[Report by Mariya Martova: "Saakashvili Bandwagon Rushing into Military Mobilization" -- taken from HTML version of source provided by ISP]
Georgia is setting course for a policy of militarism. That is how President Saakashvili's speech to graduates of the Georgian Defense Ministry's National Academy can be interpreted. Saakashvili said that Georgia is facing the threat of large-scale military aggression from... Russia. And everyone needs to "tighten their belts" to combat the "enemy" properly.
Saakashvili, who yesterday went on about the "new level of Russian-Georgian relations," has suddenly recalled the lexicon of his "patron" -- Shevardnadze. In his opinion, the last straw for the "Russian imperialists" was the 26 May military parade in Tbilisi. The sight of Georgia's military might evidently aroused black envy in the "imperialists": "The armed provocation against Georgia began a few days after this parade."
It is not entirely clear what "armed provocation" Saakashvili was talking about. On the other hand, everyone remembers Saakashvili clearly saying during this military parade that his aim was Abkhazia and Ossetia. In itself this parade was an armed provocation. Then Georgia suddenly found contraband in South Ossetia and in order to combat it brought armored vehicles, internal troops, and "commandos" under the direction of US instructors into the demilitarized zone and disembarked an assault force from helicopters. These "armed provocations" did indeed begin after the parade -- and are continuing to this day.
But Saakashvili did not stop at this bold statement.
According to his figures, there are still 70 people left in Tskhinvali today and, although 187 bandits from Russia, seven or eight Abkhazians, and a few Moscow vagrants came to their aid, they pose no danger to Georgia. "Our enemy is the outside force that may enter Georgia... Today everything must go into Georgia's armed forces, into strengthening Georgia's borders."
That prospect is hardly cause for delight for the ordinary Georgians who backed Saakashvili in the hope of an improvement in their disastrous position. The new regime began with the slogan "steal back what has been stolen," demonstrating its ideological affinity with the Bolsheviks. And now it is using the methods of a different well-known historical personage, who adeptly played on the feeling of "national humiliation." His party also came to power at a very difficult time for the German people, under the slogan of reform, but his principal reform involved beefing up the Army and placing the economy on a war footing. And everyone will remember how that ended.
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