Bush rebuking Russia? Putin must be splitting his sides.

[maddezmom]

Bush rebuking Russia? Putin must be splitting his sidesMoscow has to take some of the blame. But it is the west's policy of

Simon Jenkins The Guardian, Wednesday August 13 2008 Article history

One thing is for sure. This week's operation in Georgia has displayed the failure of the west's policy of belligerence towards Vladimir Putin's Russia. The policy was meant to weaken Russia, and has strengthened it. The policy was meant to humiliate Russia with Nato encirclement, and has merely fed its neo-imperialism. The policy was meant to show that Russia "understands only firmness" and instead has shown the west as a bunch of tough-talking windbags.

Georgia, a supposed western ally and applicant to Nato, has been treated by Russia to a brutal lesson in power politics. The west has lost all leverage and can do nothing. Seldom was a policy so crashingly stupid.

Putin would die laughing if he read this week's American newspapers. The president, George Bush, declared the Russian invasion of Georgia "disproportionate and unacceptable". This is taken as a put-down to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, who declared the invasion "will not go unanswered", apparently something quite different. Bush says that great powers should not go about "toppling governments in the 21st century", as if he had never done such a thing. Cheney says that the invasion has "damaged Russia's standing in the world", as if Cheney gave a damn. The lobby for sanctions against Russia is reduced to threatening to boycott the winter Olympics. Big deal.

Every student of the Caucasus has known since the fall of the Soviet empire that this part of the world was an explosion waiting to happen. The crisscrossing fault lines of ethnicity, religion and nationalism, fuelled by gas and oil, would not long survive the removal of the Red Army and communist discipline. There were too many old scores to settle, too much territory in dispute and too much wealth at stake - rivalries brilliantly portrayed in Kurban Said's classic novel of Edwardian Azerbaijan, Ali & Nino.

more:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/russia.georgia

[David Dunham]

1. This author sounds like a big appeaser. What would he have thought of Hitler?

[lib2DaBone]

2. Very accurate news account.......

Freedom of press.. something we no longer have in the U.S. No matter how the Neocons try to spin this.. they can't make Cheney and Bush look like "Victims". Putin called their bluff, now Bush has to send his butt-boy Sarkozy to clean up the mess.

[bemildred]

3. Bush foreign policy:

http://i13.tinypic.com.nyud.net:8090/2dvn9c6.jpg

Edit: the rat, not the raptor.

[specterderrida]

4. Chimy lost his mojo a long time ago and Putin knows it!!