I have to admit, being an American with ingrained American attitudes, that I have been surprised at the number of apologists for Russia and the South Ossetians among our Daily Kos brethren. I have commented in several diaries seeking for links/evidence to back the various claims people have been making.
What I know is this:
- the history of Georgia/Russia/Ossetia is long and convoluted.
- Russia is feeling its oats
- Georgia is a small country that has no hope of standing up to Russia by itself
- South Ossetia is an even smaller enclave within Georgia that has no hope of standing up to Georgia
- There is oil and oil pipelines in the Caucuses
- The Bush State Department is inept, is often ruled by ideology rather than facts on the ground, and, even if it is seeking to do the right thing, can FUBAR anything it touches
What I suspect is this:
- Mikheil Saakashvili is a loon
- Putin cannot be trusted
- Russia will think nothing of flattening opposition by any means possible if it thinks it can get away with it -- see Chechnya
- Russia is also capable of blundering into a situation from which there is no graceful exit
- There was no "genocide" in South Ossetia, but the deaths that did occur were unnecessary
- Mikheil Saakashvili miscalculated badly
- If anyone is guilty of ethnic cleansing right now, it's the South Ossetians.
Why do I think this? I rely greatly on Human Rights Watch, because I trust them.
They tell me that though civilian deaths did occur in the original Georgian incursion into South Ossetia, they weren't as great as some people, inluding Putin and diarists here, have claimed. See this HRW article. The Washington Post also quotes from this source in it's feature editorial, "Mythmaking in Moscow":
The doctor also said that 44 bodies had been brought to the hospital since the fighting began, of both military and civilians. The figure reflects only those killed in the city of Tskhinvali. But the doctor was adamant that the majority of people killed in the city had been brought to the hospital before being buried, because the city morgue was not functioning due to the lack of electricity in the city.
To be fair they also say the hospital had been shelled, so it's possible that casualties could have been higher had the Georgians been better at what they did, but HRW also gives reports like this:
The Georgians came to the village at around two o’clock in the morning. They told us not to be afraid and said that if our men wouldn’t shoot, they wouldn’t shoot either. They shot in the air – probably trying to frighten us. They entered the houses, checked identification documents, even took away the passports from some of our neighbors. They also looked for young guys and for the men. Though all our males were already gone by then – they joined the militia and hid themselves in the woods. The Georgians were also looking for firearms but our men had taken their weapons with them, so there was nothing much to find. We were very scared and could not stay in the village while the Georgians were there, so we also fled into the woods. For the first night, we just walked non-stop.
This same article from HRW also reports on looting by South Ossetians of Georgian homes and suggests a fairly concerted effort to ensure Georgian refugees of the fighting do not return to their homes in South Ossetia.
And they tell me that Moscow has been using cluster bombs in civilian areas article
Moreover, numerous sources tell me that the Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff has gone on record as threatening Poland with a nuclear strike: I chose Yahoo for my source for this one. This is hardly the talk of a rational partner for peace.
Let's face it folks, the history of this conflict is older than the last couple of weeks. The politics is messy. There are no clean hands. I appreciate my fellow Kossacks educating me regarding "facts" that may escape me in my American hobbit hole, wherein in I get manufactured news from sources that just aren't that curious or interested in telling me something undermines established paradigms. That said, I can't accept the numerous attempts to paint Russia as a white knight and Saakashvili as the ogre in all this. Saakashvili may not be the most trustworthy of partners, but he's not a war criminal. Putin may have valid interests in the Caucuses, but he's playing a dangerous game with a naked power grab right now.
Zirc