#1
History bites the [not so] intellectual class. The death of Archimedes holds no warning for those who believe themselves above the real discourse of human affairs.
#4
I wonder how the left is interpreting this last week's worth of events in the east. They have had a few days to think about it, but I don't have the stomach to cruise around the leftosphere. Prolly thinking of new ways to surrender in digital format if I know them. But for all their bluster about freedom of this or that they never DO anything.
#5
Once again I'd like to point out that the ideas of freedom and liberty are not only relative, but that the biggest and most powerful selling points of democracy are not freedom and liberty, but efficiency.
Freedom and liberty come along just as side effects of efficiency, something that is completely over the heads of socialist-collectivists. They think that collectivism, as is found in animal groups, is more efficient, but they are mistaken.
In truth, the only real value of collectivism is found in situations of near-starvation shortage and extremely harsh conditions. Astronauts on a Moon base would have to share and ration everything, because nothing they have to have to survive is in excess.
However, when anything is in abundance, collectivism is an obstacle to efficiency. At that point, economics is dictated by "opportunity costs" and marginality, using the abstract of currency to streamline trade. The free market wins hands down. As does the freedom and liberty needed to run the free market.
This is why Americans are often so befuddled by democracy in other countries. They both assume that other people want the same freedoms and liberties that Americans *currently* hold as the definition of freedom and liberty, and that they also hold the same national aspirations that Americans do.
Historically, we might even be grateful for the horrific inefficiency, brutality, and bloodshed of the communists in ruling Russia for 75 years. This is because of what the other alternative to Russian history might have been.
When the Menshevik democrats overthrew the Czar, for the short time they existed, government in Russia went insane. Their democratic government made the Moonbats of San Francisco look like conservatives.
The vast majority of Russians were uneducated and primitive peasants of the lowest order. Intensely xenophobic and violent, they themselves wanted an oppressive and violent government that would give them control and order.
Were such a group to be given the efficiency of democracy, not only chaos but vicious war would have been the result.
Imagine the Soviet Union, but not bogged down with the stupid and murderous philosophy of communism. It might have very well conquered the world. Communism was so incredibly bad as a system of government that it was perhaps the only thing that could have stopped Russia.
Lenin and Stalin took Russia from the Stone Age and moved them into the Iron Age, but at such a cost that Russia has used itself up. The rest of the world can now defend itself against the bear.
So Russia finally has at least a not insane version of democracy. But they still use its greater efficiency to their ends, which have little or nothing to do with American goals.
Russians are still intensely xenophobic, and afraid of chaos. So they still want a strong central government and to menace their potential enemies. But this is only a pale shadow of what Russia used to want.
So the power of democracy can be theirs. And perhaps they will someday use it better, seeing freedom and liberty, Russian style, as helping them instead of as a threat.
Yet America isn't free. We cannot drive on our freeways with little or no speed limit, like the Germans. And the Germans love and cherish that freedom.
Vadim, a South Ossetian militiaman, raced through the deserted Georgian streets, a Soviet Makarov pistol in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Dishevelled, unshaven and wild-eyed, he was searching for someone to kill. For the first time in 10 years he had crossed the border from his secessionist province and reached Gori, a town well inside Georgian territory, hours after it had been taken by Russian soldiers.
Wounded in the fighting, he had a gaping bullet hole in his upper thigh; but the pain only fuelled his thirst for revenge. As I sat by his side, he drove his battered Lada at high speed through Goris bombed-out centre, often screeching to a halt to scour the side streets and buildings in search of defeated Georgian soldiers.
This has been building up for years, he said. I knew it would happen and Ive been waiting for this moment for a long time. If I see a Georgian soldier Ill shoot his brains out. Theyre dogs.
As heavy artillery rounds exploded on the edge of town, we came across other civilian cars and minivans with Russian numberplates crammed with Vadims fellow South Ossetian militiamen. Like Vadim, who was in a tattered camouflage uniform and white trainers, they looked wild and menacing. They wore white armbands to identify them to the Russian army as friendly forces.
Some hid their faces behind black balaclavas. It was the day after Dmitry Medvedev, Russias president, had called an end to military operations in Georgia. American humanitarian aid was flowing in. Yet the Russians still occupied about a third of Georgia with impunity and Vadim and his cohorts were on the rampage in horrifying scenes that evoked the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Not only had America and its Nato partners been shamed by the invasion of a country that had been welcomed into the western embrace, but they had also shown themselves incapable of sending home the Russians and their henchmen. This humiliation raises far-reaching questions about American power, Russian revanchism and Europes sometimes craven relationship with the Kremlin.
However, the most important question is one that Washington seems unable to answer: what is its long-term purpose in relations with Russia? Does America want Moscow as a global partner, particularly in the war on terror and in repressing Irans nuclear ambi-tions? Or is it pursuing a strategy of containing the Russian bear by close alliances with neighbouring countries that were once Kremlin satrapies?
Realist diplomats from Henry Kissinger downwards are pointing out that America cant do both because a contained Russia wont be a cooperative Russia. However, if Georgia were to join Nato, the consequence could be a much more serious confrontation with Moscow, as the alliance works on the understanding that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Is the invasion of Georgia the first step towards an armed confrontation between America and Russia?
On Friday, Russia even threatened Poland with nuclear retaliation for agreeing to host US rockets as part of its antimissile shield. Not that Vadim cared about the geo-political picture. He shouted obscenities at a frightened young woman as we drove by in a side street.
Wouldnt mind f***ing one of these Georgian girls, he said. When the history of the conflict comes to be written, it may be that a small incident on the road linking Georgia to Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, will be identified as the starting point of war. The US State Departments internal timeline of the crisis pinpoints the explosion on August 1 of two roadside bombs, believed to have been planted by South Ossetian separatists sympathetic to Russia, as a decisive moment. Five Georgian policemen were injured, one severely.
That night Georgian forces struck back. There was a furious firefight that left six South Ossetian rebels dead. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was on holiday. A few new provocations by the South Ossetians did not appear to warrant her coming home. The US intelligence services had been warning that the Russians were preparing for war, but it did not occur to them that fighting would break out just as the world was settling down to watch the Beijing Olympics.
It now appears that August 1 was a well-prepared provocation one of the Kremlins favourite tactics. Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow authority on military affairs, claimed in Novaya Gazeta that the plan was for the Ossetians to intentionally provoke the Georgians so that any response, harsh or soft, would be used as an occasion for the attack. At last Russia was going to teach the Georgians a lesson. Moscows relations with the tiny nation of 5m had begun to deteriorate when Mikhail Saakashvili swept to power nearly five years ago.
A US-educated lawyer aged 40, Saakashvili is fervently pro-western. Washington has encouraged his aspirations to join Nato and has helped to train the Georgian army with the help of the Israelis. President George W Bush visited Georgia, promising to stand by it, and relations between Saakashvili, the State Department and the Pentagon have been close. Vladimir Putin has watched the process with mounting anger.
Moscow argues that while it pulled back its troops from eastern Europe and allowed American forces into central Asia to fight in Afghanistan, the Americans have been invading its traditional sphere of influence.
Its a very emotional issue, said a western diplomat. Most Russians, not just the Kremlin, see Georgia as part of their world and take the fact that most Georgians aspire to join Nato as an act of betrayal. Add the paranoia about the West wanting a weak Russia and conspiring to encircle it and you have an explosive situation. On the other hand, Georgians clearly aspire to closer relations with the West because they fear Russia.
Saakashvili has long vowed to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another pro-Russian separatist region flanking the Black Sea, back under Tbilisis control. His populist pledge is supported by most Georgians. Georgia is nothing without Abkhazia and South Ossetia, said Levan, a Georgian trapped in Gori when the Russians moved in last week.
Imagine someone came and ripped your arm off. Thats what its like for us. These two regions are an integral part of Georgia and must be returned to us.
The stakes were raised this year when Kosovo gained independence, prompting Putin to increase support for Georgias breakaway republics. That came as an increasingly bullish Saakashvili prepared an assault to retake parts of Abkhazia. Western diplomatic sources last week revealed that in early May, Washington had put frantic pressure on the Georgian leader to stop him launching military operations.
They only just managed to stop him, said a source.
By the summer, attention had switched to South Ossetia. Russians and Georgians accused each other of straying into each others territory. Rice told Saakashvili at a private dinner on July 9 not to respond with military force. However, while she thought that her message was loud and clear, Saakashvili went on to thank her warmly for her unwavering support for Georgias territorial integrity and may have interpreted it as permission to act as he pleased. Within three weeks the clashes of August 1 had raised tension again.
Rice remained on holiday while Daniel Fried, the assistant secretary of state, took the role of keeping Georgia calm. Saakashvili also spoke on the phone to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which holds the European Union presidency, and to Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief.
Western sources say neither they nor the Americans could restrain him; but the Georgian leader last week angrily said he had repeatedly warned Washington and EU countries that the Russians were preparing a military operation against Georgia but that he had been brushed aside.
On August 7 Fried took a call from Eka Tkeshelashvili, the 31-year-old Georgian foreign minister, who told him Russian tanks were advancing on South Ossetia in what appeared to be preparations for an attack. Fried warned her to avoid war but the message did not sink in, sources say. Ariel Cohen, a Russian expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, said there should have been direct talks with Saakashvili.
They needed to be at a very high level, not at the level of Mr Fried. The American position should have not just been clear, but imperative. A few hours after the call to Fried, in the early hours of Friday August 8, Georgia launched its offensive in South Ossetia, killing many civilians; and Russia responded with a huge show of force, bombing Georgia and invading a sovereign country for the first time since it seized Afghanistan in 1979.
TSKHINVALI lay in ruins last week, bearing evidence of both the Georgian attack and the Russian counterattack. The remains of Georgian armoured vehicles lay upside down close to the central square. Witnesses told of cars filled with fleeing Ossetian refugees being shelled by Georgian tanks.
They claimed that in one incident Georgian soldiers finished off the wounded by pouring fuel over them and burning them. Independent human rights observers confirmed that civilian targets had been repeatedly hit, including basements where terrified residents had sought refuge and were trapped for days. Moscow has claimed that some 2,000 people died at the hands of Georgian forces including 15 Russian peacekeepers.
However, Human Rights Watch, the American group, said that Russian estimates were suspicious. Doctors at the main hospital said that 44 dead had been brought to the city morgue. Whatever the final death toll, few dispute that the city suffered destruction and that civilians were hardest hit. Nor is there any doubting Albina Shanazarovs tragic fate. A 13-year-old girl, she sought to flee the city with her mother and three sisters. They set off with other civilians in a bus, which was ambushed by Georgian forces as they tried to reach Russia.
A bullet smacked right into the steering wheel. I had to stop and we scattered along the highway, said Guram Beloyev, the bus driver. It was dark and I was hoping they wouldnt see as we hid but they must have been using night-vision goggles because the Georgian sniper fired pretty accurately. Albina was terrified and ran towards me. Thats when she was hit by a bullet that smashed right through her chest. She died almost at once.
The survivors managed to escape but had to abandon Albinas body. It was recovered a day later by her father, Charshanbe Shanazarov, a colonel in the South Ossetian police, who said he came across two shattered taxis filled with civilians who had been killed as they tried to flee. He also found more bodies along the road, in all counting 15 dead civilians, including two children. He buried his daughter in his garden because reaching the town cemetery was still too dangerous.
They murdered an innocent 13-year-old girl. For nothing. They took her away from me for ever. Why? Each side blames the other for starting the fighting, but a western diplomat who has had extensive contact with the Georgians, said: Whatever the truth, the Russians have done everything they could to provoke the Georgians into doing something. Saakashvili appears to have fallen straight into their trap and frankly I imagine Putin could not believe his luck when he received the first report of fighting.
A western mediator, who knows Saakashvili well, said that the West should have insisted on more checks and balances being introduced to control the Georgian leaders hot temper. He is high maintenance very emotional and can get carried away, said the source. He likes confrontation. The other problem is that he makes decisions with a kitchen cabinet of only four or five people sitting in his office at 5am, determining the fate of the nation. Decision-making is bound to suffer.
The Russians have been provoking him big time and he has been held back many times. On this occasion he failed to keep his cool and did exactly what the Russians wanted him to do overreact.
America had sleepwalked into a foreign policy disaster and its response was slow and uncertain. With Bush tarrying in Beijing watching the Olympics while Putin executed a war, Americans were reminded uncomfortably of Hurricane Katrina another occasion when Bush dithered before eventually getting around to sending humanitarian aid.
Ralph Peters, a former military intelligence analyst, said last week at a symposium on Georgia at the neoconser-vative American Enterprise Institute: The image for me will be the president going to a basketball game and flirting with the beach volleyball team.
He added: Vladimir Putin is the most effective leader in the world today. Nobody comes close. In contrast, President Bush is looking like Jimmy Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Its tragic.
Bush had thought he had Georgia in his pocket. Saakashvili is surrounded by US civilian and military advisers and is so close to US politicians that John McCain, the Republican nominee, claimed last week to be in daily telephone contact with him. However, he is regarded as mercurial a polite way of saying that the Americans lost control of their client. Wed been warned about Saakashvili for some time. Our advisers knew he wasnt ready for prime time, said Peters. But hes the democratically elected leader of Georgia.
The Russians knew they could poke him and poke him until he responded. It was the Europeans who moved first in trying to stop the fighting. At the Olympic opening ceremony on August 8, Sarkozy bumped into Putin soon after news of Georgias offensive in South Ossetia started coming in. Sarko was with 11-year-old Louis, his youngest son, and the Russian prime minister wrapped the boy in a bear hug.
Nearby, Bush was looking through binoculars at the Olympic parade. Listen, Sarkozy told Putin, its a mistake by Saakashvili. We have to find a way out of this crisis.
An implacable Putin replied: I cant let it happen. After returning from China to France, Sarkozy called Angela Merkel of Germany, Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, Spains Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and 10 Downing Street to try to work out a European reaction to the fighting. In reality, the crisis had split Europe along the fault line that has divided it since the Iraq war. Germany, with its close commercial ties to Russia, wanted a no blame solution.
Poland empathised with Georgia, and Britain stood by Washington in firmly condemning the invasion. France not only has a policy of engagement with Russia but was also enjoying taking the diplomatic front seat. Sarkozy got back on the phone to Medvedev in Moscow.
The Russian president wanted Saakashvili fired but Sarkozy told him that was not a helpful condition. Its not up to you or me to designate the Georgian leader, he told the Russian. Washington apparently tried to persuade Sarkozy not to go to Moscow to talk to Russias leaders face to face.
Bush warned him: Youll arrive at the Kremlin when the Russians are firing missiles at Tbilisi. Sarkozy went anyway and was apparently told by Putin at a working lunch in the Kremlin on Tuesday: Its just like in the films theres a good cop and a bad cop, referring to himself and Medvedev.
Even so, the nice Medvedev did not mince his words. In a press conference later that day he referred to Saakashvili as a madman. The difference between madmen and normal people, he explained, is that madmen, when they smell blood, it is very difficult to stop them.
Despite the rhetoric, Russia accepted an EU-sponsored accord. For the first time in a major international crisis, it is the Americans who are on the touchline and it is the European Union that is being called upon to sort things out, crowed a French presidential aide. Well, perhaps: the Russians might have agreed to a deal but they had not yet delivered on it.
GORI is a town of more than 50,000 people, 40 miles north of Tbilisi. When I entered it on foot last Wednesday, five days after the Russians invasion, their troops were advancing rather than withdrawing.
A few hours earlier a column of Russian armoured personnel carriers, mounted with large calibre machineguns and carrying hundreds of troops, had crossed the border despite assurances from Moscow that it would not stray into Georgia proper. They took Gori without fighting, as Georgian troops fled in their thousands.
Plumes of black smoke rose on the edge of town as Russians took up position on a ridge, setting fire to the surrounding fields. As I walked by the roadside towards the city, armoured vehicles packed with soot-covered Russian soldiers cradling AK47s and grenade launchers rumbled past, their tracks crushing the asphalt. One came to a halt and its commander offered me a lift. I jumped on the back and rode a couple of miles towards the town centre.
The Georgians asked for it, Sergei, a soldier from Siberia, yelled over the engine. They came into Tskhinvali, destroyed it and killed a hell of a lot of civilians. What did they expect for Russia to sit back? As far as Im concerned we should go all the way to Tbilisi and take the city. We should wipe them out and teach them not to mess with Russia.
Famed as Stalins birthplace, Gori was a bustling community before hostilities broke out. Last week it was a ghost town. I passed blackened apartment blocks that had been hit by Russian bombs. Laundry was still hanging out to dry, abandoned in the panic. I came across fewer than 100 people.
We havent eaten in three days; do you have any bread? Please help, said an elderly woman dressed in black who was too scared to try to leave the town. A small group of men huddled in a yard, looking shellshocked and incredulous at the sight of Russian tanks taking up positions a few hundred yards down the road. Koba, a 35-year-old worker, said they had spent much of the past two days hiding in their cellar for fear of Russian bombing.
My father is blind, he said. He wanted to stay and I couldnt leave without him. The past few days have been terrifying. I never thought I would live to see such a day. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined seeing Russian tanks rumbling through our town.
As I reached Goris main square, famed for its imposing statue of Stalin, the thud of artillery shells filled the air and sent a bearded priest in a black robe and a small family carrying a few possessions running for cover. A few days earlier a Russian shell had killed at least eight civilians as they were being given bread and water.
A minivan carrying half a dozen heavily armed South Ossetian militiamen sped across the main square, coming to a halt when they spotted me. The gun-men, some in masks, asked me if I had seen any Georgian soldiers. One insisted on giving me a handful of chocolates before the group raced off. Minutes later Vadim, the militiaman, pulled up. Jump in. Have you got any bandages? he asked. Im wounded.
He took me to a nondescript single-storey house. He said he had intelligence that it had been used as a Georgian arms depot. Limping because of his wound, he walked up to the heavy metal gate, handed his Kalashnikov to me before I could decline and tried in vain to break its lock with a hunting knife he kept strapped to his side.
He then grabbed back his AK47, cocked it and fired 10 rounds at the lock from only a few yards away but, despite shattering it, was unable to enter the building. He later enlisted the help of two regular Russian soldiers in a heavy truck, who were stopped by an angry officer as they prepared to ram the vehicle into the building.
When I last saw Vadim, as I made my way out of the town on foot, he was making advances to a middle-aged Georgian woman as she collected water from a hose in her yard. I did not witness any serious abuse of civilians in Gori, but there were numerous witness accounts pointing to a paramilitary campaign of revenge attacks against Georgians in South Ossetia.
A group of heavily armed and wild-looking South Ossetian irregulars came into the village and started terrorising people and looting, said Niko Markuzash-vili, 52, who had fled the Georgian hamlet of Kheltubani and walked to Gori.
They were burning houses and stealing cars, just grabbing anything they wanted. I saw them stop a man in his car. They demanded the keys but he refused to hand them over so they shot him point blank with a machinegun and killed him on the spot. They took some of the young men prisoner.
As panicked civilians fled the area, most on foot and carrying only the clothes they were wearing, people told of young girls being abducted and men being detained. Houses were systematically looted and torched. Entire villages were razed. Too frail to leave, some elderly locals have stayed behind and now have neither food nor shelter. Exhausted villagers from Dvani, a Georgian village in South Ossetia, gathered by the road side, desperate to hear whether loved ones had managed to escape. They had walked 11 miles in searing heat.
They are coming to our villages, burning our houses and killing people so we had to escape, said Vano Bezhanishvili, 37, who said he had been lucky to make it out alive when paramilitaries who entered Dvani on two trucks began shooting, in one incident killing a man when he looked out of a window and shouted at them. Most disturbing were reports that in some incidents the paramilitaries had taken young women as sex slaves.
A car with a family fleeing their village was stopped by the militias, said Georgy, a Georgian army commander. They grabbed the mans two young daughters and dragged them away at gunpoint. Their father could do nothing to stop them. We have no idea whats happened to them. They have disappeared.
In South Ossetia itself, vengeful militiamen were moving into deserted ethnic Georgian villages on what they said was a mopping-up operation to find Georgian sabo-teurs and looters.
As they advanced they carried out widespread looting and burnt houses in an apparent ethnic cleansing campaign to ensure locals did not return. A group of militiamen held a Georgian soldier prisoner in the back of a truck, his mouth covered with a filthy T-shirt to block out the stench of two rotting corpses lying beside him fellow Georgian soldiers clad in Nato camouflage uniforms.
I didnt kill anyone. I didnt kill your women and children. I swear, he said, pleading with his captors to spare him. Inal, a militia sergeant, was in no mood for concessions. Youre going to be dumping your comrades bodies soon, you faggot, where we only bury stray dogs. And thats where you are soon going to join them.
The prisoner was made to drag the dead men off the truck and to bury them in a ditch with the corpses of eight other Georgian soldiers. Some were stripped naked and charred. One had his mouth still open in a grimace of terror and pain. Tell us the f***ing truth. Where is your weapon? Where are your documents? If you dont tell us the truth, well shoot you dead, Inal, 47, yelled at the prisoner, who claimed to have been responsible only for food and transport. Inal was unconvinced. Well talk to you properly back at the base. Then well see if you are telling the truth.
The road to the military base deep inside Russian-controlled South Ossetia was scattered with rotting Georgian corpses. Inal paraded two more prisoners both middle-aged men. One, with a scar across his nose and broken lips, was shaking in fear as Inal began the interrogation. He sat both men on the ground and took off the safety catch on his Kalashnikov.
The two Georgians, who were not wearing military uniforms, said they were builders from a nearby hamlet who had been caught in the fighting and had lost their IDs. Yelling, Inal hit one hard in the face. The man groaned in pain and cowered behind his friends shoulders.
Where is your weapon, you faggot? Inal barked, threatening to drown the man in a pool. But another South Ossetian soldier stopped Inal and handed the prisoner a Nato ration pack. Made in the USA! Enjoy! he laughed. At first the Russian army appeared unable or unwilling to control the militias. On Thursday, after the Russian interior minister said looters should be dealt with severely, soldiers blocked the road from South Ossetia into Georgia to paramilitary forces and arrested several looters.
AMERICA now has to decide how to contend with the newly resurgent Russia and with a self-confident Vladimir Putin. Whether he is called president or prime minister is immaterial. He is Tsar Vladimir or, as The Wall Street Journal put it, Vladimir Bonaparte. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, ruled out the use of force last week to compel Russia to return to the status quo ante.
For now the two breakaway provinces are back in Russias orbit, and a question mark hangs over the future of Georgia and other former Soviet satellite states. Some American commentators believe that their countrys performance has been shameful. Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, said: The Iron Lady would never have stomached this sort of behaviour by the Russians. She would have issued an immediate statement condemning Moscow, summoned an urgent meeting of the Nato command and demanded that the Russians halt their advance and withdraw their forces or face the consequences."
According to Gardiner, The whole episode has demonstrated to eastern Europe that America and Nato wont protect it. It sends the message that it is open season on any of the border states and that the West doesnt have the stomach to protect them.
The rapid conclusion of long negotiations between America and Poland to site American missile defences on Polish territory last week showed the gravity of the crisis for countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain. Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later. It is no good when assistance comes to dead people, said Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister.
The historian Leon Aron, an expert on Russia, said: The next target of opportunity is Ukraine not the entire country, but the Crimean peninsula and Sebastopol, which is home to the Black Sea fleet. There is talk about suspending Russias membership of the G8 or boycotting the 2014 winter Olympics, which will be in Sochi, in southern Russia; but the Bush administration has preferred to utter general warnings about Russias imperilled standing in the world rather than to deliver specific threats to curb its behaviour.
Will Nato and the EU draw the conclusion that we should stay away from the former Soviet states in order not to be drawn into a conflict, or will they decide that they ought to offer them the protection of membership? Im not optimistic, said Aron. Bush has barely five months of his presidency left not enough time for a tired administration, still grappling with Iraq, Iran and the intractable Palestinian problem, to come up with a coherent policy on the resurrection of Greater Russia. It seems certain that Vadim and his ragtag cohorts will be celebrating the events of August 2008 for years to come.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 12:57 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
One thing is clear in the New Cold War that has sent shivers down spines all over the world. It is that the United States, Britain and the rest of the West will not go to war with Russia to defend Georgia. The question asked by Geoffrey Wheatcroft today, is a pertinent one, therefore. What was the point of inviting the Georgians to join Nato? Nato is, after all, explicitly an alliance of mutual self-defence that commits each member to respond to an armed attack on any other member as if it were an attack on itself.
One argument has been made by American hawks. It is that, if Georgia had been a member of Nato, Russia would not have dared to drive its tanks to within 20 miles of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. This is simplistic in the extreme. It overlooks the tensions that were inherent in the rebirth of Georgia as an independent state in 1990-92. As Shaun Walker reports, the break-up of the USSR left a number of riddles unresolved about the level at which the principle of self-determination applies. In Georgia, ethnic minorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were as unhappy about Georgian domination as Georgians had been about Russian rule. Since 1993, Russian troops have been stationed in both areas as "peace-keepers" in effect as guarantors of autonomous status within Georgia. Of course, Russian policy has been aggressive and destabilising, as Vladimir Putin fomented separatism in Georgia's tiny autonomous republics. But how could Nato membership have been compatible with such a situation?
The honest answer is that it could not have been, and that was why it was pursued with such enthusiasm by Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian President. He wanted to join Nato precisely because it would have meant a confrontation with the Russians how could Russian troops be stationed on the soil of a Nato country? Mr Saakashvili has shown himself as a leader of poor judgement. In all the playground back-and-forth about who started it, it was Mr Saakashvili's decision to launch a military attack on the capital of South Ossetia eight days ago that stands out as the most disastrous mistake.
There may be those who interpret this to mean that The Independent on Sunday advocates a policy of appeasement towards Russian aggression. We reject the charge. We agree with George Bush when he condemns Russian bullying. But so much of the West's response to this crisis has been waffle and, where it has not been meaningless guff, it has actually made matters worse.
Although Gordon Brown has been conspicuous by his low profile, at least he has avoided making a dash to Tblisi, as David Cameron has done, to show disingenuous solidarity with the Georgian people and to repeat apparently on behalf of the British Government the promise of Nato membership. Instead of looking statesmanlike, which may have been the intention, he looks concerned but unworldly and immature.
One does not need to be a Kremlin apologist to point out what Nato expansion looks like from Russia. Russia's pride and paranoia may seem irrational, but it is real and needs to be managed. That does not mean "appeased", but neither should it mean "provoked". When President Bush said on Friday that "the days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us", it does not take much imagination to see how that might be interpreted in Russia. No doubt Mr Bush meant it in a benign, "why can't we all get along together" way, but to a Russian it could easily be an expression of ideological imperialism (of the type that sought to bring democracy to Iraq) and American triumphalism. "The Cold War is over" means "We won", and the end of spheres of influence means "Get used to it".
From Moscow, too, a missile defence deal between the US and Poland, hurriedly signed on Thursday, looks unfriendly. Of course, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia's deputy chief of general staff, could have chosen his words more carefully when he said that the US move "cannot go unpunished". But then that goes for both sides. You do not need to be a Russian nationalist to find the official rationale for the US-Poland deal that it offers protection against Iran unconvincing.
The West, by which we mean primarily the 26 Nato members, needs to get this straight before a more serious crisis arises, most likely in Ukraine. If the Georgian crisis acts as an inoculation against such a future threat; if it marks the end of Nato expansion; and if Western leaders adapt their rhetoric to a more thoughtful realism then it is possible that something positive might come out of the summer of 2008. But only if Western leaders show a clear-eyed understanding of Russia's fears and change the tone and substance of their response.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 12:48 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
In other words, pre-emptive surrender and appeasement are still the preferred British response to an assertive / aggresive tyranny.
#4
we are constantly told we need to understand the aberrational, paranoid, mysoginist, anti-western, Stalinist urges of our enemies and erstwhile "allies". When will we say: "you sick f*cks, understand this!!"? A time comes when the apologists and sycophants must be beaten down and shamed with their enabling and rationalizing atrocities and crushing of real human rights and freedoms...and that ain't panties on the head in Abu Grahib.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/17/2008 19:31 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Russia's pride and paranoia may seem irrational, but it is real and needs to be managed.
Nonsense. It has succeeded in bullying the author and thus is a successful tacticthat will be repeated. Russia needs to be thoroughly defeated. And seen to have been defeated. By all.
#6
Again, COLD WAR > is is said that the then USSR = SOviet Union did NOT fear a unilateral US-NATO "First Strike", etc. as it did a US-NATO versus USSR-PACT NUCLEAR WAR AS INDUCED BY THIRD-PARTY, NATION-STATE OR ORG ENTITIES.
IMO RUSSIA may covertly deniably be using the GEORGIAN CONFLICT as cover for possib LT strategic failure vv FUTURE NUCLEAR RADICAL ISLAM [States + Militants-Terr groups] + ambitious CHINA. Within this scope, Russia needs to to keep Radical Islam from its CENTER, + China from its FAR EAST.
#7
CHINA + NORTH ASIA per se are now also under threat by Radical Islam
RUSSIA > FUTURE CHINA = GIANT NUKE-ARMED JAPAN versus GIANT NUKE-ARMED STARVING NORTH KOREA versus GIANT NUCLEAR-ARMED ISLAMIST STATE versus WEAK DIVIDED CHINA WID NUKE-ARMED ISLAMIST ENCLAVES/SUB-STATE(S)???
Hard on the heels of Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleezza Rice, and keen to share their limelight, David Cameron arrived in Tbilisi yesterday. His visit is a reward to the Leader of the Opposition for having expressed even more bellicose views on the Georgian crisis than the Americans, which should sound loud alarm bells for those of us who may quite soon be living under a Tory government.
In the official view of Washington, the expansion of Nato up to the borders of Russia was a benevolent spreading of democracy. "It is the right of the Georgian people and Georgian government to determine their own security orientation," says Kurt Volker, principal deputy assistant secretary of state, and Matthew Bryza, the American special envoy, adds that Russia would not have attacked Georgia if she had already belonged to Nato.
While Gordon Brown and David Miliband merely mouthed empty platitudes about the crisis (although Miliband has been sympathetic to Georgia's Nato aspirations in the past), Cameron went startlingly further when he said that its membership of Nato should be accelerated. His words so excited the Georgians that they asked him to meet their ambassador in London on Wednesday, and then fly out for his Caucasian photo-op.
No doubt this crisis has illustrated Russian ruthlessness and brutality, but then, as the Chechens might say, we knew that already. It has also exposed the severe limits of US power. Although George Bush, Dick Cheney and sabre-rattling pundits have screeched defiance at Russia, they are bereft of any practical response. Removing the Winter Olympics from Sochi doesn't sound like the ultimate deterrent.
But above all, the crisis has highlighted the incoherence of Western policy since the Cold War ended and belatedly raised the question of just what purpose Nato now serves. This is something an intelligent opposition should be discussing.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created in 1949 as a "one for all and all for one" mutual defence alliance between west European countries, of which Great Britain was then militarily much the most important, and the United States, guarding Europe against Soviet aggression. By the terms of the treaty, "an armed attack on any member in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and ... if such an armed attack occurs, each of them ... will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith... such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."
That object met with total success. Forty years later, the Berlin Wall fell, Soviet Russia began to implode, and its empire soon fell apart. This left Nato without an obvious role, and it might logically have been wound up. Instead, it evolved, almost without anyone's noticing, into an arm of US policy and an outlet for Tony Blair's zealous "humanitarian interventionism".
In the spring of 1999, he mawkishly extolled Nato's bombing of Serbia: "No one in the West who has seen what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that Nato's military action is justified... [You need only ask] anyone who has seen the tear-stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty."
But even if Blair had been correct to say that misrule in distant countries justified armed intervention an alarmingly open-ended principle which has since helped take us into the Iraq disaster what had it to do with Nato? How did those tear-stained faces become "an armed attack on any member"? And by what geographical conjuring trick did Afghanistan, more recently, become part of "the North Atlantic area" to require a Nato operation there?
Before then the acutely dangerous policy of enlarging Nato had already begun, partly for the most frivolous of reasons. Bill Clinton ingratiatingly promised a Polish-American audience in Chicago that Poland would join, yet another example of the baleful influence of "hyphenated" American domestic politics on foreign policy.
And so, in this heedless way, Nato was expanded to include not only the former Warsaw Pact countries Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, but the Baltic states that were part of the Soviet Union only 20 years ago. One didn't have to be a Russian nationalist to see this as deliberate provocation of an angry and wounded country. With all its brutality, Russia has legitimate security concerns and national interests. When Georgian membership of Nato is flaunted, one wonders what the US reaction would have been if Leonid Brezhnev had invited Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact. Russian policy may sometimes have a paranoid tinge but, as the saying goes, paranoiacs have enemies, too.
No one stopped to point out that, if the fundamental Nato principle applied, an irredentist border dispute between Latvia and Russia should have become an armed conflict fought by Nato, which was plainly absurd. Bryza's claim that Russia would have been deterred if Georgia had already belonged to Nato is mercifully theoretical but highly questionable. And does Cameron really want what's left of our depleted army sent to the Caucasus to fight Russia?
It remained for a former Tory foreign secretary to dash a little cold water of sanity on these overheated effusions. On Friday Sir Malcolm Rifkind chided the folly of making threats about the use of force when these are obviously not going to be carried out. And the day before he had said, "I think people in both the United States and in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in western Europe will have to ask very clearly how important is Georgia to them.
"There was a lot of talk about how Georgia should join Nato and if only Georgia was a member of Nato this wouldn't have happened, and so forth. I think that is frankly totally unconvincing." The truth is surely as Sir Malcolm says: "The United States, Britain, France and Germany are not going to go to war with Russia over South Ossetia, however sympathetic to the people of Georgia we are.
"We are sympathetic to Tibet, we are sympathetic to Zimbabwe, but we don't contemplate military solutions to these problems. So Nato membership is not the answer." Is it too late for our politicians to learn again that kind of plain speaking and common sense?
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 12:33 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If NATO is so pathetic and useless, why is russia threatening nuclear attack?
As bad as the bloodying of Georgia is, the broader consequences are worse. The United States fiddled while Georgia burned, not even reaching the right rhetorical level in its public statements until three days after the Russian invasion began, and not, at least to date, matching its rhetoric with anything even approximating decisive action. This pattern is the very definition of a paper tiger. Sending Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice to Tbilisi is touching, but hardly reassuring; dispatching humanitarian assistance is nothing more than we would have done if Georgia had been hit by a natural rather than a man-made disaster.
Very lengthy but a worthy read. Balance at the link.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/17/2008 8:00 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Must be nice to have the luxury of commenting from the gallery.
Yes, they moved Cassandra to the 'galleries' too in Troy. She was such a shrew, always a downer, no fun to be around let alone pay any serious attention to. Worked out for them didn't it.
#7
Okay, all you RB'ers I'm very interested in what you think Bush/US should have done and when, publicly (ie no relying on back stage diplomacy etc. cause we have absolutely no idea what's going on there).
I'm as hawkish as anyone in a general sense, but, in this case I don't know enough to have a reasoned position on this.
So what should have been done and said for public consumption? The limits would seem to be nuking the Russians to ignoring the whole thing as none of our business. What's the appropriate middle?
#9
This probably isn't a popular stance at RB, but I think we're handling it about as well as can be hoped. The Russians have made a mistake here and the rest of the world has let them know it. The Georgians, of course, made one also when they let themselves be baited into attacking when they should have been handling this diplomatically.
Russia is going to obtain some short-term local advantage but at a tremendous cost. They've scared the crap out of all their neighbors, who now see the BEAR as having regained its old ferocity, and that's not going to be conducive to cooperation or friendly relations.
If anything, it will drive all of them closer to the U.S. Poland's signing of the missile defense treaty is proof of that. I'm sure that the treaty's Polish critics have been keeping a pretty low profile since Russia's Georgian adventure started. Long story short, all Russia's neighbors have been afraid of it for a long time. They were just beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, Russia was turning a new leaf and the world really was different. Georgia being invaded showed them their fears of Russia were completely justified; all the progress Russia had made in rehabilitating its reputation is now vanished.
Bad move on Russia's part; good chance for the U.S. to look like the friend of a bullied small country.
#12
I also agree with Jolutch Mussolini7800. Russia showing their colors has to be a good thing in the long run. They are a thug. Not the threat they were during the cold war, just an over-sized third world nation that still has some advanced tech and smart scientists left over from their hay-day.
Russia needs to be managed until Putin is gone, and/or he starts to realize that having a balwark of allies would be a far better future than little enemies.
I concur with both JM7800 and trailing wife,
Putie-Pute in one stupid blunder has thrown away 20 years of hard won World status and rekindled strong anti-Russian sentiments around the World, for what?
A useless exercise in Georgia?? What ever infinitesimal gain was won by Russia's clumsy invasion will now only cause it scorn from the rest of the World and forge even stronger ties between the remaining nations who are still emerging from the olde Soviet Empire's Iron Curtain.
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/17/2008 13:47 Comments ||
Top||
#14
As opposed to the luxury of commenting pseudonymously at a group blog. You tell him like it is. You don't take crap from anybody.
I also don't post 'I am an Expert and this is how it should have been done' commentary either.
In case you haven't noticed - Bolton ain't the the State Department no more. At this point, he's no better than any retired general, airline pilot, or politician that gets a gig on the networks.
#15
Excellent analysis Jolutch Mussolini7800. I would definately like to hear your view and predictive analysis for the future of the FSU break-away states. Thank you!
#2
Again, "GREAT GAME" > Russia has CHINA, which may become either a GIANT NUKE-ARMED JAPAN = ECON SUPERPOWER or a GIANT NUKE-ARMED STARVING NORTH KOREA iff reforms in China don't work as intended; versus NUCLEARIZING RADICAL ISLAM [pan-Asia], which ironically Russia helped empower.
GEORGIAN CONFLICT > RUSSIA may covertly deniably be trying to contain/isolate FUTURE NUCLEAR IRAN-ISLAMISM, and in the altern clearing its GEOGRAPHICAL "BACK 40" AGZ THE FUTURE DAY IT MAY FAIL AGZ EITHER CHINA ANDOR NUCLEARIZED RADICAL ISLAM + NEEDS TO FORMALLY INTEGRATE WID NATO-EU IN ITS OWN SELF-DEFENSE???
As Mark Hemingway at National Review states, "News flash: There's not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States."
You just have to wonder as Commander in Chief, which questions are not above his pay grade?
President staff member: "Mr President, we just had two planes slam into the Twin Towers. What do you want to do?
Obama as President" "That question is above my pay grade."
McCain As Good As Obama Was Bad [Mark Hemingway]
I don't want to get to overheated about what occurred tonight, but I do think McCain had a clear and decisive victory over Obama. It all comes down to something that Phil Bredesen, the Democratic governor of Tennessee recently said about Obama: Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.
By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly. McCain's answers were direct, confident and, most importantly, serious. When asked about what leaders he would consult as president, he first suggested Gen. Petraeus, architect of the surge, who he correctly praised as one of America's all-time great military leaders. By way of contrast, Obama suggested he would seek out the advice of a typical white person, er, his grandmother and his wife Michelle, who's still trying to decide whether she's proud of her country.
When asked "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?," McCain answered "At the moment of conception." Obama's answer here was flaming-dirigible bad:
Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.
That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There's not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States. If you can't solve every problem and are humble about it, that's fine but you can't get away with being unsure about the most defining moral issue in politics. Of course, he didn't put down the shovel:
But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that Im absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And so I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue is not paying attention.
So after completely hedging on the question and declining to give a specific answer he wants to speak "more generally" about the issue? And, lo and behold, speak more generally he does: "Im absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue." In related news, Obama is also "absolutely convinced" that the sky is blue, water is wet and puppies are adorable. None of this, however, tells me a thing about his judgment and moral worldview.
But what bowls me over about how craptacular his answer here is, did no one on his campaign ever anticipate that he would have to talk about abortion, such that he could come up with a better answer than this? Surely they would have had to expect it at this forum in particular.
His answer here was in many ways reminiscent of last April, where he imploded in his last debate with Hillary. He was asked to respond to his then-recent clinging to God n' guns remark. He totally botched the answer and, like this evening, it seemed as if he was totally unprepared for the question that would most obviously be asked.
But I also think that it's worth noting that Obama wasn't just bad, but that McCain was very good. He was the perfect balance of likable and serious. He also came across as informed, offered far more policy specifics than Obama, highlighted his faith as was appropriate to the setting, and almost everything he said bolstered his conservative credentials. (His comments on taxes and what it means to be "rich" were especially good in that regard.) I'd wager that for a lot of conservatives watching, McCain went from the enemy of my enemy to someone they felt good about voting for. He may yet foul that up, but I suspect he may be riding high for a while after tonight.
#3
A fatuous and feckless answer. Personally I am abiguous about abortion -- it's morally wrong, but there's some knuckleheads out there who simply should not have kids; and when they do the kids suffer (uaually brutish and short lives).
But Big Zero's voting record is not ambiguous -- he's extreme: in favor of late term and partial-birth. I think this too-cute-by-half crap will catch up with him even among some of the brain-dead constituents.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/17/2008 7:42 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Obama can't go toe-to-toe with anyone marginally compentent. So, whatzee gonna do come the debates at the end of September? My advice is for him to go on a much needed vacation. McCain knows the issues because of a decades long relationship with them. And nobody can match him for handling the unscripted public event. My prediction is that the fighter pilot will keep the kid on defense all through the debates.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/17/2008 8:10 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I think these two will be neck and neck in the polls, until Obama debates or refuses to debate. If he debates, he will show just how ignorant of the issues he is and McCain will completely dominate the fight, end up getting behind Obama's six and put the proverbial sidewinder up his tailpipe.
If Obama refuses to debate, people will wonder what he is hiding and will really start to look at the past few months and decide that he just isn't ready and/or completely cowardly.
#6
Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective
No, sense YOU ARE PRO-CHOICE and support abortion, we are looking for YOUR PERSPECTIVE. If you have no perspective or idea, how can you have made a decision to support abortion?
#8
I would interpret Candidate Obama's response about a baby's human rights is that it's "above his pay grade" was supposed be a joking reference to God. But the sure sign that joke is unsuccessful is when it must be explained. He really has no sense of people beyond his academic circle -- his Chicago political pals are fellow academics for the most part, as far as I can tell.
#9
IMIdiotO, he was just trying to be clever, thinking that this might woo some of the gun-and-Bible clingin' hicks over to his side.
He must be attempting to use John Kerry's leftover jokes, with approximately the same results. (Aren't there any funny Dems they could use as speechwriters?)
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
08/17/2008 12:41 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Somebody at McCain HQ got a clue because this man is finally beginning to sound like someone who I can vote for in good conscience. I read the liveblogging of the "debate" over at Althouse and thought McCain cleaned Obama's clock. Most of Althouse's commenters thought so too.
The best answer McCain gave was, when asked about SCOTUS nominees he WOULDN'T have selected, he immediately said "Ginsberg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens." For that answer alone he deserves to be President of the United States, but particularly when contrasted with Obama's answer (to the same question) of Clarence Thomas.
For me, the choice is pretty stark here. It's not quite Reagan/Carter or Nixon/McGovern, but it's become far more clear than it was. McCain isn't who I would have wanted for a Republican candidate; that said, he's orders of magnitude better than Obama and I'll be voting for him in November. Heck, if he keeps saying the right things I might even send him some $!
#11
(Aren't there any funny Dems they could use as speechwriters?)
Well, they could have gotten an actual charismatic candidate. But yet again they passed up the opportunity to nominate Kinky Friedman, and yet again they're probably going to lose as a result.
#13
It amazes me the MSM contines to take a charitable approach to Obama's obviously weak performance last evening's softball debate, calling it... a difference in substance style. You can stick a fork in any additional debates of this type. Obama will run from them.
#15
14 I prefer a very difficult answer not answered than blurting out a dubious answer.
In pregnancy the "human rights" of the unborn baby may conflict with the human rights of the mother.
To say that a fertilized cell has the same rights than a born human being is very questionable.
Posted by: Sherese Jones6358
Well then, let us start from the delivery room. Does "life begin" when the toes come out? If not, then when? You bloody tell me! Abortion is MURDER! As far as I am aware, we are the only species in all of creation which practices it.
#17
Of the millions of abortions performed in the US a relative handful are to save the mother's life; rather, it's a form of birth control. Despite my ambivalence about abortion even I know this is a canard.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/17/2008 15:22 Comments ||
Top||
#19
Unfortunately all the reporting I've heard today focused on Obama's promise to keep Roe v. Wade in place and McCain's promise to be run a pro-life administration. No mention of Obama's waffling or evasion.
#20
It's not above my pay grade. Anyone who honestly wants to research the issue of abortion will discover a male-dominated, multi-billion dollar/year industry, making the big bucks off of women in trouble. Go to http://www.feministsforlife.com/ for some real answers, then visit http://www.hopehouseofcolorado.org/ for what can be done. Life of the mother arguments came from doctors practicing abortion on the side, in order to avoid insurance problems. Abortion is the worst form of child abuse--and people like Warren Hern (inventor of late term abortions, resides in Boulder, CO) says in journal articles that he gets a "real thrill" to feel the child struggling against him before inserting the scalpel into the skull to suck out the brain tissue, then collapsing the skull to make "delivery" easier. When the left makes enemies out of infants, the elderly, retarded, and terminally ill are next.
About Obama and McCain.
VOTE MCCAIN. Duh. (And we all know I was never his biggest fan in the past).
Obamania is really scary in the totalitarian/puppet of greater powers sort of way.
#26
The real point of the question is that there is no easy answer to it. It's a matter of belief?
When exactly does human life start? When does it reach a status that must be "protected". Does this status trump the will and freedom of the mother?
We simply do not know what goes on in a fertilized cell moments after conception. We can assume it does not think or feel yet. When exactly this starts isn't easy to decide.
Seeding is done with mechanical planters which cover as many as 10 to 24 rows at a time. The planter opens a small trench or furrow in each row, drops in the right amount of seed, covers them and packs the earth on top of them. The seed is planted at uniform intervals in either small clumps (hill-dropped) or singularly (drilled). Machines called cultivators are used to uproot weeds and grass, which compete with the cotton plant for soil nutrients, sunlight and water.
About two months after planting, flower buds called squares appear on the cotton plants. In another three weeks, the blossoms open. Their petals change from creamy white to yellow, then pink and finally, dark red. After three days, they wither and fall, leaving green pods which are called cotton bolls.
Inside the boll, which is shaped like a tiny football, moist fibers grow and push out from the newly formed seeds. As the boll ripens, it turns brown. The fibers continue to expand under the warm sun. Finally, they split the boll apart and the fluffy cotton bursts forth. It looks like white cotton candy.
#30
"And why is a single cell called a "baby". What exactly makes it one?"
It's not a baby -- it's a living being with the complete genetic code to develop into a unique, mature being. And the being is, by genetic code, human. So it is a human being.
Human development from conception to adulthood is a continuum, so it is absurd to arbitrarily define some point in it as a line beyond which abortion is murder. Abortion is always murder.
Pro-abortion people are either ignorant or feigning ignorance of atrocity for convenience and/or conscience sake. They're not people I want to represent me.
It is not pro-life versus pro-choice -- it is pro-life versus pro-death. No amount of politics or debate or "saving the life of the mother" or wishing will make it otherwise.
#32
It's interesting how fundamentalists in this question always call any abortion murder... but they have trouble calling all those women who have an abortion murderers... which would just be logic.
Sherese, in my anecdotal experience, every woman I've ever known who had an abortion suffered for years because of it and probably never really got over it mentally. I don't think it's necessary for anyone else to call them that; I think they already know in their hearts and it saddens them deeply. As it should, since killing babies is an ugly, ugly thing that simply shouldn't happen.
You can't tell me there aren't places for these babies to go, either, since I've known at least four people who have gone to foreign countries to adopt. Any American woman who is willing to have her baby can find a good home for it quite easily. Here, at least, there's no good reason for abortion, particularly late-term abortion. It's simply not justifiable.
#36
As far as I am aware, we are the only species in all of creation which practices it.
Your ignorance on this subject is shocking.
Rabbits, among others, have the ability to absorb their embryos back into their bodies. Most species, however, rid themselves of unwanted young by simply killing (and sometimes eating) them after birth.
I trust you are reconciled to the entire idea of abortion now that you are enlightened? No? Then don't use this silly argument.
#39
One of the biggest reasons why I truly hate the libs is because they're so willing to countenance the brutal killing of the innocent (abortion) while so adamantly against killing those who truly deserve it (murderers). Their priorities are about as out of whack as they could possibly be.
#41
There are those who've had abortions for what they believe to be the right reasons, and who feel no guilt over it, but only the determination to do right by those children they actually bear.
#44
The question is, when does it become "protected human life"
Scientifically speaking, a fertilized egg is a self-integrating, genetically distinct life.
Anything else is rationalization.
Barack Obama was one of Illinois' foremost abortion enthusiasts in the state Senate. I have seen nothing from him that suggests his stance has changed.
#45
You can adopt a lot of reasonable position towards abortion but McCain's point is a truly extremist one (and I think his position has changed quite a bit).
A few points
1) Abortion is never something desirable. Just when it starts becoming a crime is a matter of much debate. Universal consensus only exists that killing a child after birth is a crime.
2) All abortion laws need to reconcile the rights of the unborn with the rights of the mother. A woman is not a body that can be forced to bear a child without any regards to her health or psyche or will.
3) Everything should be done to convince a woman to bear the child. She should be helped but she should not be forced.
4) If an abortion has to be done make sure it can be done as early a possible. Do not prevent women from getting a "day after pill" and do not prevent her from getting the abortion she positively wants by delaying the process.
5) Keep in mind that "liberals" (or whatever you call them, at least most of them, do not take abortion lightly. Reasonable abortion laws have proven to bring DOWN the number of actual abortion. Germany or Switzerland have (fairly) liberal abortion laws but have a much lower percentage of abortion than "intolerant" countries like Portugal, Ireland or Poland.
When Germany enacted liberal abortion laws in the 70s, the number of abortions fell dramatically, and of course also the number of women dying while getting a (botched) abortion.
6) Stop bringing "nature" into it. Nature is cruel. Many animals will kill some of their newborns if they deem them too weak or for whatever reason do not want them.
Bottom Line: If you are truly "pro-life" reasonable abortion laws will help your case. Less unborn children will die.
Of course you can opt for "moral principles", declare fertilized cells as human beings and think you are off the hook easily. You are not.
Re Obama: I wouldn't have answered the question in such a flippant way. But it is a question that is not answered easily and with authority.
"At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?
I couldn't answer it. But I can tell you that a fertilized cell is not a baby and therefore does not have "human rights".
Btw a sperm or an ovum already qualifies as "life", biologically.
Even the Bible doesn't take such a radical view a McCain.
Lev 17:11 (and other places) indicate that life is in the blood. Without blood there is no life and with life there is blood.
"The central holding of Roe v. Wade was that abortions are permissible for any reason a woman chooses, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes viable, that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks." The Court also held that abortion after viability must be available when needed to protect a woman's health, which the Court defined broadly in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton. These court rulings affected laws in 46 states.
#1
The thing is, there are people who will think "Yeah, that's the way to do it, stay calm, above it all,...". Already run into a few; stomach-turning.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
08/17/2008 7:46 Comments ||
Top||
Since 9/11, General Musharraf has systematically destroyed every institution in Pakistan. Thanks to the economic policies of Shaukat Aziz, the Citibank executive that Musharraf imported from New York to run PakistanŽs economy first as finance minister and then prime minister, there has been so much poverty and frustration in the country that few economists are confident that things can improve even marginally in the foreseeable future. Men have been killing their families and then committing suicide because they cannot feed them. Widows and divorcees have been putting up their children for sale, jumping into rivers or in front of trains because they cannot afford a meal.
There is one man that the people of Pakistan (85 percent, according opinion polls) believe is responsible for their plight: General Musharraf. It is, however, not just poverty that Musharraf has wreaked on Pakistani masses. He has given another gift to the country and its people: on 3 November 2007 he sacked and imprisoned 60 judges of the Supreme and High Courts of Pakistan. In the words of Aitzaz Ahsen, President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association, sacking and imprisoning 60 judges (along with their families) is unprecedented in the legal history of the world. Since 3 November 2007, the lawyers and the people of Pakistan have been campaigning hard to have the judges restored, but Musharraf has shown no respect for the law of the land. People by and large strongly believe that he has had a hand in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto too. This is borne out from the fact that only days before her assassination, Benazir in her e-mail to Mark Siegel wrote that if she was assassinated, Musharraf would be connected to it.
Musharraf is so much hated in Pakistan that no one can praise him in public and not be manhandled. This is why, the Musharraf-backed Muslim League (Q) was thrashed in the national elections held on 18 February. For the success of his party, Musharraf had been campaigning like a man possessed. He declared that peopleŽs vote on 18 February would be a vote for or against him. The result on 18 February brought Pakistan PeopleŽs Party and Muslims League (N) in power, the two parties that Musharraf had demonized for years.
The vote on 18 February gave the people of Pakistan hope. They believed that after years of MusharrafŽs misrule, their own representatives would do something for themin whatever measure. But they also believed that Musharraf was the hurdle which must be removed before any good could come their way. All and sundry demanded that he resign. But then the government of the United States of America jumped onto the Pakistan stage like a Hollywood macho. From John Negroponte and Mark Boucher down to State DepartmentŽs junior officers plus a pack of high ranking military officers began to "meet" (actually bully, as Pakistanis think) the elected representatives of Pakistan even before they had formed the government. Soon Bush and Rice weighed in and the new government of Pakistan was told that Musharraf would stay at all costs. By the first week of June 2008, there was so much pressure on the parliament that it appeared that Musharraf would be impeached. PakistanŽs leaders and ministers gave clear indicationseven a dateto this effect. But then suddenly George Bush phoned Musharraf and assured him of his personal support. Next day Musharraf was howling like a wolf amidst a herd of sheep. He held a press conference and not only bragged about his "constitutional powers" (as if he had ever respected PakistanŽs constitution!), but also he insulted the people of Pakistan in a manner that even the heartless Nero would not have even imagined: To a question that the people of Pakistan could no longer afford to eat even pulses (the cheapest commodity in Pakistan), Musharraf responded with an extremely malicious sneer: "They should eat chicken!"
On 12 June 2008, half a million lawyers and general public gathered in Islamabad after a two-day Long March in order to force the government to restore the judges. From every city, town, and village people walked more than a thousand miles with their little kids shouting "Hang Musharraf!" Thousands of them had brought the dictatorŽs posters which they spat on and beat with shoes: In Pakistan, these are the most hateful expressions one can make. The huge gathering in Islamabad was addressed by a number of lawyers and politicians, and all of them demanded that Musharraf be tried for high treason, a crime whose penalty is death. Musharraf has been a serial committer of this crime. One can imagine the hatred the people of Pakistan have for the United States for unabashedly supporting Musharraf. People are angry that the sole superpower in the world has undermined democracy even before it could start functioning. It is very convenient for the likes of the CNN and Fox to put innocent-looking American kids on TV with "Why do they hate us?" question. American networks, however, have never asked, say, a Pakistani to answer this question. Instead they have George Bush answering the question: "They hate our freedoms!" Pakistanis do not hate the United States. You will find millions of Pakistanis who have their relations living happily in the United States. Pakistanis are very appreciative of American educational institutions: You will find few Pakistanis who do not want their children to study in America. Many Pakistani parents sell their properties to send their children to the United States to study. American scientific and technological advances awe and astound Pakistanis. They have no reason to hate America or the Americans, but they always say: "We have no inclination even to think ill of your freedoms. DonŽt rob us of our own. Period."
Since its establishment in 1947 Pakistan has been a frontline state for the United States. Till the 1980s it played a pivotal role in containing, undermining, and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union. The American-backed Afghanistan jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s was launched from Pakistan. And now Pakistan is the "most allied ally" in the American War against Terrorism. As a result, Pakistani society has become the most violent society in the world. Having done so much for the United States, the people of Pakistan deserve support and understanding. The United States can at least rid Pakistan of the Taliban who have turned Pakistan into a sectarian battlefield of great bloodshed. The United States has had an indirect hand in the creation of the Taliban in the first place. Now it can destroy this evil once for all. But it is very clear that the United States is not interested in wiping off the Taliban, but control and use them in places like Iran and South Lebanon. Given the TalibanŽs hatred of Iran (because the Iranians are Shias, and the Taliban Wahabis/Deobandis like the Saudis), and American malevolence towards the Islamic Republic (one of the few democracies in the Islamic world), making of a US-Taliban brotherhood may not be too far.
But sadly, the United States has never done anything that can benefit Pakistan. The billions of dollars of loans (wrongly called "aid") that it has been giving to Pakistan have landed in the generalŽs hands. But it is the people who have been repaying the loans with high interest on them. Instead of helping the people of Pakistan, the United States has strangled PakistanŽs democracy every time it was brought to life by the people of Pakistan. Dictators like Generals Ayub (in the 1950s and the 1960s), Yahya (in the late 1960s), Zia (1980s), and Musharraf (since 2001) were (and are) whole-heartedly backed by the United States despite the fact that their crimes against humanity were blatant, glaring, and persistent. Pakistanis are a very talented people, but years of corrupt rule of the corrupt army have deprived them of most of their civic, constitutional, and natural rights.
It appears that the American Empire does no more than invent and reinvent all kinds of slogans about democracy and freedom, and show off the First Amendment and "We, the People" drivel to gain moral superiority. But the people of Pakistanbesieged by depraved generals and bloodthirsty Talibanwill always say: "the Emperor wears no clothes!"
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The United States has had an indirect hand in the creation of the Taliban in the first place.
Err.. no.
The Taliban were created after the Russians had left Afghanistan and US support ceased. They were the brainchild of Gen. Nasrullah Babar, Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister and his plan was originally opposed by the ISI. Benazir approved it however and the ISI got on board when the Taliban began to have some success.
It is Pakistan that created the Taliban due to its strategic depth doctrine. It is the Pak ISI that has provided funding and training post 9/11.
Pakistanis have nobody to blame but themselves for the jihadi monster. To this day ordinary Pakistanis donate money for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan outside mosques and markets.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 14:41 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I'm a wee doubtful about people starving to death in the streets, as well.
#3
As we say at Rantburg... Let them hate, so long as they fear.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/17/2008 15:35 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Maybe 20 years ago I read a Reader's Digest article about these Pakistani schools called Massadras. Pretty scary. I say the chickens have come home to roost.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/17/2008 16:56 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Typical Muzzie. Screw things up to a fare thee well themselves, then frantically look for someone else on whom to blame the resulting mess. Sorry, Abbas, I'm not buying it. Want to see the real source of Pakiwakiland's problems? Grab your Koran, then go look in a full-length mirror.
#6
Yep, he's right. The Pakistanis are the world's greatest victims. I am sure that without the interference of the eeeeeviillll USA, they would all be leading lifestyles that would make Westerners jealous. (Ok, they'd settle for making the Indians jealous.....but you know what I mean.)
Yep, the fact that they refuse to do anything serious to improve education, public health, or their infrastructure has nothing to do with it. Nope, it's all America's fault.
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
08/17/2008 18:52 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I got tired of the conflation of the Taliban with the actual mujaheddin that fought the Sovs sometime in the early afternoon of 9/11/01. The guy who carried the freight against the Sovs was Masood. It wasn't any Pashtun, to include Hekmatyar, but also including the Jalalabad warlords.
The war against the Sovs went from 1979 to 1992, if I recall. That means it ended 16 years ago. The Dog-Eat-Dog lasted until 1994, which was when the Talibs descended from the Pak madrassahs and chased Gul Agha Sherzai out of Kandahar and Hekmatyar out of the country. Prior to that, they were students (taliban) away safe from the fighting.
The Arab mujaheddin, by the way, weren't that much of a factor against the Sovs. Because there were Pashtuns involved, most of their time and attention was involved with jockeying for position and knifing tribal rivals in the back, sometimes literally.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/17/2008 19:35 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Is the current batch of the poverty-stricken any worse off than poor people in that part of the world going back the last 4,000 years? Are there that many more of the starving poor as a percentage of the population? Raw numbers don't count, because the entire population has grown so throughout the Indian subcontinent. If yes, I would be very interested in the evidence.
Finally, just because Benazir Bhutto thought President General Dr. Musharref was behind attempts on her life, that does not mean he was the one to succeed. It could have been the ISI, working for their own portfolio, or the jihadi types disapproving of a woman appearing bare-faced in public, brazenly putting out her hand to regrasp the crown and scepter of Pakistan.
#11
FWIW:
"Pakistan has seen a growing middle class population since then and poverty levels have decreased by 10% since 2001. GDP growth, spurred by gains in the industrial and service sectors, remained in the 6-8% range in 2004-06. In 2005, the World Bank named Pakistan the top reformer in its region and in the top 10 reformers globally."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Pakistan
Both India and Israel which had openly jumped on Bush's anti-terrorism enterprise after the September 11, are acting upon a secret diplomacy, targeting Pakistan and China in particular and other regional countries in general. In this context, proper media coverage was not given to the Indo-Israeli secret diplomacy, which could be assessed from the interview of Israel's ambassador to India, Mark Sofer published in the Indian weekly Outlook on February 18, 2008. Regarding India's defence arrangements with Israel, Sofer had surprisingly disclosed "We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. On the other hand, what is secret is the defence relationship". And "with all due respect, the secret part will remain a secret." On being asked whether he foresaw joint exercises, Sofer replied, "Certain issues need to remain under wraps for whatever reason."
Indo-Israeli nexus remained under wraps till 2003, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India to officially reveal it. In this respect, Indian 'The Tribune' wrote on September 10, 2003, "India and Israel took giant leaps forward in bolstering the existing strategic ties and forging new ones" and Tel Aviv has "agreed to share its expertise with India various fields as anti-fidayeen operations, surveillance satellites, intelligence sharing and space exploration." Next day, 'Indian Express', disclosed, "From anti-missile systems to hi-tech radars, from sky drones to night-vision equipment, Indo-Israeli defense cooperation has known no bounds in recent times". On September 5, 2003 American Wall Street Journal pointed out, "The U.S. finally gave its approval to Israel's delivery of Phalcon Airborne Warning & Controlling Systems (AWACS) to India"-this "sale might affect the conventional weapons balance between India and Pakistan".
Before it, Jerusalem Post had also indicated about Israeli sale of the Arrow-II anti-ballistic missile defense system to India, revealing that "the U.S. was a collaborator in the project". The Post further elaborated that "Israel could be acquiring an element of strategic depth by setting up logistical bases in the Indian Ocean for its navy." In fact, links between India and Israel were started in the early years of the former Prime Minister Indra Gandhi when she asked the chief of RAW Rameshwar Nath Kao to establish a clandestine liaison with Mossad to monitor military relationship between Pakistan, China and North Korea.
During the era of Zia-ul-Haq, a RAW-Mossad joint plot was detected to attack Pakistan's nuclear plant at Kahuta. The matter is not confined to purchasing of military equipments only, Indo-Israeli overt and covert links are part of a dangerous strategic game in Asia. In this connection, the then Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu had already made it clear in July 1997 saying, "Our ties with India don't have any limitations-as long as India and Israel are friendly, it is a strategic gain". There are other reasons behind Indo-Israeli secret diplomacy.
Fast growing economic power of China coupled with her rising strategic relationship with the Third World has been misperceived by the Americans and Indians. Owing to this jealousy, tactical support of Washington to New Delhi, indirect military aid through Israel, the US-India nuclear deal-all are part of American desire to make India a major power to counterbalance China in Asia as both of them see China a "future strategic competitor". As regards Indian new military build up, on May 31 this year, after 43 years, New Delhi re-opened its Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) airbase in northern Ladakh, which overlooks the strategic Karakoram Pass and is only 8 km south of the Chinese border-Aksai Chin area. India has also erected more than 10 new helipads and roads between the Sino-Indian border.
It is of particular attention that in May 1998, when India detonated five nuclear tests, the then Defense Minister George Fernandes had declared publicly that "China is India's potential threat No. 1." India which successfully tested missile, Agni-III in May 2007, has been extending its range to target all the big cities of China. On the other side, a 'nuclearized' Pakistan, depending upon minimum deterrence, having close ties with Beijing is another major target of the Indo-Israeli secret diplomacy. However, Beijing and Islamabad cannot neglect their common defence when their adversaries are following a covert strategy.
Formation of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), voicing for a multi-polar system in the world might be cited as an example. Under the new proposed deal with Pakistan, China will be able to use the Karakoram Highway and ports of Gwadar and Karachi for transporting its goods to the Middle East and Africa. It is notable that on April 18, 2008, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi openly claimed that "some external forces were trying to weaken Pak-China strategic ties by creating misunderstandings". On August 8, 2007 Major Tanvir Hussain Syed (R), the former parliamentary secretary for defence accused the American CIA of killing Chinese nationals in Pakistan to harm the cordial relations between Islamabad and Beijing.
It is mentionable that in the recent past, when anti-government violent protests by Buddhist monks erupted in Tibet's capital, Lhasa including nearby provinces, New Delhi, while acting upon a secret diplomacy backed the same, though outwardly denied. New Delhi shows that despite Sino-Indian border dispute, she does not favour an independence of Tibet and avoids any propaganda against Beijing. But Indian stand was indirectly expressed by its leaders and media. For example, the former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha said, "We want good relations with China, but if we reach a point of conflict over Tibet, we should be prepared for that eventuality."
Indian media had left no stone unturned in exaggerating the casualties by manipulating China's crackdown against the militants of Tibet, which was essential to restore law and order. Nevertheless, it is because of the strategic developments in Asia that the issue of Tibet and Dalai Lama is being manipulated by the anti-China states. The state-run China Daily, on July 27, 2006, denounced the Lama as a "splittist" and pointed out that he has "collaborated with the Indian military and American CIA to organise Indian Tibetan special border troops to fight their way back into Tibet". As regards Islamabad, US, India, Afghanistan and Israel are in collusion as part of a plot to 'destabilize' Pakistan for their common strategic interests.
It was due to new subversive acts of the militants in Balochistan and the tribal areas, especially Swat, backed by CIA, RAW, Khad and Mossad that on June 29, 2008, Prime Minister Gilani stated that there were "several enemies of the country" and "foreign hands were also involved in the acts of terrorism". On August 4, President Musharraf also said that India was behind the unrest in Balochistan, providing arms and ammunition to those involved in violence in the province. Recently, Islamabad indicated evidence that there are a number of Indian training camps in Afghanistan from where saboteurs are being sent to these areas to commit terrorist activities. During the recent trip of Prime Minister Gilani to the US, American media propagated ties between Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI and militants in the tribal regions, blaming it for the bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7.
These false allegations were also repeated by Kabul and New Delhi. The main aim behind was to tarnish the image of ISI to conceal the clandestine activities of CIA, RAW, Mossad and Khad which have been creating unrest in Pakistan. The fact of the matter is that by availing the ongoing international phenomena of terrorism, Jewish-Hindu lobbies are collectively working in America and other European countries to exploit the double standards of the west in relation to terrorism and human rights vis-à-vis Pakistan and China.
Israel and India are equating the 'war of independence' in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism. They also accuse Iran, Syria and Pakistan of sponsoring cross-border terrorism in the related regions of South Asia and the Middle East. If India considers Pakistan as her enemy number one, Israel takes Iran in the same sense especially due to its nuclear programme which is also negated by the US. Tel Aviv is also against Pakistan as it is the only nuclear Islamic country. However, these similarities of interest have brought the two countries to follow a common secret diplomacy with the tactical support of Washington, targeting particularly Pakistan and China including other states like Nepal, North Korea, Bangladesh, Iran, Syria etc.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:12 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
he has "collaborated with the Indian military and American CIA to organise Indian Tibetan special border troops to fight their way back into Tibet".
Actually the CIA and RAW did organize the SFF for clandestine missions in Tibet and China.
RAW still uses the SFF commandos (Special Frontier Force) for that purpose.
Take a look at this Tibetan lass. Note the paratrooper qualification badge
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:27 Comments ||
Top||
#2
the clandestine activities of CIA, RAW, Mossad and Khad which have been creating unrest in Pakistan
He forgot MI6, the DGSE and the IMF (Mr. Phelps and company)
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:29 Comments ||
Top||
#3
New Delhi has been shopping in the US. The SPG (Special Protection Group) that guards Indian ministers has new equipment.
This gent was protecting PM Manmohan Singh at the Red Fort in Delhi for Indian Independence Day
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:32 Comments ||
Top||
#1
Misses the impact of their religion on the Pak. Other than the nihilistic cult of personality [and starvation] from the North, I don't recall any particular religion having a 'death cult' aspect to it that runs in the South.
#2
In the 1960s, South Korean delegations would visit Pakistan to learn about economic development. Pakistan had a higher per capita income and South Korea even copied Pakistan's second five year plan (1960-1965).
At that time, the Indo-Pak border was open. People still crossed back and forth and the currency of each country was used in towns on either side.
In 1965, Pakistan launched "Operation Gibraltar". 40,000 Pakistani troops and irregulars, disguised as locals, entered Jammu and Kashmir to provoke a rebellion among the population. There was a great stir amongst the Muslim population due to the mysterious disappearance of a holy relic - a hair from the beard of the Prophet Mohammed, from Kashmir's Hazratbal shrine. Then President General Ayub Khan and Foreign Minister ZA Bhutto (Benazir's father) believed that they could seize most of Kashmir and force India to the negotiating table where the seizure would be legitimized.
India counter-attacked across the LOC and captured most of the infiltrators. Pakistan then launched "Operation Grand Slam" and attacked J+K with Patton tanks (which they had promised the US they would not use against India). They attempted to seize Akhnoor Bridge and cutoff the supply lines to an Indian infantry division and threaten Jammu. The Patton tanks were far superior to India's AMX tanks and Pakistan believed they would crush the Indian response.
India stopped the advance and proceeded to attack across the international border in the Punjab, an escalation of the conflict that the Pakistanis did not think likely. This was now full scale war.
After the 1965 Indo-Pak war, things rapidly went downhill for Pakistan. South Korea became an economic power while Pakistan remained mired in the third world.
60 captured Patton tanks were displayed at Bhikiwind village, nicknamed Patton Nagar.
Indian children still play there.
Many Pakistani commentators write with longing for the time when the South Koreans (and many others) regularly came to them for advice on industrial policy.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 9:03 Comments ||
Top||
#4
And that Amerikanski (untranslatable Russian) stands there, and he looks at me like he's trying to figure if I'm wearing contact lenses, or something.
Posted by: Vladimir Putin ||
08/17/2008 9:37 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Is there anywhere in Morton's opinion piece a quote from Bush or a member of his administration stating that the President is "betting" that Pakistan will become like South Korea?
How I loathe this kind of work - a frolic of stupidity conjured up from a good-bye and good luck phone call from George W. Bush to a principal actor (for good and ill) in America's WoT.
#7
Not while the North supported the guerrilla army in the South.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/17/2008 13:45 Comments ||
Top||
#8
jf: Not while the North supported the guerrilla army in the South.
Actually, by the time Uncle Sam pulled out, that guerrilla army was basically finished. Then North Vietnam regulars invaded with tanks, Migs and artillery.
#9
Tet pretty much annihilated the VC [not that the MSM would ever let you know that]. From that point on the war effort was carried on by the NVA. The VC remained as a front/sock puppet for Hanoi, much to their surprise when the North finally did take over and pushed them aside. The North mounted one invasion after the bulk of the US left and the South's army was able to contain them with some assistance, mainly air support. However, the Donk controlled Congress subsequently cut all funding for supplies and support. The second invasion by the North succeeded.
#10
The South Koreans blended hard work, Confucian values, western aspirations, and national pride to accomplish nothing short of a miracle in a few decades.
The Pakistanis have the national pride and the Koran -- they're doomed.
#11
Many Pakistani commentators write with longing for the time when the South Koreans (and many others) regularly came to them for advice on industrial policy.
well as least the NK's can visit and marvel
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/17/2008 20:29 Comments ||
Top||
IT WASN'T so long ago that erstwhile supporters of the war in Iraq were invoking hindsight to justify their newfound opposition to it. "Obviously if we knew then what we know now," Senator Hillary Clinton said in December 2006, when asked whether she regretted her 2002 vote authorizing military action, "I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."
Many of Clinton's colleagues said the same thing. An ABC News survey of senators in January 2007 found that "an overwhelming number" of Democrats who had voted in favor of going to war - including Joe Biden of Delaware, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, John Breaux of Louisiana, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia - had had a change of heart.
Liberals and Democrats weren't the only ones going wobbly. "If I had known then what I know now about the weapons of mass destruction," Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, told the Houston Chronicle, "I would not vote to go into Iraq." The conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg pronounced the Iraq war "a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq." Others singing from the same hymnal have included Jonathan Rauch, National Journal's respected semi-libertarian essayist, and (somewhat earlier) Michael Howard, the former leader of the British Conservative Party.
The prevailing wisdom 18 months or so ago was that invading Iraq had been, in retrospect, a disastrous blunder. It had led to appalling sectarian fratricide and an ever-climbing body count. Iraqi democracy was deemed a naive pipe dream. Worst of all, it was said, the fighting in Iraq wasn't advancing the global struggle against Islamist terrorism; by rallying a new generation of jihadists, it was actually impeding it. Opponents of the war clamored loudly for pulling the plug - even if that meant, as The New York Times acknowledged in a bring-the-troops-home-now editorial last July, "that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave."
But what if we had known then what we know now?
We know now that the overhauled counterinsurgency strategy devised by General David Petraeus - the "surge" - would prove spectacularly successful, driving Al Qaeda in Iraq from its strongholds, and killing thousands of its fighters, supporters, and leaders.
We know now that US losses in Iraq would plummet to the lowest levels of the war, with just five Americans killed in combat in July 2008, compared with 66 fatalities in the same month a year ago - and with 137 in November 2004.
We know now that the sectarian bloodletting would be dramatically reduced, with numerous Sunni tribal leaders abandoning their former Al Qaeda allies, and Shi'ite radical Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army being thoroughly routed by the Iraqi military.
We know now that by the summer of 2008, the Iraqi government would meet all but three of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress to demonstrate security, economic progress, and political reconciliation.
And we know now that, far from being undermined by the campaign in Iraq, the wider war against Islamist violence would show significant progress, with terrorism outside Iraq's borders having "in fact gone way down over the past five years," as Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria noted in May - and with popular support for jihadist organizations plummeting across the Muslim world.
So what does hindsight counsel today? That Iraq is a pointless quagmire - or that it is a costly but winnable war, in which patience, tenacity, and smarts have a good chance of succeeding?
Hindsight isn't always 20-20, particularly in wartime, when early expectations of an easy rout can give way to an unexpectedly long and bloody grind - and when victory has so often been achieved only after persevering through strategic debacles, intelligence failures, and wrenching battlefield losses.
There are no guarantees in Iraq. As with every war, we will know for sure how it ends only after it ends. But an effort that so many critics sourly have called the worst foreign-policy blunder in American history - the drive to emancipate Iraq from a monstrous and dangerous dictatorship and transform it into a reasonably civilized, law-abiding democracy - looks increasingly like a mission nearly accomplished. Had we known six years ago what we know today, would we have done it? Differently, no doubt. But we would have done it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
by Robert Kagan
