As the situation in Georgia worsens, the world looks on in horror as hundreds and now thousands are dying in a war being fought over a tiny sliver of land in the northern area of the new Georgian Republic. CNN and MSNBC report the death toll in between their coverage of the Olympics. The realities and complexities of the event, dealing with oil and natural gas pipelines are too much for the networks and cable news outlets....but on Fox News and other neo-con entities, this tragedy is a great thing for them.
ThinkProgress sums up their bloodlust:
Russia’s increasing aggression is putting a spark into American neoconservatives. Today on the Times op-ed page, one of their leaders, William Kristol, claims the U.S. must “defend” Georgia’s sovereignty as a reward for its participation in Iraq, while the conservative Washington Times is calling for “maximum pressure” on Russia:
Bill Kristol: [Georgia] has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation.
Washington Times: It is in America’s interest to exert maximum pressure on Russia to withdraw its troops and halt the interference in Georgian territory. This latest act shows the need for greater resolve in establishing a European security system that can be an effective check on Russian power
Writing in the Washington Post today, Robert Kagan goes even further, suggesting that the Georgia-Russia conflict may be the start of World War III:
Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama. […]
The mood is reminiscent of Germany after World War I, when Germans complained about the “shameful Versailles diktat” imposed on a prostrate Germany by the victorious powers and about the corrupt politicians who stabbed the nation in the back.
Like a good neoconservative, Kagan also links the Western response to the conflict and its wider policy towards Russia as “appeasement.”
Hearing them talk sends shivers down my spine. If they had as much power in 2008 as they had in 2001, I'd be running for the hills. Now this is where we tell them to STFU and sit down. This isn't about beating back communism or corruption, beholden to Georgian sovereignty or any of that crap. This is purely about oil, money and power....and whether we control it indirectly or Russia does.
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