Very reasonable.
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Campaign for Peace and Democracy
<cpd at igc.org> wrote:
> This interesting piece is by Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive.
> --Joanne Landy
> <http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx081108.html>http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx081108.html
>
> No Good Guys in Russia-Georgia War
> By Matthew Rothschild, August 11, 2008
>
> Russia and Georgia must immediately agree to a ceasefire, and Russia must
> withdraw its troops from Georgia. Both sides must also respect the lives of
> civilians.
>
> That is the bare minimum required by international law.
>
> There are no good guys in this conflict.
>
> Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was reckless to send in the military
> to subdue the Russian-leaning province of South Ossetia on Friday.
>
> And Russia, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry
> Medvedev, responded with unnecessary force.
>
> As in most modern conflicts, it is civilians who bear the brunt. There have
> been reports of more than 2,000 civilians killed already. Both Amnesty
> International and Human Rights Watch have urged Russia and Georgia not to
> fire on civilians, and to give them safe passage. Amnesty International
> warns that some of the attacks may already have constituted war crimes.
>
> Russia does not have a legitimate claim here. It brutally subdued Chechnya,
> which was trying to secede from Russia. Georgia was trying to subdue a
> restive South Ossetia. What's the difference?
>
> Nor does the United States have a legitimate claim to criticize Russia, for
> three reasons.
>
> First, the United States encouraged Kosovo to break away from Serbia, so
> Washington is in no position to disparage the desires of those in South
> Ossetia who want to break away from Georgia.
>
> Second, after the United States launched an unprovoked war of aggression
> against Iraq, it's in no position to lecture Russian on this provoked war.
>
> And third, the United States has been eagerly allying with Georgia, and
> arming it and training it, which Washington knew all along was an irritant
> to Moscow. Why didn't Condoleezza Rice restrain Saakashvili?
>
> Perhaps because there are many powerful Republicans who yearn for a rerun of
> the Cold War.
>
> William Kristol was itching to go in the New York Times on Monday, though
> even he had to note that Russia today is not the threat that Stalin or
> Hitler was.
>
> Robert Kagan, Kristol's partner in crime at the Project for a New American
> Century, compared South Ossetia to the Sudetenland.
>
> Cheney said, "Russian aggression must not go unanswered."
>
> John McCain warned of "severe, long-term negative consequences" for Russia.
> He heaped praise on Saakashvili, though he pronounced his name as
> "Shaskavili" three times, according to Agence France-Presse.
>
> Rather than defuse this volatile situation, the talk of Kristol, Kagan,
> Cheney, and McCain only adds recklessness to recklessness.
>
> There is another issue at play here, as well, as Michael Klare notes.
>
> "The United States seeks to use Georgia as an 'energy corridor' to transport
> Caspian energy to the West without going through Iran or Russia," says
> Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. "To this end, it helped
> build the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) Pipeline across Georgia and helped beef
> up the Georgian military to protect it. Russia seeks to frustrate America's
> use of Georgia for this purpose, and uses Abkhazia and South Ossetia as
> daggers pointed at the jugular of the BTC pipeline. When Saakashvili sought
> to drive the Russians out of these enclaves, the Russians struck back."
>
> We don't need a new Cold War with Russia, which still has a couple of
> thousand nuclear weapons that can hit our shores in 15 minutes.
>
> And we certainly don't need one over oil.
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