[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
By the way, where is the European peace movement? You know, the ones that gather by the hundreds of thousands to protest any military action the U.S. might undertake? I’m not hearing a peep from them. This was an unlawful invasion right in their own backyard. Where are the marches? Where are the demands that the U.N. do something? Where are the requests for sanctions and boycotts of Russia?
[/QUOTE]
Why the fuck should anyone march in favour of the initial aggressor? You play with fire, you get burned. Good lesson for the next bunch who think they can embroil NATO in the suppression of other ethnicities.
Georgia gambled and Georgia lost. Too late for them to whine on and play the ‘poor little democracy’ card. People who lay specious claims to states that they have never controlled and whose claim for them lies in the fact they were administratively part of Georgia in the map of the USSR don’t get to play that card.
And I doubt if anyone wants, ‘because Uncle Joe Stalin said it was ours’ to become a legitimate claim on territory. Not Moldova or Latvia.
Georgia lost. Its US backers lost and there is nothing that can be done about it but play the game from here. As Russia holds all the cards there is no use bleating on like a whiny bunch of kids. Russia is doing no more than we have done in recent history with a lot less cause. It is the West who have established its fine to invade sovereign states on specious grounds, that it is fine to break up sovereign states to ‘protect’ ethnic minorities. It is the West that claims most of the bloody world is its legitimate ‘sphere of influence’.
What goes around comes around and at least Georgia is actually on Russia’s borders. There’s no ‘takesy backsy’ in international politics and no amount of pretending that Russia is doing anything the West hasn’t done and is still doing all over the world, no amount of only underlining our impotence, chest-thumping will make a blind bit of difference to the fact that Georgia is getting punished for its own stupidity.
More fool them for believing the West would be willing or able to help. The Hungarians, the Kurds and the Shia could have told them about their western encouraged uprisings and the diddly squat help they got.
They’ve learnt - just like Iraq, just like Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala and Cuba, just like Grenada, just like Afghanistan - that Big Powers don’t take kindly to those that step out of line.
And again compared to what we did in Iraq - the disgraceful shattering of cities like Fallujah to suppress ‘rebellions’ Georgia is getting off incredibly lightly.
Honestly the rank bloody hypocrisy of some in this thread sickens me. These are the rules of the game the USA plays by. Might makes right so stop bloody whining when someone else play by the same rules.