Meanwhile, over in Georgia

5 minutes later, switch over to Sky and who do I see but Saakashvili again, talking to some slip of a girl who'd obv. never interviewed anyone more important than a member of some boyband on the red carpet outside a film premiere in Leicester Square

yes, somebody tell the leader of a tiny, war-torn and apparently all of a sudden completely insignificant state (lol oil pipelines amirite) he needs to behave himself on british television

PS fuck putin btw I hope castro outlives him

Pupkin vs. Putin fite

finally get some good links and the whole thing suddenly finishes.

thanks for the links though chaps.

Wow, Tom, you have smart co-workers, give yourself a pat on the back. Of course that has nothing to do with the point I made, which (rephased) is this: the news broadcasts would show something other than explosions and body counts if that's what a majority of their viewership wanted to see. Which is why everyone is going out of their way on this thread to link to commentaries and reports that go beyond the basic "X number of people have died, fighting is bad" three-minute nuggets wedged between updates on the Olympics.

that's a criticism of network news, then, and not the general populace, where the comment you made is pretty explicitly against the general populace, as opposed to you, possibly the seventeenth smartest man alive

I mean if you're going to belong to some elite hundred thousandth of the public you might as well think a little about how you phrase things

Last I checked, the general populace are the people who watch the network news. If more people had the tolerance or the desire to hear something more than the most superficial coverage of a conflict like this, then that's what TV would provide them with.

ok well whatever I said ten minutes before whatever you said, I'm right and you're a prick

I mean, the difference between Saakashvili and Putin/Medvedev (generalizing again) is that Saakashvili knows that impassioned pleas for peace and justice are what flies on Western TV, and that many people will be quick to dismiss his own wrongs (or not even bother to consider them) if they could only catch a glimpse of him on TV and see what a swell guy he is. Putin couldn't give a flying fuck about any of that.

I'm speaking for the 99.9% of the people who watch CNN or BBC who have very little interest in hearing about anything other than the body count.

I know you are! Stop it!

By the way, the idea that television is some kind of accurate reflection of the totality of a nation's desires for entertainment and information has been disproven over and over.

Heh! I've just spent half an hour typing a very long email to a pal setting out how I think this whole thing will pan out (regime change and a proxy russian finger hovering over the pipeline tap, I can exclusively reveal), then I refresh here and find that, uh, I got it a bit wrong. Thankfully I concluded with that Churchill quote about 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'

Note to self: always caveat everything (if appropriate)

Well to be fair that could still happen. Russia doesn't mind playing a long game.

Russia says it's concluded operations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7555858.stm

but Lavrov is calling on Saakashvili to step down, among other things

The Russian airforce attacked a key oil pipeline running through Georgia on Tuesday but there was no word yet on whether it had been damaged, the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council told AFP.

"Russians bombed the BTC pipeline south of the city of Rustavi," said Alexander Lomaia.

"We don't know yet whether it was damaged. It's a second attempt to bomb this pipeline since August 10."

A spokesman for British energy giant BP, which operates the pipeline, said the company was unaware that it had been attacked.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jkO1FVRBFvudN6Oll6x_LRTRQ3LQ

but Lavrov is calling on Saakashvili to step down, among other things

That's hardly surprising. The Georgians do seem to be telling an awful lot of porkies.

If Georgian politics were anything like ours, it'd be hard to see Saakashvili not stepping down, given that it was his outrageous gamble that failed so quickly and so spectacularly. But it's not Lavrov's call to make

The point of view here (Moscow) is that this was all an elaborate gamble by Washington.

1. The Russian response to Georgia's actions was 100% certain.
2. Saakashvili would never have provoked Russia to that extent without, at the very least, the explicit agreement from someone in Washington.
3. Given the way the situation exploded, one side or the other must now "win" - there will be no settling back into the stalemate we've seen for the last 12 (?) years.
4. Georgia, and now probably most of the West, will insist on UN/EU/NATO peacekeepers replacing Russian ones as part of any peace settlement.
5. This means that Russian troops will leave South Ossetia, which will ultimately be seen as a defeat. And Saakashvili's real objective was to get the Russian troops out, anyway.
6. Washington wins because Russia "loses," although one consequence may very well be that Saakhashvili loses US support somewhere down the road (covert trade-off to Russia for leaving South Ossetia).

I don't think we'll be seeing Georgia in NATO or the EU any time soon

Esp. not if Saakashvili is still in charge

Eh, that was totally unrealistic even before this

Was it?

I think so. Georgia has a history of political instability, sits in the middle of a flashpoint with ties into Russia's own Caucasus issues. Far too much of an obligation for NATO to take on.

I think Saakashvili can stop constantly being photographed in front of the Georgian and EU flags because that's not going to work either.

So I guess the Russians basically made Sarkozy look like a dope for flying all the way to Moscow only to have the war end just a few minutes before he arrived? Of course, that's exactly how Russia wanted it -- "thanks but no thanks, we've got our business under control and we don't particularly need your input."

Anything that makes Sarkozy look like a dope is fine by me

anyone post Fred Kaplan's article?

The second half of the article is good, but I don't like this:

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would

No it's not, it's infuriating because it paints the Georgians as naive, vulnerable idiots. I don't for a minute think they were banking on the Americans wading in - they were banking on making the Russians retreat with one blow - but if they were, they had no grounds to do so. Grounds for believing Bush wishes them well and will support them to an extent, but come on

I wish I shared your certainty that Sakaashvili is not an idiot

The eXile has it's own take

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of HE. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse—truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.

Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable.

Even if Georgia had intended for this to blossom into war between Russia and Georgia, which I doubt, I don't think it would have been in their interest to prolong the conflict once it started.

perhaps Sarko's flying to Russia caused them to hold up a bit?

Saakashvili would never have provoked Russia to that extent without, at the very least, the explicit agreement from someone in Washington.

o rly?

I wish I shared your certainty that Sakaashvili is not an idiot

-- Tom D., Tuesday, August 12, 2008 6:56 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

OTM. A very camera-savvy, media-ready idiot, with strong friendships with American conservatives aside from McCain going back to before he was even elected

How does such rubbish, advocating active US military involvement, get published in the lol "liberal media" ?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/152012

Even the National fucking Review's goddamned slanderous editorial (omitting any of Saaky's provocations) didn't espouse that

Ah I forgot tipsy mothra already linked to that, but still. It's kind of infuriating.

It's a pretty amazing article.

I think Paul Krugman's definition of "know-nothingism" is apt:

know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise

I guess the reports of the death of neo-conservative hawkishness were somewhat premature. Soon "realist" will be as much of a dirty word in foreign policy debate as "liberal" has become in domestic politics.

Obama, naturally, is going the pragmatic route, calling for UN intervention, a review of Russia's global status, and most telling of all, "deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO."

The President-In-Waiting clearly understands what his upcoming gig demands. NATO expansion is but one of many tasks on the docket. The only "change" we can believe in is how Obama will polish the same old bullshit using fresh, uplifting rhetoric. Yet I suspect in the short-run, when shoved and slimed by a desperate McCain, Obama may very well dispense with the niceties that have endeared him to so many hopeful consumers, and show that he too can growl and promise sadistic punishment for our many enemies. Not that his liberal followers will mind all that much....

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2008/08/another-chokehold-routine.html

know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise

that Perrin post is pretty nonsensical. "UN intervention, a review of Russia's global status, and most telling of all, "deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO" = "Sadistic punishment of our enemies"? uh yeah, okay buddy.

I don't think I've seen a Perrin post that wasn't nonsensical.

(Granted the only ones I've seen are the ones Morbius posts.)

Obama's working on a McCain-style League of Democracies (ie, a better rubber stamp than the UN) too.

the nerve of that guy, trying to get people to cooperate and talk to each other

no, to agree to sanctify our holy bombings, Mo.

Don't you ever get bored of being the most one-note poster on the political threads?