Personally, I blame Sonny Perdue
Another voice post. In this one I embrace my inner James Herriot and talk about the shit happening just outside my door. And I do mean shit.
I tried the auto-transcription service with amusing results. I know I'm not the easiest person to understand, but I'm not that bad, right? Right?
On a much less frivolous note, anyone else been following the scary stuff happening in Georgia? As most of my readers are Americans, let me explain.* I am referring to the scary stuff happening in the country of Georgia as opposed to the typical scary stuff which happens in the Southern US state. Georgia is a country north of Turkey and south of Russia which has an upstart democratic government, oil, and a wish to show that it has grown up and out of its past as a former Soviet. For all of these reasons, the US government likes Georgia and Georgia likes us. Up until a few days ago, Georgia had the third largest force in Iraq after the US and the UK.
There has been a clusterfuck brewing between Georgia and Russia for months now (years really. For more info, I suggest NPR. Diane Rehm had a show on the topic this morning which was very informative.). On Friday, the Georgian president decided to cast the iron dice** by sending in Georgian forces to take over a part of his country which was his in name only. The people of South Ossetia are for all intents and purposes independent of Georgia and would prefer to be a part of Russia. Essentially, Georgia is being Serbia to South Ossetia's Kosovo. The US backed Kosovo in 1999 and backed its declaration of independence earlier this year; however, the US likes Georgia and doesn't want to hurt relations with a counterweight to the reemerging Russian power. See the problem? Bush, as usual, is in way over his head, but this would be a problem for pretty much any administration. Even a Dream Team of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kissinger, Jefferson, and Chuck Norris would be caught flat footed here.
Here's where things go from messy and awkward*** to nightmare fuel: Russia jumped in the fight on Friday and repelled the Georgians from South Ossetia, but they haven't stopped there. As of my drive home, the Russians have rolled south into Georgia and are 50 miles outside of the capital. It's doubtful that the Russians will try to take over the country completely, but the fact that they would punish Georgia so throughly is frightening not only to the Georgians, but to other former Soviets which are or were lining up with the US and the West in general such as Ukraine. Whether this conflict leads to others in the area, the fact of the matter is Russia is back and the world has somehow gotten even scarier.
I have heard analogies to other conflicts to describe what is happening in Georgia. I myself referred to South Ossetia as a sort of Kosovo east. A caller on the Diane Rehm raised the spectre of Hitler in the Sudetenland at which point Diane declared "Godwin's" and ended the show 20 minutes early.
from here.
Analogies aren't bad by nature, but if used recklessly they can over simplify a situation. Consider the major wars the US got involved in in the 20th century. In the majority of them, one cause of the war or something which make it worse came from taking a lesson from a previous major conflict. After seeing France take a beating from an alliance of German powers in the Franco-Prussian war the various powers entered into alliances which turned what could have been a regional conflict between Austria-Hungry and Serbia into a global clusterfuck****. Fifteen years later, Europe was a lot less eager to fight when Hitler and Mussolini started taking teriority and rather than banding together early and crushing the fascists, gave them room and time to train (the global depression and the fact that they didn't have adequate military strength at the time was a factor as well). In Korea, the US was too eager and wound up pissing off the Chinese protracting that war and throwing away their gains.
The old saw is "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." It should be "Those who learn the wrong lesson from history are fucked. Those who learn the right lesson from history, but apply it in the wrong situation are fucked as well," but that doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
On a more frivolous note, every wonder how a country in Eastern Europe could get a Western Europe name like Georgia (George comes from a Greek words which essentially mean famer--ge "Earth" [cf geology and Gaia] and ergon "work" [cf ergonomics and ergs]. I was inclined to blame the Byzantines, the people who called themselves "Roman," spoke Greek, and lived in Turkey, but that's not it, at least not directly. The thing is the Georgians don't call themselves "Georgian," but rather the Kartvelebi and they call their land Sakartvelo. Georgia is a Western name and no one really knows where exactly it came from. In other words, while Georgia might be on Ray Charles' mind it's on no one else's.
That was horrible.
*War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. -Mark Twain, American humorist
**If the iron dice must roll, may God help us. -Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German chancellor
***Inserting random quotations in my writing makes me look smart. -Gail Simone, Earthbound goddess and comic book writer
****In high school we only heard about Europe because that's where we Americans were, but the entire world was on fire. There were battles in Africa and Istanbul and the Pacific. The Mideast got involved and got fucked (where do you think their borders came from?). Even Mexico thought about jumping in but wisely said "Nó."