Blog PostsSanity returns to US-Russia relations
By Richmond Gardner at Mar 07, 2009 |
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Six months ago, the US confronted Russia over the much smaller state of Georgia in the South Ossetian War. The US Establishment was trying to present the war as an heroic "David vs Goliath" tale of the brave and noble Georgians standing up to their much bigger and stronger neighbor, Russia. The liberal blogger Juan Cole caught Fox News in a D'oh! moment when Fox interviewed "an Ossetian-American 12-year-old girl who thanks Russian troops for saving her from Georgian aggression." As Georgia had indeed started the war, the Fox News people frowned and sputtered and fumed, but couldn't come out and flatly contradict the girl.
The US had been supporting Georgia in the years before that to such an extent that the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili felt confident that if he attacked the ethnic Russian citizens of the Georgian province of South Ossetia, that the US would come to his rescue. Oops! The US promptly demonstrated that it was a paper tiger that was completely incapable of coming to the aid of an alleged ally.
Now it appears, the US has thought better of its earlier stance. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, didn't completely ignore Georgia, but said:
The BBC adds:
And that:
So Georgia is not entirely kicked to the curb but it's quite clear that good relations with Russia have taken priority over the previous, untenable, relationship with Georgia. Cole suggests that helping Afghanistan while maintaining hostility towards Russia was simply
not a realistic option.
A member of the local NorthWest Greens, Arn Specter, has been documenting relations between Russia and the US, looking at the relationship
through the viewthat "neo-cons aim to achieve full military domination over the rest of the world" via building a Missle Defense system and just generally taking a very hostile view of pretty much everything that Russia does. Of course, it's possible that a major reason that the Obama Administration has been unenthusiastic about neo-con ideas is that Missile Defense is a
complete turkeyof a system. It does the job of
funneling billionsin taxpayer dollars to
defense contractors, but never did and probably never will actually defend America.
So, brava to Mrs Clinton! Pursuing better relations with Russia is the practical and sane thing to do.
By Gardner, Richmond at Mar 07, 2009 18:17 PM
Someone pointed out that Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense/NMD, etc., is an offensive system as opposed to be just one meant strictly for defense. In a pamphlet that was distributed to suspected supporters of the system (My family counted) well before Reagan actually announced it in 1983, it was clear to me that the system was meant to be an offensive one. It was merely cloaked as a defensive one.
The original proposed system consisted of orbiting stations that would fire small rockets at enemy missiles as those missiles would rise up into the atmosphere. I realized that the same weapon could hit stationary silos far more easily than it could hit rising missiles. With the momentum of traveling many hundreds of miles straight down, well they wouldn't even have to be explosive to destroy missiles, let along nuclear. A big chunk of heavy metal traveling at that speed would be enough to take out just about any silo.
So yes, when I say "Missle Defense," that's strictly what I consider to be the standard term that everyone else is using. I don't mean to suggest that it's purely a defensive system.
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