World: South Ossetia

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey thinks the Deciderer really ought to zip his festering gob on this one:

President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is “magnificent foreign intelligence” such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being “driven around the country in vehicles”? Suppose Russia declares for instance that “Saakashvili stiffed the world” and it is “time for regime change”?

Yaknow, they could do that. They could. Hell, we did.

The time has come to acknowledge that grievous human rights violations occurred in South Ossetia, and that Russia and the U.S. have been planning this little elbowing contest for some time. Saakashvili allowed his country to be used as the catspaw to provoke the conflict.

Let us be clear that nobody wants war except for a small group of crazy people who expect to profit from it one way or the other. Among them, Cheney (Halliburton); other war profiteers, like KBR and Blackhawk; the neocon lunatics who are well paid to trumpet pro-war propaganda (Bill Kristol, Mickey Kaus, Fred Kagan, and their ilk); the arms merchants who will enjoy short but wealthy lives if the next stage of war is set in motion; and, of course, fundamentalist godbag loonies of every stripe who believe/hope/pray that their Deity will take them off to someplace where they will not have to gasp their lives out as a result of radiation poisoning or extreme damage inflicted by guns, bombs, and other such weapons in our arsenal.

Perish the thought. If a Deity existed, it would not have permitted the bombing of hospitals and churches in Tskhinvali. CJR describes Russian citizen-journalists' eyewitness reports from the frontlines.

One last thing: Those why clamour to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war are usually those who have never actually served or seen war. Watching people blown up or hacked apart is a most unlovely, traumatising, terrifying sight. The stink of death is no misnomer.

John McCain was a fighter pilot. He unleashed death and destruction from miles above with no knowledge of his targets. Ask any vet who has actually served in the military, who has actually participated in hand-to-hand combat or had to encounter injured and dying, whether civilian or military.

Now Dick "Five Deferments, I had other priorities" Cheney and John McCain are both making noises about a military response to the events which occurred in South Ossetia and Georgia. Perhaps a USAF plane could drop the two of them on the front lines for some first-hand experience of armed conflict? It would save those soldiers who don't want to be there, while simultaneously getting rid of two of the loudest pro-war voices.

Meanwhile, we have to ask, together with commenter SFAW, over at Matt Yglesias' blog:

Something’s been tickling the back of my mind for awhile, maybe someone can help me with it …

The Georgia/Russia conflict seems to have been building for awhile. Russia sticking its thumb in Georgia’s eye in a non-violent-but-highly-provocative-way, Georgia finally attempting to exert its manhood, but whoops! Russia wanted that to happen and so was massing troops on the border. But what’s a little puzzling is that no one in the Administration - say, someone thought of by Bush/Cheney as an expert regarding Russian/Soviet affairs and their whole world outlook, etc. - raised a red flag awhile ago. Something like “This conflict is going to happen in the next 3-6 months; here’s what we should do to prevent Russia from annexing the Sudetenland (so to speak)” and so forth.

Yeah. What's with that? As far as we can tell, Bootsie Ferragamo is an expert on Russia, the former USSR, Eastern Europe, blah, blah, blah-beddy-blah. How comes it that this eminent scholar did not notice or predict that things were going to blow up in a big ugly stinky mess of poo?

Or did she just think to herself, "Hell, let Jor Jee twist in the wind for this one"?

The astute reader might note that we have not included the Powers That Be in Russia among those who want war. We beg to be excused on the grounds that, unlike the Emperor Jor Jee, we are unable to look into the eyes of Putin or Medvedev, for that matter, and determine the quality of their souls, if any.

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