I suppose it would be nice for the United States to have the moral authority to condemn Russia’s unprovoked, full scale invasion of Georgia, a sovereign nation, but you know… we don’t.
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Heckuva job Bushie. I think that this ranks right up there with when his father abandoned the Shi’ites to be massacred after the Gulf War.
Is our military up for a third front?
@2: Isn’t it supposed to be, in theory?
Betcha some of the more over-the-top evangelicals are just about flipping their lids over this. I’m almost inclined to turn on TBN and see of Hal Linsey and his ilk have dusted off their “Russia is Gog” speeches.
Give Tom McCabe a call at home! His personal number is 360-xxx-xxxx. I’m sure that he’d LOVE to hear from all of us day and night!
[PHONE NUMBER X’D OUT BY GOLDY. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, SO I’M NOT INTO THAT SHIT.]
Of course, some conservatives believe that Bush is presenting an “uncompromising stance”…
Remember that WWI started when a Serbian terrorist assasinated an Austrian Duke. These things have a way of spilling out way beyond their borders.
It’s at times like this that we need a President who is known and respected in the international community for being thoughtful and principled in the quest for peace and the rule of law. A President who’s moral authority can assist him/her in persuading the combating parties to accept a cease fire, and putting forward the framework for a more peaceful way of resolving their differences.
But then, we have George W. Bush. The only thing lower than his approval rating at home is his approval rating abroad. And foreign leaders are still scratching their heads as they try to figure out how he won election to one, much less two terms.
Man you have to admit Monkeyface Bush has balls – standing there and lecturing Putin about starting a shooting war in a sovereign nation, blah, blah, blah.
Isn’t that exactly what we did in Iraq?
I bet Putin told Bush to fuck himself – as well he should.
Now that the 2000 troops from Georgia are pulling out of Iraq, I think that leaves us with two tanks and 12 guys from Camaroon to help form our “international” coalition.
Regarding the Olympics…there was a tragic irony yesterday when two of the medalists in one event, one a Russian and one from Georgia, who a few years ago would have been teammates, hugged each other at the award ceremony.
You libs have the backs of your Volvos plastered with “Free Tibet” bumper stickers. Seems to me like Russia is just “Freeing” South Ossetia. Isn’t that a good thing? Oh wait, Richard Gere hasn’t told you to be concerned about that part of the world yet, has he?
In actuality the ‘Bear’ mentioned in Revelation is ‘Bear-Stearns’ — not the Russian Bear.
re 10: And Ronald Reagan hasn’t told YOU what to think because he’s dead now and he was brain dead as president.
Republicans rely far more on Hollywood types than Democrats do.
Ronald Reagan’s highest approval rating while in office was 52% — direcly after he ordered the Marines to invade Tijuana, Mexico — and the resultant astounding ‘victory’.
The universal love and regard for RR is another corporate media MYTH that has no legs. I’d say F*** you and the horse you rode in on — but that would be insulting to the horse.
The U.S. does not have the right to tell Russia, or any other country, what to do, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing just that. But I respect the hell out of Russia for basically telling us to fuck off by ignoring our demands, and going full steam ahead with their plans, anyway.
Republicans love to watch war on TV.
Apparently the gun-rights folks’ claim that “an armed society is a polite society” doesn’t apply to dealings between nations.
re 13: “The U.S. does not have the right to tell Russia, or any other country, what to do….”
So, are you saying that the U.S. has no right to tell another country to stop doing something? That is incredibly stupid.
Whether we now have the moral authority to be taken seriously is another matter — thanks to you Republicans.
Goldy said something about “Russia’s unprovoked … invasion of Georgia.” Right or wrong, Russia says they were provoked, so at least according to them, there was provocation.
@16
I’m a liberal/progressive Democrat.
@18 “I’m a liberal/progressive Democrat.”
No, you’re delusional. Big difference.
UN Resolution 1441.
The U.S. used to be able to speak with moral superiority with respect to human rights, unlawful detention without due process, and torture. Last week Bush tries to lecture China on human rights issues, and the whole world just laughs at us.
The U.S. also used to be able to speak with moral superiority with respect to the use of military force to settle territorial issues. Since WWII, the U.S. had insisted that all territorial disputes should be resolved in the United Nations, not on the field of combat. Now we are in Iraq, still trying to achieve a lasting “regime change”, and when we lecture the Russians, they also just laugh at us. Who are we to lecture them?
It’s going to take the better part of a generation to undue the long-term damage to the reputation of the United States, internationally. Lots of right-wingers don’t care about our international reputation, but when you suddenly need the assistance of other countries, it becomes important in so many ways. I
t is just one more of the “infrastructure” items which the Bush administation, and the Republicans in general, feel can be discarded at a moment’s notice in favor of short-term policies, regardless of the long-term effect on U.S. interests. The Obama administration will spend eight years rebuilding the U.S. reputation at home and abroad, at considerable cost, but it will be the future presidents who will reap the benefits.
The most cogent comments on the Georgian crisis were made two weeks ago , in Berlin, by BH Obama. While lots of folks were mazed at the specatacle of a potenmtially POPULAR US President with the personal clout to affect how other nations behave, they .. and the Repricans, missed the key elements of what may be a new, Obama doctrine.
BHO called for a new relationship with Europe, Germany and the rest of the democratic world. Imagine if this mess were happening with a really effective NATO? Imagine that NATO was part of a larger alliance with India, Brazil, Turkey, Japan, Korea (united sic)?
This is what Barack talked about although I believe his goals go further. I read the speach as a step toward an expansion of the NATO model into something that might be the Democratic Treaty Organization.
Of cause this new Germany and Japan would be able to assume equal burdens with the US while exerting their opinions on a world stage because of an active military role in NATO/DTO.
Traditionally the Repricans have decried such an idea since it means US troops fighting in blue helmets for French speaking female generals .. or soemthing of the sort. Withour something like this, however, the 21st century looks like the 2oth, with the US playing Britain and China playing the US role. By the middle of the century we too may achieve the status of a third rate power,
So, is that So bad? It is not if all you think of the US as is our tribe. It is terrible if you think the US has a role in promoting democracy.
The U.S. also used to be able to speak with moral superiority with respect to the use of military force to settle territorial issues. Since WWII, the U.S. had insisted that all territorial disputes should be resolved in the United Nations, not on the field of combat.
—————-
Really? What about the Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999?
@10 Troll uses the phrase “You libs.”
@16 He says he is a liberal progressive Democrat.
This stupid right wing fuck outs himself in the same thread. Is this the best the republicans can do?
Go back to sucking dick for a living Troll. You have to be good at SOMETHING. It sure ain’t this.
@17
Goldy said something about “Russia’s unprovoked … invasion of Georgia.” Right or wrong, Russia says they were provoked, so at least according to them, there was provocation.
And Putin is such an honest and trustworthy guy, I mean, why doubt him?
Man, you’re dumb.
It was inevitable that the tribal and ethnic hatreds of the former Soviet Union states would eventually come out of the woodwork. The Soviet authorities (i.e., the Russians) were holding everyone down and under Russian control from the get-go. Hell, trading the czars for the Russian commissars wasn’t much of an improvement in October, 1917 for the people in countries like the Ukraine and Georgia!
I don’t know if the U.S. ever had “moral authority” at least when it comes to interventions in other countries.
Since the U.S. decided to ape other imperialists with our colonization of the Philippines or even with gunboat diplomacy in Japan by Perry in 1853 – we kind of lost it.
Almost forgot land-grabbing from Mexico? Not good.
And slavery? The Native Americans? Not too good with human rights.
BYEBYE GOP DID YOU DET THAT PLASTIC BAG FOR YOUR HEAD YET.IF NOT GET TWO ONE YOU CAN GIVE TO STEVE.
22 Stephen, from your description it sounds like Obama is proposing to re-invent the United Nations. Why not instead simply try and fix the old one? After all, at this point the United States (or rather the Republican-governed United States) is responsible for much of what’s broken about it.
@28 “ONE YOU CAN GIVE TO STEVE”
How very thoughtful of you, although there’s no need to shout.
@23 ,,, what bullcrap!
1. While I admire the UN, I am not sure why you think it ocnveys morality.
2. The US/UN moral force seems to have not had a lot of good effect on:
US/Riussia sponsored Iraqui invasion of Iran.
Chinese aided Ruwanda
Chinese invasion of Tibet
Chinese aided Burmese putsch
YLB @ 27: The general agreement, internationally, was that everything pre-WWII would be forgiven, and everybody would get a fresh start with the UN in place. That was supposed to avoid the problems like you STILL have in the former Yugoslavia, with ethnic-territorial arguments going back for centuries.
That is also the basis for Great Britain to reject the Argentine attempt to “annex” the Falklands in the early 1980’s. Argentina may or may not have a legitimate claim to the islands, but the use of military force was not the right way to go about exercising those claims.
Oh fucking please. NO war in the history of this world was ever stopped because someone invoked ‘moral authority’.
Moreover, this skirmish is exactly what you get from a leftist government. War to exert and maintain control. If you vote for Christine Gregoire, you’re voting for Putin.
@33 “If you vote for Christine Gregoire, you’re voting for Putin.”
If you vote for Rossi, you’re voting for the commie-fascists at the BIAW. Oh, and Hitler.
If I were Putin I’d take out an ad at the Olympics that said GEORGE – SUCK MY DICK! Signed Putin.
We have NO authority – moral or otherwise – to tell ANY country what’s right or wrong after the disaster that is Iraq.
@35: WHAT? So then invading another country is okay now that we’ve done it (recently)? Heck, I’d rather be a principled hypocrite than a complete fucking bastard that doesn’t want to take a moral stance.
When I say something like “you libs,” I am not “outing” myself. I am a liberal, too. If a engineer addresses a group of engineers, and says “you engineers need to realize that….” Does that mean the speaker is not an engineer, because he used the term “you engineers?” I’m AM a liberal Democrat, with the exception of a couple of issues.
I don’t see how Bush can complain. Shouldn’t he be supporting Russia’s “surge?” It’s obviously working.
@23 ,,, what bullcrap!
1. While I admire the UN, I am not sure why you think it ocnveys morality.
————
You miss the point of the comment, which was in response to the claim, “Since WWII, the U.S. had insisted that all territorial disputes should be resolved in the United Nations, not on the field of combat.”
In fact, this is not the case, Kosovo being one example. There’s no claim being made about the UN and what it conveys (in fact, I happen to agree with in large part).
The US has conducted other campaigns independent of the UN including: Bay of Pigs (Kennedy, 1961); Grenada (Reagan, 1983, condemned by the UN); Panama (Bush I, 1989, condemned by the Organization of American States).
33
Remember when your buddy GWB said he’d looked into the soul of Putin and saw a good man (not a quote)? Do you think Georgie got that one right?
Lies. Reagan had 73% approval rating in 1981.
Good God. Our moron President can’t even pronounce South Ossetia correctly.
Troll – useless trying here. If you don’t toe the line 100%, you might as well be a neocon to them. So tolerant the left is.
@37
When I say something like “you libs,” I am not “outing” myself. I am a liberal, too.
What issues are you liberal on?
If a engineer addresses a group of engineers, and says “you engineers need to realize that….”
If he was talking about what all engineers should be doing, then what he said would have been obnoxious.
You’re not a liberal, you’re an idiot.
I’m AM a liberal Democrat, with the exception of a couple of issues.
You’re ARE an idiot.
If you are looking for an exact parallel to the Russian invasion of Georgia, you will not find it. In the political context, the 1845 war on Mexico has some similarities. As does Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland, with the West’s quisling agreement.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. For the longer it goes, the more the Russians will look in the world as an evil Dictatorship.Will Putin emerge as an illegal President, with Medvedev as his puppet? We all suspected it, but this may throw the chimera of legitimacy off of the Kremlin. It may force the West to confront alternative energy policy as a matter of survival, not merely as an economic concern.
For China, it can be seen as the only honest broker with the political gravitas to resolve this situation. Will they use soft power to urge the Russians to withdraw to an internationally respected boundary?
That is how low the neo-cons have brought our reputation as a law abiding nation.
For Bush, history will show that his bribing of other nations for the Republican invasion of Iraq to be chock full of pitfalls and costs. We turned Georgia into a well equipped and trained ground force capable of starting this trouble. The neo-cons needed puppets. That is one very expensive puppet. Good thing the Russians are too stupid to realize they should have waited for the Ossetians to be photographed during the humanitarian disaster Georgia caused. Then they could have had the northern Europeans on their side, and possibly split NATO.
I like RR’s comment at #14. It nails the right wings keyboard kommando’s home guard/fuktards perfectly.
@33
Moreover, this skirmish is exactly what you get from a leftist government.
Actually, despite my snarky reply in #25, this conflict appears to have started when Georgia thought it could get away with violating a ceasefire. The Russians used that as the pretext for invading.
PI @ 26:
The first comment on this thread that actually means something. We like to call ourselves a nation of immigrants, an ethnic melting pot. The former Soviet Union managed to weld all these major ethnic groups together:
Russians
Kazakhs
Georgians
Lithuanians
Latvians
Estonians
Ukranians
Belarusians
Turks….. are you getting my drift?
That’s just a partial list, mind you. On top of those major ethnice groups are dozens, perhaps hundreds of minor groups, like the Ossetians and Abkhazians. All held together, their individual identities and beliefs smothered under the unifying force of Russian Communism (though Stalin was Georgian). The end result is a polyglot patchwork that came unraveled at the death of the Soviet Union like a cheap blanket. And similar to what happened in the former Yugoslavia, all the centuries-old tensions of the various ethnicities have gotten back on the boil.
The Georgians have been fighting little wars with Ossetian and Abkhazian separatists for over a decade, which is why the Russians sent in peacekeepers quite some time ago. And when the Georgians pressed on and attacked the Russian peacekeepers, they brought this shit on themselves. While the UN, US, and EU can (and really should) tut-tut about this all they want and try to mediate a diplomatic solution, the best course of action is to let Georgia get their asses kicked, because they started this fight.
43:
You must be new here. Roger?
———————————–
And by the way, nobody toes any such line here. Just ask Goldy how he feels about my opinion of the retarded anti-war protestors that tried to stop shipments of supplies to our troops by blocking access to the ports.
45 “If you are looking for an exact parallel to the Russian invasion of Georgia, you will not find it.”
Well, maybe the invasion of the “other” Georgia, in 1864.
How about this being a WAR for Oil? Russia doesn’t like the fact that a major pipeline is there and isn’t under their control. But it can’t be cause there is no Haliburton…so must just be them trying to help the Ossetia folks….
@39 .. we agree.
The US as a moral exemplar has been effective mainly because of our forces and economic power, not because folks have loved us or cared about OUR sense of morality.
@29 Artfart
From what he said, I assume that the UN would be a big effort, BUT the UN is not a coalition of the like minded. NATO can do things the UN can not do.
@5 “Give Tom McCabe a call at home! His personal number is …”
We don’t do that. We’re not rednecks.
@10 “You libs have the backs of your Volvos plastered with ‘Free Tibet’ bumper stickers. Seems to me like Russia is just ‘Freeing’ South Ossetia. Isn’t that a good thing?”
If you’d read a newspaper once in a while you’d know the Russians didn’t stop with retaking South Ossetia, you ignorant fuck.
@30 He’s not shouting. He’s too stupid to figure out how a caps key works.
@37 “I am a liberal, too.”
I’m Mother Goose.
@43 Give us one good reason why we should tolerate you fascist goatfuckers.
@54
You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. Sure, Russia had to go far into Georgia to secure the freedom of South Ossetia, but they did it! Let’s rejoice! In the words of Reverend Junior Doctor Junior Mints Martin Junior Doctor Reverend Martin Luther Doctor Junior Luther Reverend King Junior, they are free at last! Now we just have to free Tibet!
Republicans rely far more on Hollywood types than Democrats do.
Ronald Reagan’s highest approval rating while in office was 52% — direcly after he ordered the Marines to invade Tijuana, Mexico — and the resultant astounding ‘victory’.
Versus a democrat which can’t get over 50% of the popular vote for POTUS to save thsir lives Reagan was a superstar. You are an idiot.
Lee @ 46
[T]his conflict appears to have started when Georgia thought it could get away with violating a ceasefire.
There’s a case to be made that this is yet another example of Bush’s horribly failed foreign policy. Take Bush’s contributions, via weapons and training, to Georgia’s military capability, couple that with Bush’s insistent invitations that Georgia join NATO, and it’s not at all difficult to believe that Mikhail Saakashvili thought the US would come to his rescue if he ever got into a shooting match with the Russians. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
But, that’s not all. Today, McCain’s, one might say “presumptuous,” response to the situation upstages Bush’s own rhetoric. McCain takes all of the worst elements of Bush’s foreign policy, and, Emeril Lagasse style, kicks it up a notch. One wonders if “Bam!” is McCain’s favorite form of onomatopoeia.
When it comes to foreign policy, McCain isn’t McSame. He’s McWorse.
Apparently the gun-rights folks’ claim that “an armed society is a polite society” doesn’t apply to dealings between nations.
08/11/2008 at 12:16 pm
Georgia is armed with a pea shooter compared to Russuia. If Taiwan was similiarly armed like Georgia they would have been taken over yesterday. It’s a good analogy.
Lies. Reagan had 73% approval rating in 1981.
Come on, what do you expect.
These libs can’t get their story straight from last week let alone 2-3 decades ago.
Republicans love to watch war on TV.
08/11/2008 at 12:15 pm
Why not, it’s less violent than watching COPS in some liberal run city. Now that is bloodshed baby.
So exactly what should we do in the Georgia situation? It doesn’t seem like the Georgia were all that nice to the Ossetians, and that they may have attacked the Russian “peacekeeping” troops that were initially stationed in South Ossetia.
On the other hand, the Abkhazians were not all that nice to the Georgians, with a 20% Abkhazian minority ethnically cleansing almost all of a 45% or so Georgian plurality out of that province about 15 years ago.
And the Russians appear to be invading and attacking far beyond the disputed Abkhazia and South Ossetian provinces.
There are a lot of things the USA could do. Given current military numbers and capabilities, intervention there would likely be successful, assuming that Russia doesn’t use its WMD’s.
So is it a matter that George W. Bush simply doesn’t have the balls to do anything?
Just let the chips fall where they may, Richard. We have no dog in this fight, regardless of what the guv’mint says. The only role the US should have is to help negotiate a cease-fire and help with humanitarian aid for the civilians.
So is it a matter that George W. Bush simply doesn’t have the balls to do anything?
He can’t. His term is almost over and this is a problem the next president will have to face. Luckily the next president will not inherit 20 well trained terrorists in some American flight school.
@58 What are you? A fucking commie?! Russia is knocking over Bush’s ally and he isn’t doing jackshit about it! Where are the U.S. cruise missiles when our friends need us? Huh? Buh-uh-cluck-cluck-cluck!!
@64 “So exactly what should we do in the Georgia situation?”
This is the opportunity to kill Russians wingnuts have salivated for since 1945!
All wingnuts should enlist in the Georgian Self-Defense Forces!
They’ll form a special unit for American volunteers called the Ronald Reagan Brigade!
And give them RPGs and point them toward the Russian tanks!
I wanna see this!!
Now that a rightwing regime on Russia’s doorstep is in trouble, where are the wingnuts who’ve been itching to fight the Russkies?
Buh-uh-cluck-cluck-cluck! Cluck-a-cluck-cluck!!
If anyone will do anything about the Russians it will have to be us. The useless collection of international liberals at the UN are only good at raping women at their relief centers. I guess we will see what happens.
Maybe the fuktard Republicans who read this blog are not aware that the US is currently fighting TWO WARS!
There is jack shit we can do in Georgia. Even if we were not fighting two wars, it would be asinine to get involved in a war on Russia’s southern border. How many American cities is Gori worth? Because this war, if we enter it, would probably go nuclear( or as the neo-cons pronounce it “nuklar”).
Don’t worry. This is a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians. They now have no friends on their border. They just have vassals and soon to be western friendly Democracies. Just wait. You are about to see Democracy spring to life all over Russia’s borders, if for no other reason than to piss the Russians off. Oh, and they have another Chechnya on their hands.
And about that natural gas pipeline to Germany. I wonder how long it will be before that starts to be sabotaged by patriots in the Ukraine. Ukraine, who also hates Russia. Yep, old Putin is going to have to spend a bunch of money keeping his gangster enterprise alive. He no longer can hide his illegitimate dictatorship to the citizens of Western Europe. He has all his neighbors hating him. His army of “made” men are about to get more expensive. You think maybe the dons of Baku might support Georgia with weapons to keep the Bear one country away from them? That is a yes.
Yeah, we don’t have to do shit. Bush may have shot himself in the ass on Georgia, but Putin is going to start to die by a thousand cuts.
@70 Okay bitch who you going to send to fight Russia? You got FlipFlop McSame wanting a 100 year war in Iraq – he wants to bomb Iran – now Russia.
You chickenhawks sit on the sideline and root for war knowing you’ll be sending some poor Black or Hispanic kid to do your bidding.
Much like WHATADICK Cheney who had “other priorities” during Nam – Lush Flimbaugh who used the excuse he had a boil on his ass and punks like Handjob Hannity who could have volunteered for Desert Storm but was content to let others fight.
Go to Russia and start the war bitch. We’ll wait on you.
What if China had attacked Tibet? Should the US do nothing? Say nothing?
@73
If case you didn’t notice, China annexed Tibet some time ago….
When was it, back in the 1950s, or so?
At least Russia was quick about it..
It’s a hypothetical, dipshit…
Let me fix my question by adding this to the front of it:
If it was 1949, and…