This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression

Dandelion Salad

Sent to me by Jason Miller from Thomas Paine’s Corner. Thanks, Jason.

By Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday August 14 2008

“War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial drive as local conflicts. It’s likely to be a taste of things to come…”

The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered”. George Bush denounced Russia for having “invaded a sovereign neighbouring state” and threatening “a democratic government”. Such an action, he insisted, “is unacceptable in the 21st century”.

Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied – along with Georgia, as luck would have it – the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon’s infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?

You’d be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an all-out attack on South Ossetia to “restore constitutional order” – in other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it claims as its own in South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali. Several hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week, along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement: “I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of women and children,” one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov, told reporters on Tuesday.

» This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression.

see

Russia-Georgia conflict is over control of oil

Fox News cuts American child for thanking Russian troops + PR campaign + evidence of Georgian ‘genocide’

All the Propaganda That’s Fit to Print: The New York Times, Again, Tells It Like It Ain’t

Russia-Asia cooperation a nightmare for US hawks

“Gori in ruins”? See for yourself + Paul Craig Roberts on Russia Today + Georgia is a US Project

Inventing Your Own History As It Happens By John Steppling

Wag the Dog: How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse

Georgia