From Slate:
That's Joe Stalin's Georgia, not Jimmy Carter's Georgia, so not doing much about it sounds like a great idea. As for Abkhazia, didn't Harry Potter straighten that whole mess out?
What's Going on in Abkhazia?
The Russians are meddling in Georgia, and America can't do much about it.
That's Joe Stalin's Georgia, not Jimmy Carter's Georgia, so not doing much about it sounds like a great idea. As for Abkhazia, didn't Harry Potter straighten that whole mess out?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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12 comments:
I agree with you, Steve, and I'm troubled by the mindset that thinks if we could do something in Georgia we should.
Even without our interference, I doubt the Kremlin's project to reconstitute the USSR will end well.
Eric: I doubt the Kremlin's project to reconstitute the USSR will end well.
Hey, a little off-topic, but Michael Hayden has been talking demography:
CIA boss sees more ethnic conflict in Russia
By Bill Gertz
April 30, 2008
washingtontimes.com
...On Russia, Gen. Hayden warned that Russia is facing "demographic stress" with a population that will decline by 32 million in the next 40 years, almost one-fourth its current population of 141 million.
"To sustain its economy, Russia increasingly will have to look elsewhere for workers," he said. "Some immigrants will be Russians from the former Soviet states. But others will be Chinese and non-Russians from the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere, potentially aggravating Russia's already uneasy racial and religious tensions," the general said...
By contrast, note the sanitized version of the remarks, as published across town, in the Washington Post:
CIA Chief Sees Unrest Rising With Population
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; A15
washingtonpost.com
Full transcript is here:
Transcript of Remarks by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the Landon Lecture Series, Kansas State University
cia.gov
Harry Potter... hee-heee!
The Financial Times had an interesting interview with the president of Georgia a couple of weeks ago, Lunch with the FT.
- Fred
Steve and Eric.
I agree with both of you. I don't want to be in the business of solving Georgia's problems with Russia. As a matter of fact, I don't want to be in the business of most of the interventionism advocated by the op-ed pages of the elites.
I'd be very happy if Darfur, Somalia, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, etc can solve their differences on their own. The US is damned by the arm chair elites when we let these more or less inevitable problems work themselves out, and we are damned by the victims of our bombs when we mind our own business like reasoable people.
We can't satisfy everyone here. Seems sensible to me to just try to take care of our own borders.
Is there a candidate who thinks along these lines?
Anyone wanting the world to sort itself out by it's own is living in a dream world, and ignoring a few things. Like 9/11. Or the 1993 WTC attack.
Like it or not, we live in the world. Ever interconnected, by the internet, satellite TV, jet travel. Nuclear proliferation, international terrorism, demands by various tin-pot countries to "try" people for various "blasphemies" (Jordan will demand Interpol issue an arrest warrant for the Danish cartoonists and newspaper publishers over the MoToon incident) means what happens over there doesn't stay over there.
So on general principal, we damn well better stay engaged, particularly with nuclear proliferation, if we want a chance to prevent a nuking of a Western city.
In the specifics of Georgia, other than a proposed pipeline from the Central Asian Republics it's not worth much. It's probably smart to "get" something from Putin and it might be we already did -- like resupply in Afghanistan when not if the Taliban start seriously hitting our supply caravans through Pakistan.
Cards are made to be traded, and Georgia is another card. We're not like New Zealand, far away from anyone, of no real importance, and protected by a big super-power. We're target No. 1 (China is probably Target No. 2) so we better be on our toes.
Letting Afghanistan go to pot didn't turn out so well now did it?
testing99, with all due respect, that's sheer idiocy. We have nothing to gain by getting involved in Georgia, and much to lose. Georgia isn't Afghanistan - we don't have a history in the region. There isn't any reason to take sides there.
We only become liable for the fallout (quite possibly literally) if we poke our noses where they don't belong. The way the power balance has shifted since 1991 the Russians aren't our natural enemy, and it doesn't pay to make them our enemy.
Would you have us get involve in every fight in the world? Every single one? We don't have the resources even if we had the will.
All people of moral seriousness--such as Ms. Applebaum, who wrote a book called "Gulag," which means she knows moral seriousness--agree that Americans will not be free unless Georgia is free. Why that's the case we can figure out after we get in deeper. And then Thomas Barnett can be deployed with his PowerPoint Brigade to explain how critical it is to fill in the "gaps" and then Barnett and Applebaum can collect honoraria explaining how nation-building would have succeeded if it had only been tried. And then they can move on to the latest crisis du jour.
"Cards are made to be traded, and Georgia is another card."
You could just as easily substitute the word 'card' in the above sentence with the word 'pawn'.
The problem with the mindset held by testing99 (and, most unfortunately, by a majority of our nation's ruling class) is that the 'pawns' rarely benefit in these 'trades'.
And again the question is begged: how is it possible that 'what happens over there doesn't stay over there'?
Who invited Mohammed Atta and his friends to the US in the first place?
According to Osama, the reason for 9/11 is that the US had troops in Saudi Arabia and it supports Israel.
Over-involvelment, not under-involvement, was the problem here.
BTW, how's that Iraq thing working out for us? Feel any safer?
"testing99 said...
"Cards are made to be traded, and Georgia is another card. We're not like New Zealand, far away from anyone, of no real importance, and protected by a big super-power.
Letting Afghanistan go to pot didn't turn out so well now did it?"
What didn't turn out so well was helping the Afghanis kick out the Russians. Afghanistan is a rat-trap of a country. If you're enemy wants to stick his fingers in a rat-trap, you shouldn't try to dissuade him. That's probably why the Russians aren't so pissed off about our meddling in Afghanistan as they are about it in the Ukraine, for example (Both areas the Russians consider their "sphere of influence").
You would casually play cards with nations, Testing99, but it is ultimately people's lives your trading (from the comfort of your den). And if we continue to meddle in everyone's business but our own, we will do ourselves to death. We will become a poor and unimportant country, only we won't have any super-power to protect us.
I don't give a rip about what happens to Darfur, or Georgia, or Abkhazia, or Macedonia, or the Congo. And especially not when our own country is experiencing a demographic invasion. What profiteth it a a man to gain Abkhazia - and lose California.
We've tried your way for the last 60 years, Evil Neocon. It doesn't work. It's the road to imperial ruin.
Anyone wanting the world to sort itself out by it's own is living in a dream world, and ignoring a few things. Like 9/11. Or the 1993 WTC attack.
Snap out of your dream world. 9/11 and the 1993 WTC attack happened because we were stomping around the world with our military and spies, and especially because we were acting against American interests due to the Israeli lobby.
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