The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Lost Verizon

8.12.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 7)

My concern is that this symbolic activity will one day be recognized as the smoke-screen for an infamous flight from Saratov, Russia to Tehran, fulfilling the deliveries of nuclear war-heads to the mullahs there while the West was too busy monitoring other airspaces.

Really, this is all about as subtle as a damn hand grenade being delivered to one's table during Sunday brunch.
-- Michael S. Smith II
Charleston, South Carolina

Vladimir Putin's current excursion into the heart of the Caucasus gives new meaning to the song title "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

The U.S. has been able to move a cadre of Georgian troops out of Iraq and back to their homeland to face the Russian invasion. A shame we weren't also able to send a flight of A-10 Warthogs to chew up some Ruskie armor. An even bigger shame is that we weren't able to force NATO in accepting Georgia and Ukraine as members. This would have stopped Putin and his minions cold.

The potential loss of these two democratic countries could well pose dire consequences for the West in the near future.
-- Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, Ohio

In 2001, George Bush "looked into Putin's eyes and got a sense of his soul." Putin, most likely, returned to Moscow singing "Bush has got Bette Davis eyes." The leader of the free world is a chump when it comes to judging character. Putin probably synchronized the timing of the Georgian invasion with the Olympic Games years ago.
-- Jack Hughes
Chicago, Illinois

SPEAKING OF RUSSIAN BEAR
Re: Matthew Omolesky's History Returns to the Caucasus:

I read this article with a mild amusement. Pretending to be a scholarly article on the topic of current war in Ossetia, it omits the most basic facts that do not fit into the author's scheme:

1) The war has been started by the Georgian side. The very first action was near-obliteration of the capital city, Tskhinvali, with hundreds of civilian casualties (Ossetia claims 1,500 civilians dead with no other reliable or unreliable estimates available)

2) 15 Russian peacekeepers were killed in this initial and unprovoked assault. The decision to attack the peacekeepers was a very stupid miscalculation on the part of Mr. Saakashvili (and certainly, "a blend of condescension, arrogance, and brazenness"). The Russian reaction to it was 100% predictable as it is completely unrelated to the not-very-democratic political system of the latter (just think of the reaction of the U.S. in a similar situation). The article is also conveniently omitting that this is the third time Georgia tried to resolve the Ossetia problem by force, that Georgia increased the war budget 30-fold in few years and is spending way more of its GDP on the army than the U.S.

The U.S. has enormous leverage with Georgian government, as we are bankrolling its enormous current account deficit. We should be using this leverage to discourage further military adventures of this kind, not helping to mop-up the results, as the author seems to suggest. Otherwise, we might eventually come to repeating the word of Kaiser Wilhelm, "How did it happen?" These words were spoken when the old Kaiser returned form the vacation in 1914 only to find that Germany has been dragged in to a major war by its lesser allies who happily interpreted Germany's a support as a blank check for settling some old scores.
-- Dmitri "Dima" Varsanofiev

The end of history does indeed seem to be eventuating, though not the end envisioned by Fukuyama. One can only wonder (with trepidation): What next? (Incidentally, though Russians profess a love for Stalin, they are now bombing his homeland.)
-- David Govett
Davis, California

An excellent assessment of the current situation in Georgia, if a trifle steeped in academia. Let me add a couple of other bits of information to the mix that just might simplify things a little.

Russia has been actively working to re-establish its Soviet hegemony for some time. It has been following a easily discerned plan. Russian leadership has been attempting to re-establish its borders at the end of the Romanov period. If successful, it will then attempt to re-establish its eastern European buffer zone of satellite states. This is one of the reasons that the Kremlin leadership fears the deployment of an anti-missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin is not acting on a short term program here. This is a deliberate program to restore its Soviet era borders.

It was refreshing to see Mr. Omolesky point out that stepped up military action against South Ossetia by Georgian military units came as a direct result of significantly increased attacks against Georgian towns and cities outside of South Ossetia by Ossetian separatist forces. And, coincidentally, Russia just happened to have the military and diplomatic wherewithal to "protect its peacekeepers and citizens" nearly instantaneously. How its "peacekeepers" happened to be in such close proximity to the artillery batteries of the South Ossetian separatists which were the preliminary targets of the Georgian artillery batteries has not been reported.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, Trade, Vladimir Putin, Television, Business, Sports, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, United Nations, NATO, Africa, Oil