International sensitivity
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.
So the Fighting Uruk-Hai of Arizona would like to inform us all that today we are all Georgians
.
Maybe so, but the problem, asshole, is that today not quite everybody wants to be.
See also:
- Sheldon Richman, Free Association 2008-08-15: This Is Priceless
- Sheldon Richman, Future of Freedom Foundation Commentaries (2008-08-15): War in Georgia Shows U.S. Foreign Policy Is a Bust
N.B. Meanwhile, McCain is also shocked! shocked! to discover that putatively humanitarian
invasions of Near East countries in the name of regime change
often turn out to have brutal consequences for lots innocent people. Of course, he’s right that Russian soldiers should be immediately and completely withdrawn from Georgia, and also that the punitive country-wide bombing campaign has been an inexcusable act of brutality. But I’m not sure how he goes on talking about this without the cognitive dissonance causing his head to explode.
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Yeah, I particularly like McCain’s opening line in his WSJ piece:
“For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call.”
Now, who would have ever thought that “international aggression was a thing of the past,” especially if one lives in either A.) a country that has invaded (and is occupying) two foreign countries in the past seven years–while meddling in who knows how many others–or B.) one of the countries that has been invaded by (and is being occupied by) A.)?
Cognitive dissonance? You’re being too generous. I’d say McCain is just a plain, garden-variety asshole.
My theory about McCain: either he’s incredibly stupid or he really takes crackpot nationalism more seriously than the value of peace he purports to represent in that WSJ piece.
Just to clarify, Russia did not abruptly start shelling Georgia. It was actually Georgia that started the shelling of a seperatist district and they actually killed several hundred people. Russia intervened to stop this, like they warned Georgia they would.
It’s hard to say how many people would have died had Russia not intervened, but it’s possible that more people, mostly Ossetians with Russian citizenship, would have died had the situation escalated without intervention.
It’s fine to oppose intervention on principle, but it should be clear that Russia was acting to protect it’s citizens in Georgia. This is not at all like Iraq where intervention made things worse and was mostly about securing oil resources.
It’s idiotic to take sides with either Russia or Georgia here like so many politicians have done. I’m just glad the fighting stopped as quickly as it did.
But what American leaders want Ossetians to be is more important than what Ossetians want, right? After all, the regime they are expected to submit to has been declared “democratic” by the most important people in the world.
/sarcasm
It’s so obvious that US imperialists are angry that someone else might get to decide what part of the world looks like. The root problem is of course the desire of conflicting assholes to claim authority over the same people.
Discussed at attackthesystem.com /#
Attack the System » Blog Archive » Updated News Digest August 17, 2008:
your comments I think its foul, cause neither obama nor mccain has a real historical or geopolitical grasp on whats up with Georgia & russia
More on Ossetians:
The Ossetians (Ossetic: ир?@c3;a6;Ñ‚Ñ‚?@c3;a6;, ir?@c3;a6;tt?@c3;a6;) are an Iranic ethnic group indigenous to Ossetia, a region that spans the Caucasus Mountains. The Ossetians mostly populate North Ossetia-Alania in Russia, and South Ossetia a large part of which is now de facto independent but internationally recognised as part of Georgia. They speak Ossetic, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. Relatively closely related languages are the other Iranic languages like Kurdish and Pashto. The Ossetians are mostly Christian, with a large Muslim minority…
rawdawgb,
All the more reason for them to not make foolish commentary on it without doing a bit of research.