The Russian-Georgian War

In reality, the Russia-Georgia war involves three important elements, as commentor Muhammad Sahimi put it,

1.The desire to encircle Russia with pro-U.S. clients in the former Soviet republics, from Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, and by setting up missile "defense" systems in Poland and the Czech Republic that are intended for the Russians, but are justified by the bogus threats posed by Iran's missiles and its nonexistent nuclear weapons program.

2.Recognition, over strong and angry objection by Russia, of Kosovo as an independent state. I suppose so long as such unstable mini-states as Kosovo are clients of the U.S., their Islamic identity poses no problem to the neoconservatives. Most other Muslims, such as those in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are considered dangerous.

3.But perhaps the most important element has to do with the control of the routes for transporting oil and gas from Central Asia and the Caucasus region to international markets and, in particular, to Western Europe. If the U.S., pressured by the Israel lobby, had not pushed for bypassing Iran, we would have perhaps been in a different situation than what we have now between Georgia and Russia, with all of its geopolitical implications.

These are all the American Neoconservatives goals. It's about oil and gas. It's about Israel. Human lives means nothing to these people.

The apparent bias of the western media is astonishing. The western media has made Russia seen as the bad guy even though it was Georgia who started the war of aggression. Even more disturbing was the way the war was launch. The South Ossetians was duped into beleiving that a peace and future for South Ossetia was about to be negotiated on the following day. Instead, Georgia launch a massive attack on the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.

The decidedly apolitical, non-ideological Web site Reliefweb said:

"The place that has suffered most is South Ossetia which is home to both ethnic Ossetians and Georgians, the latter accounting for about a third of the population. The destruction there has been appalling and it looks as though many hundreds of civilians have died, in the first place as a result of the initial Georgian assault of August 7-8. Gosha Tselekhayev, an Ossetian interpreter in Tskhinvali with whom I spoke by telephone on August 10 said, 'I am standing in the city center, but there's no city left.'

"Ossetians fleeing the conflict zone talk of Georgian atrocities and the indiscriminate killing of civilians."

The Georgian President, Saakashvili, launch this war of aggression in a way to catch the ossetians off guard by apparently offering a peace deal. As Reliefweb said:

"On August 7, after days of shooting incidents in the South Ossetian conflict zone, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made a speech in which he said that he had given the Georgian villagers orders not to fire, that he wanted to offer South Ossetia 'unlimited autonomy' within the Georgian state, with Russia to be a guarantor of the arrangement.

"Both sides said they were discussing a meeting the next day to discuss how to defuse the clashes.

"That evening, however, Saakashvili went for the military option. The Georgian military launched a massive artillery attack on Tskhinvali, followed the next day by a ground assault involving tanks.

"This was a city with no pure military targets, full of civilians who had been given no warning and were expecting peace talks at any moment."

This was down right atrocious. It was design in such a way to make the ossetians off guard then slaughtered them. It was an attempt to commit genocide.The attack looked designed to take everybody by surprise, perhaps because much of the Russian leadership was in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games. It also unilaterally destroyed the negotiating and peacekeeping arrangements, under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, that have been in place for 16 years. Russian peacekeeping troops based in South Ossetia were among those killed in the Georgian assault.

Off course we would not be hearing all this in the western media. They are all pro-Georgia. The so called 'democracy' that Georgia champions is nothing to be proud off. While shouting all over of their 'democracy', the Georgian government have been beating protestors, clamped down on disent and shutting down opposition media.

The blatant media bias displayed by the "mainstream" news organizations is more than matched by the shameful cover-up of Georgian atrocities by the mainline "human rights" organizations. More important than the hypocrisy and ideology-induced moral myopia of the "human rights" crowd, however, is the very real human suffering that is being pointedly overlooked. These are real people being killed and rendered homeless, people who now live in terror and uncertainty while the West sit around discussing the geopolitical implications as if individual human beings were pieces on a chessboard. Their hypocracy knows no bounds.

The west is now poise to deliver humanitarian aid to the region. This "humanitarian" gambit is just that: a device designed to legitimize the west growing intervention in the region. Plain and simple. The American Neocons and their european allies are now shouting Russophobia. It was always present as an animating force on the "humanitarian interventionist" agenda of the neocons.

The Russians was right this time. They are actually the defenders of the people of South Ossetia.