Georgia on Our Minds

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The past couple of weeks have been "beeg trouble for Moose and Squirrel" (President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice) with the military confrontation between Russia and its former Soviet satellite state, Georgia.  Bush was seen prancing around Beijing, China reliving his cheerleader days by cheering on the U.S. men’s basketball team, and playing grab-ass with the the women’s beach volleyball team.  Secretary Rice, allegedly an expert on Sovietology (although she has yet to demonstrate any expertise on Russia) also was on vacation and could not be disturbed by the confrontation in Georgia.  Think Progress » Rice refuses to ‘interrupt her holidays’ to deal with Georgian conflict.

No worries. Darth Vader (Dick Cheney) was in charge back in Washington.  Dick Cheney and his Neoconservative shop of horrors have been itching for a confrontation with Russia for some time.  It appears that they green lighted the Georgian preemptive strike earlier in the week against Russian CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Peace Keepers in the breakaway South Ossetia province of Georgia, sent there to protect their pro-Russian population. Georgia’s folly | Otago Daily Times Online (There are conflicting claims of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" by all sides.  Georgia’s Ethnic Cleansing Lawsuit Against Russia & Troubling Questions About Georgia’s Attack on the South Ossetians There are no "good guys" in this dispute, despite the propaganda in the media). This confrontation was green lighted with the full knowledge that it would provoke a military response from the Russian bear.  The Russian response apparently was "disproportionate" to what the chickenhawk warmongers in Dick Cheney’s Neoconservative shop of horrors anticipated.  (Just like these geniuses failed to anticipate the insurgency in Iraq).

The corporate news media that belatedly confessed to selling Neoconservative propaganda for the war with Iraq jumped to its feet and saluted to sell the Neoconservative propaganda that Russia had invaded Georgia and violated the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation, and is engaging in an unprovoked war of aggression.  (Wait, why does this sound so familiar?  Oh, right.  The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq).  Dick Cheney, with dark foreboding, announced that Russia’s actions "must not go unanswered." Chickenhawk cheerleader William Kristol of the New York Times got so excited about Cheney’s threat of war with Russia that he wet himself on Fox News.

The attempt by Neoconservative pundits like Kristol, the American news media, and American politicians to frame this dispute as a two-dimensional cartoon – an unprovoked attack by the Russian bear on a small hapless victim – are not quite accurate.  Georgia’s Ethnic Cleansing Lawsuit Against Russia & Troubling Questions About Georgia’s Attack on the South Ossetians

Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this…

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What remains is an absolute determination not to be defeated by Georgia and not to suffer the humiliation of having to abandon Russia’s South Ossete client state, with everything that this would mean for Russian prestige in other areas. Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin made it clear again and again that if Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Russia would fight. Georgian advocates in the West claimed that Moscow was only bluffing. It wasn’t.

President Bush finally tired of eating Chinese food after four days and returned to Washington on Monday to hold a press conference in which he made some wild assertions that elicited this response from a Pentagon spokesperson: "that comes as news to us."  Reportedly the U.S. had been warning Georgia for months not to react to any perceived Russian provocations. Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington.  Georgia is a de facto U.S. protectorate. The sudden apparent shift in policy is a strong indication that Dick Cheney’s Neoconservative shop of horrors may be working outside of official government channels again.

Which raises the question whether Neoconservatives within the Bush administration are manipulating American foreign policy in coordination with the campaign strategy of Neoconservatives within the McCain campaign?  Inquiring minds want to know.  McCain had been using cold warrior rhetoric against Russia throughout his campaign that struck many reporters as oddly out of place – until now.  Events of the past couple of weeks bear a striking resemblance to a "wag the dog" scenario.  Note how quickly the McMedia used these events to revive the meme that this a "3:00 a.m." moment (ignoring the fact that the current occupant of the White House responded in his typical Hurricane Katrina like fashion by not interrupting his vacation). 

If you listen to the McMedia coverage you might be confused into believing that John McCain is the current occupant of the White House.  The McMedia assures us that John McCain is "acting presidential" by laying out his policy of what he will do to Russia for the Georgia conflict.  McCain invoked the specter of 9/11 by declaring that "we are all Georgians now." Then we witnessed the spectacle of Georgia’s President Saakashvili making a direct televised appeal to Senator McCain, rather than to President Bush.  Reports of Bush’s untimely irrelevance are premature, however.

Note to the McMedia: this country has only one president at a time, and at the moment that is George W. Bush.  We have only one foreign policy, and politics stop at our shores.  We speak with one voice to the world.  If a Democrat was doing what McCain is doing the McMedia would be crucifying him or her for usurping the authority of the president and injecting domestic politics into U.S. foreign policy during a crisis.  He or she would be labeled "presumptuous and arrogant" and accused of "treason" by Republicans.  But the McMedia’s favorite son John McCain gets a pass while they attempt to paint Barack Obama as weak for exercising proper judgment with his restrained comments on Georgia.

McCain has always been quick to shoot from the lip with bellicose threats and saber rattling. His first instinct to any situation is to respond militarily.  (He stated recently that "we need a surge strategy" in response to crime in American cities). This is because McCain is a militarist.  The Militarist | The American Prospect "McCain appears to be grounded not only in dangerous ideas about international relations but also in an active hostility to prudence." "The military, and an expansive view of the extent to which it should be deployed around the world, is at the very core of McCain’s personal and political identity."

[W]e’ve had the opportunity to observe seven years of neoconservative high drama and higher causes, and most people don’t like it very much. Most, that is, except for McCain, who gives every indication of wanting to shift neoconservatism into higher gear. He is the foremost proponent of an imperial conception of America’s role in the world since Teddy Roosevelt, the most persuasive advocate of "national greatness" in practical politics, and the most loyal adherent of neoconservative ideas in Congress.

As Patrick J. Buchanan has said: John McCain ‘Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi’  In short, a vote for John McCain is a vote for more wars in or future.

The Bush administration has privatized our U.S. Armed Forces into a corporate protection force for the oil cartel.  Our military is being used to protect vital resources of oil, rather than our strategic interests in the world. In Afghanistan, there was the Unocal pipeline long-delayed by negotiations with the Taliban.  War! The pipeline deal was quickly inked and is now under construction (with former Unocal employee Hamid Karzai installed as president of Afghanistan). In Iraq, Cheney wanted to get OUR oil out from under THEIR sand.  So Cheney’s Neoconservative shop of horrors fabricated false intelligence (see Ron Suskind’s new book) in support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  War!  The oil majors are now negotiating contracts with Iraq to divvy up its oil reserves.  Kinda makes you wonder what was actually discussed in Cheney’s secretive Energy Task Force, now doesn’t it?

Which brings us to Georgia.  There is the broader geopolitical gamesmanship of the U.S. attempt to isolate Russia by encircling it with former Soviet satellite states as full members of NATO and installing a U.S. missile defense shield in those countries.  Russia understandably sees this as a hostile provocation. There is also Georgia’s proximity to Iran, high on the Neoconservative list of countries to be toppled next.  Hence the interest of the U.S. in a military presence there.  Russia’s response to Georgia was a clear signal to other former Soviet satellite states to beware that Russia will not tolerate their flirtations with the U.S.

But there is also the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline of vital interest to the oil cartel. The pipeline is 30 per cent owned by British Petroleum and supplies 1 per cent of the world’s oil needs, pumping up to a million barrels of crude per day to Turkey.  The Pipeline War: Russian bear goes for West’s jugular | Mail Online  Georgia President Saakashvili argued that Russia invaded his country to consolidate its near-monopoly on energy in the region. Georgia is on the route of the only oil and natural gas pipelines not controlled by Russia in the area. Conflict in Georgia – good backgrounder

And Israel is a partner in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which brings oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean. More than 20 percent of Israeli oil is imported from Azerbaijan, of which a large share transits through the BTC pipeline.  War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

"What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon."

"Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East.

The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines."

A far-reaching 1999 bilateral military cooperation agreement between Tbilisi and Tel Aviv was reached barely a month before the NATO sponsored GUUAM agreement. It was signed in Tbilisi by President Shevardnadze and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These various military cooperation arrangements are ultimately intended to undermine Russia’s presence and influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.  War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

As long as the world remains dependent upon oil and gas for its principle source of energy there are going to be wars and rumors of wars over securing access to vital resources of oil and gas and protecting vital transporation routes for oil and gas.  Ending the world’s dependence on oil and gas in favor of clean renewable sources of energy may remove one source of conflict in the world.  Unfortunately, there will always be many other causes for war.