, Captures Undisputed Georgian Territory.
- Russia Takes South Ossetia, Eyes the Rest of Georgia, Seeks to Oust Georgian President (Updates: A Couple of Likely Reasons)
Category: Alliances and Allies, No More Tyrants
