"badgolferman" <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:g84b1s$h92$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> What a fantastic article detailing the shortcomings of the West / NATO
> and the implications of the Russian invasion of Georgia. John
> Bolton's
> description of Chamberlanian weakness and what must be done to get
> Russia and the Middle East's attention makes him my new favorite
> international diplomat. If McCain would guarantee Bolton as his
> Secretary of State I would have no qualms casting my vote.
>
> -------------
>
> Russia's invasion across an internationally recognised border, its
> thra****ng of the Georgian military, and its smug satisfaction in
> humbling one of its former fiefdoms represents only the visible
> damage.
> As bad as the bloodying of Georgia is, the broader consequences are
> worse.
>
>
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2563260/John-Bolton-After-Russias-invasion-of-Georgia-what-now-for-the-West.html
>
> http://tinyurl.com/54um7z
>
> --
>
Just remember that Bush looked into Putins eyes and saw his soul. And it
was good. LOL
Just remember that we have no moral authority after the reps have lost
it all for us.
--
Lew
Master Plan or Screw Up?
Georgia and U.S. Strategy
By MIKE WHITNEY
The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South
Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending
40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying
much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took
place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South
Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still believe that
the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. The BBC, AP, NPR, the
New York Times and the rest of the establishment media have consistently
and deliberately misled their readers into believing that the violence
in South Ossetia was initiated by the Kremlin. Let's be clear, it
wasn't. In truth, there is NO dispute about the facts except among the
people who rely the western press for their information. Despite its
steady loss of credibility, the cor****ate media continues to operate as
the propaganda-arm of the Pentagon.
Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a good summary of
events in an op-ed in Monday's Wa****ngton Post:
For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The
peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians
fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live
close to each other, found at least some common ground....What happened
on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military
attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket
launchers designed to devastate large areas....Mounting a military
assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic
consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are
now clear. The Georgian leader****p could do this only with the perceived
sup****t and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed
forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its
sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries.
This, coupled with the promise of NATO member****p, emboldened Georgian
leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in
South Ossetia...Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression
against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows
a lack of humanity."
Russia deployed its tanks and troops to South Ossetia to save the
lives of civilians and to reestablish the peace. Period. It has no
interest in annexing the former-Soviet country or in expanding its
present borders. Now that the Georgian army has been routed, Russian
president Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have expressed a willingness
to settle the dispute through normal diplomatic channels at the United
Nations. Neither leader is under any illusions about Wa****ngton's
involvement in the hostilities. They know that Georgian President Mikail
Saakashvili is an American stooge who came to power in a CIA-backed
coup, the so-called "Rose Revolution", and would never order a major
military operation without explicit instructions from his White House
puppetmasters.
The Georgian army had no chance of winning a war with Russia or any
intention of occupying the territory they captured. The real aim was to
lure the Russian army into a trap. US planners hope to do what they did
so skillfully in Afghanistan; lure their Russian prey into a long and
bloody Chechnya-type fiasco that will pit their Russia troops against
guerrilla forces armed and trained by US military and intelligence
agencies. The war will be waged in the name of liberating Georgia from
Russian imperialism and stopping Putin from achieving his alleged
ambition to control critical western-owned pipelines around the Caspian
Basin.
In June, former foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, presented the basic storyline that would be used
against Russia two full months before the Georgian invasion of South
Ossetia. The article appeared on the Kavkazcenter web site. Brzezinski
said the United States witnessed "cases of possible threats by Russia,
directed at Georgia with the intention of taking control over the
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline".
Brzezinski: "Russia actively tends to isolate the Central Asian region
from direct access to world economy, especially to energy supplies..If
Georgia government is destabilized, western access to Baku, Caspian Sea
and further will be limited".
Brzezinski's speculation is part of a broader scenario that's been
crafted for the western media to provide a rationale for upcoming
aggression against Russia. Brzezinski is not only the architect of the
mujahadin-led campaign against Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but
also, the author of "The Grand Chessboard--American Primacy and its
Geostrategic Imperatives", the operating theory behind "the war on
terror" which involves massive US intervention in Central Asia to
control vital resources, fragment Russia, and surround manufacturing
giant, China.
"The Grand Chessboard" is the 21st century's version of the Great
Game. The book begins with this revealing statement:
"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some
five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world
power.....The key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Central
Asian Republics."
This is the heart-and-soul of the war on terror. The real braintrust
behind "never-ending conflict" was actually focussed on Central Asia. It
was the pro-Israeli crowd in the Republican Party that pulled the old
switcheroo and refocussed on the Middle East rather than Eurasia. Now,
powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment (Brzezinski,
Albright, Holbrooke) have regrouped behind the populist "cardboard"
presidential candidate Barack Obama and are preparing to redirect
America's war efforts to the Asian theater. Obama offers voters a choice
of wars not a choice against war.
On Sunday, Brzezinski accused Russia of imperial ambitions comparing
Putin to "Stalin and Hitler" in an interview with Nathan Gardels.
Gardels: What is the world to make of Russia's invasion of Georgia?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role
Russia will play in the new international system.(aka: New World Order)
Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously
similar to Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign
minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin's
"justification" for dismembering Georgia -- because of the Russians in
South Ossetia -- to Hitler's tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to "free"
the Sudeten Deutsch. Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is
doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting
by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In
effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day.
The question the international community now confronts is how to
respond to a Russia that engages in the blatant use of force with larger
imperial designs in mind: to reintegrate the former Soviet space under
the Kremlin's control and to cut Western access to the Caspian Sea and
Central Asia by gaining control over the Baku/Ceyhan pipeline that runs
through Georgia.
In brief, the stakes are very significant. At stake is access to oil
as that resource grows ever more scarce and expensive and how a major
power conducts itself in our newly interdependent world, conduct that
should be based on accommodation and consensus, not on brute force.
If Georgia is subverted, not only will the West be cut off from the
Caspian Sea and Central Asia. We can logically anticipate that Putin, if
not resisted, will use the same tactics toward the Ukraine. Putin has
already made public threats against Ukraine."
Brzezinski, Holbrooke and Albright form the "Imperialist A-Team";
these are not the bungling "Keystone Cops" neocons like Feith and
Rumsfeld who trip over themselves getting out of bed in the morning.
They know what they are doing and they are good at it. They're not
fools. They have aligned themselves with the Obama camp and are
preparing for the next big outbreak of global trouble-making. This
should serve as a sobering wake-up call for voters who still think Obama
represents "Change We Can Believe In".
Richard Holbrooke appeared on Tuesday's Jim Lerher News Hour with
resident neocon Margaret Warner. Typical of Warner's "even-handed"
approach, both of the interviewees were ultra-conservatives from
right-wing think tanks: Richard Holbrooke, from the Council on Foreign
Relations and Dmiti Simes from the Nixon Center.
According to Holbrooke, "The Russians deliberately provoked (the
fighting in South Ossetia) and timed it for the Olympics. This is a
long-standing Russian effort to get rid of President Saakashvili."
Right. Is that why Putin was so shocked when he heard the news (while
he was in Beijing) that he quickly boarded a plane and headed for
Moscow? (after shaking his finger angrily at Bush!)
Holbrooke: "And I want to stress, I'm not a warmonger, and I don't
want a new Cold War any more than Dimitri does....The Russians wish to
re-establish a historic area of hegemony that includes Ukraine. And it
is no accident that the other former Soviet republics are watching this
and extraordinarily upset, as Putin progresses with an attempt to
re-create a kind of a hegemonic space."
It is impossible to go over all of Holbrooke's distortions,
half-truths and lies but, what is im****tant is to recognize that a story
is being constructed to demonize Putin and to justify future hostilities
against Russia. Holbrooke's bogus assertions are identical to
Brzezinski's, and yet, these same lies are already appearing in the
mainstream media. The propaganda "bullet points" have already been
determined; "Putin is a menace","Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet
empire", "Putin is an autocrat". (Unlike our "freedom loving" allies in
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt!?!) In truth, Putin is simply enjoying
Russia's newly acquired energy-wealth and would like to be left alone.
So why are Brzezinski and his backers in the foreign policy
establishment demonizing Putin and threatening Russia with "ostracism,
isolation and economic penalties?" What is Putin's crime?
Putin's problems can be traced back to a speech he made in Munich
nearly two years ago when he declared unequivocally that he rejected the
basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine and US global hegemony. His speech
amounted to a Russian Declaration of Independence. That's when western
elites, particularly at the Council on Foreign Relations and the
American Enterprise Institute put Putin on their "enemies list" along
with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, Morales, Mugabe and anyone else who
refuses to take orders from the Wa****ngton Mafia.
Here's what Putin said in Munich:
The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master,
one sovereign---- one center of authority, one center of force, one
center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not
only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself
because it destroys itself from within.. What is even more im****tant is
that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be
no moral foundations for modern civilization.
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any
problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new
centers of tension. Judge for yourselves---wars as well as local and
regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than before.
Significantly more, significantly more!
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force -
military force - in international relations, force that is plunging the
world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles
of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of
fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state
and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped
its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic,
political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other
nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?
In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve
a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency,
based on the current political climate. And of course this is extremely
dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to
emphasize this - no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that
international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course
such a policy stimulates an arms race.
I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we
must seriously think about the architecture of global security.
Every word Putin spoke was true which is why it was not reprinted in
the western media.
"Unilateral and illegitimate military actions", the "uncontained
hyper-use of force", the "disdain for the basic principles of
international law", and most im****tantly; "No one feels safe!"
Putin's claims are all indisputable, that is why he has entered the
neocons crosshairs. He poses a direct challenge to what Brzezinski calls
the "international system", which is shorthand for the cor****ate/banking
cartel that is controlled by the western oligarchy of racketeers.
Was the Goergian attack last Thursday a set-up, organized in
Wa****ngton? Unfortunately for Bush, the wily Russian prime minister is
considerably brighter than anyone in the current administration. Bush's
plan will undoubtedly backfire and disrupt the geopolitical balance of
power. The world might get that breather from the US after all.
Mike Whitney can be reached at fergiewhitney@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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