That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

By Mark Ames, Radar. Posted December 13, 2008.

The war in Georgia will be remembered as the place where the American Empire fell on its face.



(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)


Tskhinvali, South Ossetia -- On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army's advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. "Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters," he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. "You see how well they fought, with all their great American training -- they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled."

Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It's a U.S. military model. "This is a little trophy -- a gift from one of my soldiers," he says. "Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations -- they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food," he adds slyly. "It was tasty." The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.

Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region -- not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who've had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren't happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.

The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia's de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked -- some say he'd set a trap -- and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour's drive from Saakashvili's luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/that_was_no_small_war_in_georgia_--_it_was_the_beginning_of_the_end_of_the_american_empire/

[NoPasaran]

1. "Our boys stuffed themselves on the food. It was tasty."

Six decades and more since the Great Patriotic War the Russian Army's rations still don't measure up to SPAM.

[geckosfeet]

2. Yeah. Guess we win.

[knitter4democracy]

20. When I was there in 1995, they didn't have the money to feed their troops.

It was during the first Chechen war after the fall of the Soviet Union, and moms were taking trains down there and getting their sons and taking them back home. There were reports of cannibalism of the dead, even, and the governor of the oblast where we were studying filled several boxcars on a train and paid for it himself to take food to the troops from his oblast, it was that bad.

I'm not sure it's gotten better. There's a good chance the guys were just plain hungry.

[htuttle]

3. Kudos to the author...

...for referencing Einsturzende Neubauten!

:D

[JNelson6563]

4. This should get about 100 recs.

Wow!

[alfredo]

5. A bitter pill.

They say a family business dies in its third generation. The new economy was started around my grandfather's time, grew quickly through my father's time. My generation saw it peak, lose it's way and start it's decline.

[marmar]

6. Sad but true.

n/t

[Jokinomx]

7. Every American should read this article.

But that won't happen. Americans really don't want to know the truth. Or should I say republicans! Here we have an article that puts some credible information on what had happened and why. As the article stated that western reporters were looking for anything to show genocide or cluster bombs were perpetrated by Russia and ignoring the rape and pillage by Georgian troops before Russia intervened. I agree with Putin.... Georgia attacked South Ossetia to try to influence the American elections. It failed miserably! Most Americans now see that the last 8 years of republican rule only hurt the U.S.

Lets just hope that President Obama can begin to rebuild our reputation which could take a decade or more of correct decision making and responses to world events.

Thanks for posting this article.

:toast:

[unblock]

8. given that georgia was part of the ussr, that's a bit of an overstatement

at worst, it shows us that the american empire couldn't expand to claim all the parts abandoned by the soviet empire.

[Pharaoh]

9. Once again proving that Bush

and the neocons are a bunch of morons

[nashville_brook]

10. best paragraph EVER! >>

During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence.


wow.

[nashville_brook]

11. most terrifying paragraph ever >>

Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room -- speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America -- is a recipe for serious disaster. If we're lucky, we'll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority. If only we have the will, they'll tell us, we can win once and for all.

[seemslikeadream]

14. "THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL" n/t

[radfringe]

16. when you have a commander guy

who makes decisions and policies by sticking his head up his ass and calls it consulting with others - what do you expect

[ensho]

12. I thank Putin and Chavez for saying NO to the neo cons

helping us bring down the neo cons.

the neo cons haven't just ruined our country, they have caused trouble where ever in the world they stepped foot.

[EFerrari]

13. Ahmed Rashid said (at the National Press Club) that this was the first time

since he started covering Central Asia in the 70s that not one single person at that desk in the State Department knew anything about the region. Not in the first Bush term and not in the second one. Heck of a job, Junior.

[ensho]

15. yes and they told us they would make new realities so they had no

need to pay attention to actual reality. they would teach Asia the new reality (backed up by the US military in case Asia didn't take to the new reality.)

[Blue_Tires]

17. k+r

[leftchick]

18. what a great article

the hubris of the US laid bare is just stunning.

K&R

<snip>

As we hop out of the army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building on the far side of the square, "You see?" he says. "The Georgian flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory -- we're not annexing it like the media says." This kind of boast, conquering a country and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was something that had once been reserved for America's forces. How quickly history has turned here.

The other Western journalists fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians. The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia's war crimes in South Ossetia. It's a sordid business, but the reporters are just following orders.

After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to the city's central square, where I stumble across a stunning spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory dance in the Georgian end zone. They're clowning around euphorically, shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori's most famous native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian land forces' North Caucasus Military District -- the roughest neighborhood in Western Eurasia -- and ask him how he feels now, as a victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.

[underpants]

19. Marking for later read