Russia-Georgia craziness

[Odin2005]

Anyone else getting fed up with the pro-Russia crap getting spewed in the threads pertaining to the conflict in Georgia and related topics like the missiles going to Poland. The black-and-white thinking, crap "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" arguments, and other nonsense is getting annoying.

I was just disgusted by the posts in the Poland thread that looked as if many of the posters had no problem throwing a NATO ally under the bus as long as it made the neo-cons look bad. :eyes:

Many of those posters are probably the same ones that think the neo-cons and the Bush family are some vast conspiracy involving the Kennedy assassinations and 9/11. :eyes:

[Evoman]

1. What I hate is the attitude that ANYTHING that makes George Bush look bad is good.

I'm sorry, but the world is not some fucking game. Real people with real families die when shit like this happens..it is not worth 1, 2 or 100 lives just to make the neocons look bad.

It's bad enough that the elites treat our world like some sort of power game without us doing the same damn thing.

[realisticphish]

2. *cough cough* HUGO MOTHERFUCKING CHAVEZ *cough cough*

but in general, yeah. I wish more people would understand that, though we hate the current administration, we are americans. And the long term success of america is something we should work for. Being reactionary helps nobody :shrug:

[TZ]

3. *cough* President of Iran *cough*

As a Jew and a family devastated by the Holocaust, the people who praise him because he hates Bush make me very ill...

[onager]

4. *cough* Mookie The Freedom Fighter *cough*

Moqtada al-Sadr, who some DU'ers seemed to consider a hero for "standing up" to Bush. Especially after Cindy Sheehan got into the act and started complaining about, IIRC, his private army not being allowed to see their families.

In Basra, Mookie's Mahdi Army threatened to kill ALL women, not just Muslims, who refused to wear the headscarf.

They also tracked down "dishonored" women, especially those with children born out of wedlock. The women AND their children were slaughtered.

These stories and many others are available at Islam-Online.net, so I don't think they are pro-Bush Western propaganda.

[LeftishBrit]

7. *cough* Robert Mugabe, foe of imperialism *cough*

There are always one or two people who will come on those threads and defend him. Not many, but it shocks me that any liberals/leftists would.

I was once on a thread where someone was defending Stalin, and implying that those kulaks really had it coming to them. That did leave me rather speechless - I know some very left-wing people, including some who identify as communist, and they are all *intensely* anti-Stalinism, so I just didn't expect it from liberals in the 21st century.

[realisticphish]

9. seriously?

fine, there are crazy people that might defend stalin, but Mugabe???

[Odin2005]

10. Probably the same people who thought Mao was a great guy in 1968.

You can't argue with such people because they have convinced themselves that people who criticize thier craziness are simply suckers for "Western propaganda". :eyes: I was a Marxist-Leninist nut in high school so I know all the BS buzz-words those types use.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Couldn't agree with you more!

Those are PEOPLE who are being killed. Not pawns in a chess-game.

[varkam]

5. That same sort of stuff comes from people who regularly compare Bush to Hittler...

without an ounce of irony. Bush is arguably the worst president in United States' history (though we have had some pretty terrible ones), but not him, nor any president we have ever had, rises to the level of someone like old Adolfo. These are people who are willing to (to borrow a phrase) throw accuracy and context under the bus in order to win some rhetorical points. While I understand and share the sentiment that drives that sort of thing, I do not agree with the methods.

And to be quite honest, I don't think that there is much that we need to do in order to make the neo-conservative movement look bad: they are handling that mighty task adeptly themselves.

[Odin2005]

8. Those are the people sucked into the whole "BFEE" conspiracy nut demonology.

When I see a post with something like "the coup was started by Bush Sr. in 1963 when JFK was assassinated" or something similar I want to pull my hair out.

[realisticphish]

12. ah HA

look, in this picture of JFK from 1943, there's a guy who went on to be an acquaintance of the Bush's gardner!

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN EMPIRE

[onager]

13. And in 1940, the (Japanese) gardener told FDR all about Pearl Harbor...

I'm always amazed to see THAT old right-wing slur pop up on DU: that FDR knew the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor but kept it secret because he wanted WWII to start. But I did see it, and not so long ago, in one of the conspiracy threads. They all sort of blur together after a while.

I guess there's one grain of truthiness in it. FDR did make it clear repeatedly (to Winston Churchill, for one) that the U.S. would not make the first move to start a war.

Then the Japanese launched a *cough* pre-emptive war *cough*--er, I meant a Dastardly Sneak Attack--against us.

[HamdenRice]

11. More like valid Russia-Georgia rational skepticism based on international law

Most of the posts I've seen on this are quite rational, while being skeptical of the counter-factual narrative that the Bush administration and the corporate controlled American media are constructing -- which is quite different from the view most western Europeans have taken.

One of the supreme crimes of international law is the starting of military conflict and war. In this case, Georgia attacked its erstwhile province of Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers first. Because of the way Georgia seceded from the Soviet Union, most of Ossetia's residents are Russian citizens, which means that Russia has an obligation and right to protect them.

With typical militaristic brutality, the Russians have engaged in a disproportionate response, for which they also are liable in international law.

But that doesn't alter fact that a rational, skeptical view of the conflict and the way it is being presented to a gullible American public would (1) hold Georgia responsible for the initiation of hostilities, and (2) reject the absurd story being spun by the Bush administration that the increasingly authoritarian Georgian government is some sort of valiant little democracy trying to defend itself from Russian aggression.

[LeftishBrit]

14. I basically agree with you: both sides are to blame here.

What I object to is people saying 'isn't it great that Russia has handed a defeat to the neocons' or similar. Even if I thought Russia were 100 per cent right, which I don't, I would still find this sort of triumphant gloating about a war abhorrent. There are more important things re the Georgia/ Russia situation than how it affects American politics.

[Odin2005]

15. I'm in no way supporting Shakashvilli's actions.

Though I do think the Russians were intentionally provoking a response from him as an excuse to invade that in no way absolves Shakashvilli's actions. The point I'm trying to make is that Russia doesn't give a damn about 70,000 South Ossetians except for using them as a convenient causus belli for imperialism (not that the US isn't guilty of doing the same thing, but that's beside the point).