Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 2:59:46 PM
It is funny to hear the media reporting on the event sin Georgia. The two regions involved in the Russian invasion are described as "breakaway republics". In a tactic familiar from the Sudetenland crisis, Putin is using ethnic Russians transplanted during the Soviet era to stir up fabricated dissent in order to justify his invasion, yet the press is treating this as Georgian oppression of native people.
At first I dismissed this as the usual press ignorance of anything outside of the US and Western Europe, but then I heard Obama's call for "both sides" to exercise restraint. And those words were eerily familiar. Whenever Israel is attacked by terrorists who kill numerous civilians, the moment Israel harms a hair on the head of a single terrorist, we begin to hear calls for "restraint on both sides" and talk of the "cycle of violence".
All of which bodes ill for Georgia. Being cast in the role of Israel in international affairs is not a position any nation desires. Of course, at least McCain seems to understand that the invader is not exactly there to try to help some dissident freedom fighters, but is instead creating dissent and then exploiting it for his own benefit.
Well, at least Obama appears to have retreated form his "everybody's guilty, let the UN sort it out" position. The problem is, it took McCain to let him finally see the light. Were he president Obama, with no dissenting voices around him, witht he press telling him of breakaway republics and dissidents, would he ever have come to this realization?