The Georgian Dogs Of August - Or Shmucks Of Our
Time
Saul Landau
27 August 2008
 Saul
Landau, is an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and
filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau's most widely
praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social,
political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he
won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for
Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy
for "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang." Landau has written over ten books,
short stories and poems. He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for
*Assassination
on Embassy Row *
A Bush & Botox World: Travels Through Bush's America (Counterpunch) *
The Dangerous Doctrine - National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy *
The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can
Reverse the Trend (Paths for the Twenty-First Century). 
http://roundworldproductions.com
Stupid leaders interpret words to satisfy their political desires. They miss
vital nuances in dangerous international relations. On August 7, Mikheil
Saakashvili ordered Georgia's armed forces to invade South Ossetia, a
secessionist province bordering Russia. In so doing, he joined other heads of
state who won dunce caps with disastrous decisions based on failure to
understand the obvious.
Georgia's President apparently counted on US backing, albeit his "good friend"
George W. Bush had not explicitly promised to send US forces if needed. The
Georgian Army assaulted a piece of its own country, causing tens of thousands of
South Ossetians to flee into Russia. Did "Saaka" ask Bush the explicit question
or merely extrapolate --as in "good friend must translate into US military
support?" In June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew to Santiago to
address the OAS on human rights. Before his speech, he met with Chilean dictator
August Pinochet to try to help boost his tarnished image. In the
conversation, according to a State Department Memcom, K assured P that
Washington "approved of his methods" - probably referring to free market
economics and his dispatching reds, pinkos and rose-shaded elements from the
Chilean political scene. But that "cleansing" activity led to worldwide
condemnation for human rights abuses and provoked the Kennedy Amendment barring
Washington from selling military equipment to Chile. K wanted Chile to buy new
fighter jets.
By praising P's "methods," K may well have led the less than suave Chilean
general to think that "approval" included permission to assassinate
Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Ambassador (under Allende) to the United
States - in Washington DC on September 21, 1976. After all, P may have reasoned,
K knows we assassinate our enemies abroad. Indeed, K had helped Chile set up a
multination hit squad called Operation Condor. In 1978, the Justice
Department indicted Chile's secret police chief and other Chilean officials for
the assassination. P's name remained on an unsigned indictment in the Assistant
US Attorney's office in Washington DC for conspiracy to assassinate Letelier-
until he died in 2006. In 1982, Argentina's military junta thought that praise
from Washington for "ridding their country of subversives" would surely merit
support for a war they planned against England to regain control of the
Falklands/Malvinas islands. Indeed, US diplomats and military attaches in Buenos
Aires offered pats on the back to the thugs in power who had offered help in the
US' illegal war against Nicaragua. When they reclaimed the Malvinas and
England declared war, Washington sneered at the Argentine request for support,
as if it ever could have considered deserting its closest and longest standing
ally for a bunch of military brutes - and temporary ones at that. In 1990,
before Iraq invaded Kuwait,
US Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that the US had no "opinion" on
Arab-Arab disputes. Presumably, she thought Saddam planned to take the small
corner of Kuwait that had been in dispute and that legally belonged to Iraq.
Saddam, not a man known to detect the nuance in a statement, understood her
words as President Bush's (I) permission to take all of Kuwait. Oh well!
Saakashvili has now earned his status in the ranks of modern blunderers. This
former New York lawyer turned head of state thought he enjoyed full US support.
After all, he had remained loyal when the rest of Bush's coerced coalition began
pulling out of Iraq. He kept 2,000 Georgian troops there and won in return
Bush's support for NATO membership - plus hugs, back slaps and even White House
dinners and lunches. Given these outward assurances and lots of US military aid,
and despite occasional warnings about provoking the semi-sleeping Russian Bear,
he dispatched his troops against secessionist "rebels," killing Ossetian
civilians. As thousands of Ossetians fled north into Russian, Russian troops
poured south forcing Georgian forces to beat a hasty and less than dignified
retreat Russia removed the Georgian military from both South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. It added punishment and humiliation to Saakashvili's predicament by
occupying Georgian territory and bombing some areas. Presumably, the Russian
leaders had little concern that the West that had armed and encouraged Georgia
would do anything to stop the military push. As Bush frothed at the mouth in
anger, all he could do was dispatch one military airplane, filled with
humanitarian supplies. The embarrassed Bushies now leak to the stenographic
US press that its pleas to Saakashvili to act prudently regarding the
pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia fell on deaf ears. Such a
version of events collides with Bush's authorization to send US military
advisers to integrate into Georgia's military apparatus. Could Washington have
such a chummy relationship and yet exert no control over events that could have
led to nuclear war?
"It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia's
mobilization and intentions," wrote Stratford military analyst George
Friedman. "It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the
Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. US
technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to
unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian
troops were moving to forward positions." (August
13, Stratfor.com)
If true, Bush emerges as strategically more idiotic than Saakashvili. Bush
said nothing when Georgian troops invaded South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Someone in
his entourage must have known the Big Bear would not tolerate such a
provocation. Indeed, Russia showed Georgia and the world who controlled its
sphere. But, whined Bush, the Russian response was "disproportionate" and
"brutal." This from the shock and awe man who bombed and invaded Iraq and
Afghanistan and threatens war with Iran! A decade ago, Clinton bombed Serbia
for almost three solid months and then sent troops in to "persuade" its
government to allow Kosovo to secede. Compare Serbia's claim to its territory
with Georgia's "historic" - as if - hold on Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia
has signed a peace accord and swore to begin troop withdrawal. But Konstantin
Kosachev, Chair of Russia's Parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said
Russian forces "sooner or later" will leave Georgia, depending on conditions.
"If I would ask you," Kosachev continued, "how fast the American forces can
leave Iraq, the answer would be, as soon as we have guarantees for peace and
security there. The same answer would be toward this situation." In 1991, the
United States rejoiced over the break up of the former Soviet bloc. But the much
heralded principles of self-determination and sovereignty apply only when the US
says they do. When some residents of two provinces, not with an ethnically
Georgian majority, seek independence, the United States waxes indignant.
Saakashvili and Bush's neo cons hold different standards. What the good guys do
is automatically good. Now what? President Medvedev has stopped the
"well-intentioned" West from reducing Russian power. In Eastern Europe, NATO had
already absorbed six former Soviet bloc states and three former Soviet
Republics. Washington even induced the Russians to close their only nuclear pact
monitoring base in Lourdes, Cuba to show "sincerity." Less than five years
later, Washington has begun a new anti-missile strategy, by moving sites from
Western Europe to Poland and the Czech Republic - supposedly to defend against
non existent Iranian ICBMs and nuclear weapons. On the economic front,
Western capital and diplomacy steered a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from
Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia. No Russian participation - or profit.
Western capital and political know how poured into Ukraine and Georgia to usher
in "democratic revolutions" - anti-Russian; they tried and failed in Belarus.
The questions not posed by the US media came from Fidel Castro.
"What are Georgian soldiers doing in Iraq if not supporting a war which
has cost that people hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of victims?
What ideals are they defending there?" asked Cuba's former President.
"Saakashvili, on his own," wrote Castro, "would never have jumped to the
adventure of sending the Georgian army into South Ossetia, where he would be
clashing with Russian troops."
Egg now drips from several faces. But Georgia's foolish president doesn't
have a stable of toady neo cons and a distracting media to help lick it off. The
question is: has the Russian military move taught the West a lesson or will Bush
and his successor push until an even more dangerous "incident" occurs? |
