Join the Discussion

Reply
Report this post

Some history of the area needs to be presented if my comment is to be understood. The South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast was established in 1922 by the U.S.S.R. And remained a part of the U.S.S.R. inside Georgia until it failed. The new Georgian government declared their government as illegal and took away the freedoms the Ossetians had lived under since 1922. The Ossetians refused to accept the loss of their local government and have been in rebellion until the present. More than 90 percent of the Ossetians are duel citizens of both Georgia and Russia. One way of understanding their local government would be to compare an American Indian Nation and the US Government. When the army of Georgia decided to attack and kill every Ossetian the Russian's moved in to stop it. THEY HAD ALREADY KILLED 1,400 Ossetians. This is where we find the situation today. When the Serbs attempted to wipe out the Albanians in Kosvo, America did exactly the same thing to stop them and we bombed Serbia. You can think for yourselves as to whether or not Bush is in order with his comments to Russia. The people of Kosvo were not American citizens yet we felt a moral duty to protect them. If 1,400 American Citizens had been murdered just south of our boarder what to you think we would have done? You decide? My post here was written to be posted on another site but fit here as well so I posted it unchanged. Your background is the best I have seen and like you I hold the belief folks need to know the facts before climbing on one band wagon or the other. I am disappointed that a potential new President spoke with such an uninformed understanding. How would it have looked to the world if Russia had stated at the time of the Kosvo problem "WE ARE ALL SERBS TODAY.” God help us. I cannot speak to what Russia's motives are at the end of this crisis, but I do believe it was necessary in the beginning or the entire population or South Ossentia would have been killed. The day this all began I saw with my own eyes a video of Georgian tanks running over civilians in the streets of the capitol of South Ossentia. Over 1,400 were killed in the first few hours.

Reply
Report this post

I have much respect for Bill O'Reilly, to whom I frequently listen, but I wish he would have known what we can learn from Pat Buchanan's columns of Aug. 15 and Aug. 19, 2008 before going off the deep end. You can find those columns on this site. Buchanan was a foreign policy adviser of Presidents Nixon and Reagan. He is also very well versed in history.

Reply
Report this post

Buchanan is an anti-Semitic isolationist with very little to say which is of meaningful value. I quit reading him years ago; like other libertarian paleocons, he went completely off the deep end after 9/11, when Bush decided to hit the bad guys on their own turf. As to O'Reilly's column, it's spot-on. The only thing I'd add is that Vlad the Impaler, despite is brutal record, is heralded as a hero to this day in Romania, having been credited with stopping the Muslim hordes from invading Europe via Turkey & Greece. Similarly, Vlad Putin is heralded as a hero in Russia today, having been credited with revitalizing the Russian economy and restoring the nation's international prestige. Neither of these positive views are worth the paper they're written on.

Reply
Report this post

Re: Allen Charles Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:32 AM: If your views made a dime's worth of sense, then the Russian military would have stopped its advance after driving the Georgians from Abakhazia and South Ossetia. As it is, they've come within thirty miles of Tbilisi, and would likely be smoking cigars in the Georgian government buildings right now, were it not for NATO's protests. You don't try to overthrow the government of another country (and deprive it of the ability to defend itself) if your only goal is peacekeeping and protecting the lives of your civilians. Indeed, as O'Reilly pointed out, it's Hitler and the Czech Sudetenland all over again.

Reply
Report this post

Hey Bill, Did you happen to notice that our ally, Georgia, killed 2000 innocent civilians in a sneak attack to provoke this response by Russia? Which of the war criminals in our government gave them the OK?