On Aug 18, 2008, at 8:03 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Wendy Lyon wrote:
>> .... the Irish analogy works well:
>> ... Russia's policy of giving citizenship to the residents of a
>> territory that aspires to rejoin it is neither unprecedented nor,
>> it seems to me, particularly remarkable.
>
> I think you're leaving out a crucial part of the analogy, Wendy:
> nobody would consider this arrangement a justification for the
> Republic of Ireland to suddenly occupy the North on the pretext that
> it was protecting its citizens.
Somehow, I think an awful lot of Irishmen would not even bother thinking of legalistic "justification" if the relationship of forces between IR and UK were reversed. Anyway, what conceivable "justification" was there for the Georgian nomenklatura to impose an international boundary (wiped out within days by the Ossetians themselves) through the middle of Ossetia when such a boundary had never before existed in all history? And isn't there something...specious...about the words "suddenly occupy" when everyone excerpt the US media and their dupes knows that it was the Georgians who attacked suddenly. And it was not only Ossetians who were killed when their chief town was bombarded without warning by Georgian artillery. Russian peacekeepers were also slaughtered by the Georgians, making it obvious (to all except the dupes of US media) that protection of Russian citizens was no "pretext" but recognition of the need for self-defense.
Of course, however justified the little war, the Russian military-- like just about every other army in history and especially the American--acted with an unjustifiable (except in military terms) amount of brutality (one bomb, one shell, on a civilian target is that amount). La guerre, c'est la guerre! Remember Panama and Grenada (and Wounded Knee).
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos