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Τρίτη, 12η Αυγούστου 2008

Από το Gary Brecher |

Υπάρχουν δύο βασικά γεγονότα για να λάβουν υπόψη για το smokin» λίγο πόλεμο σε Ossetia:

1. Οι Γεωργιανοί τον άρχισαν.

2. Έχασαν.

Εάν θέλετε να πάρετε όλους σοβαρό και πραγματικά τη μελέτη επάνω για Ossetia, το Βορρά και το νότο, και τη Γεωργία και ολόκληρο τον αιώνιο πόλεμο συμμοριών ότι καλούν τον Καύκασο, μπορείτε να ελέγξετε έξω το α στήλη που έκανα σε εκείνο τον σχολείο-όμηρο splatter σε Beslan, Βόρεια Οσετία, πλάτη μερικών ετών.

Η Νότια Οσετία είναι λίγο με σχήμα μήλου σταγόνα που ταλαντεύει από το ρωσικό έδαφος κάτω στη Γεωργία, και το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του ήταν υπό έλεγχο των νότιων Ossetian irregulars που υποστηρίζονται από τους ρωσικούς «αστυφύλακες» για τα τελευταία έτη.

Οι Γεωργιανοί δεν συμπάθησαν αυτού. Δεν σταματάτε το έδαφος σε εκείνο το μέρος του κόσμου, πάντα. Οι Γεωργιανοί είναι πάντα άγριοι άνθρωποι, καλοί μαχητές, όχι ο τύπος συγχώρεσης. Στην πραγματικότητα, δεν μπορώ να αντισταθώ σε λίγη ιστορία εδώ: θυμηθείτε πότε τη σκουπισμένη Mongols έξω Βαγδάτη το 1258, η μεγαλύτερη σφαγή σε οποιεσδήποτε από τις κατακτήσεις τους; Καλά, οι πιό ενθουσιώδεις μπαλτάδες και οι καυστήρες σε ολόκληρη τη σφαγή ήταν τα της Γεωργίας χριστιανικά στρατεύματα στο στρατό Hulagu Khan. Έφθειραν τα όπλα χάραξής τους σε εκείνους τους πολίτες Baghdadi. Κανένας δεν ξέρει πόσοι άνθρωποι σκοτώθηκαν, αλλά ήταν τουλάχιστον 200.000 - ένας αρκετά μεγάλος αριθμός στις ημέρες πριν από τα αντιβιοτικά που έγιναν ζωή φτηνή.

Έτσι: σκληροί άνθρωποι σε κάθε πλευρά σε εκείνο το μέρος του κόσμου. Κανένα τέταρτο που ρωτιέται ή που δίνεται. Κανένας καλός τύπος. Ειδικά όχι οι Γεωργιανοί. Έχουν ένα ύφασμα ως καλούς ανθρώπους, ένα στο ένα, αλλά δεν θέλετε να βρωμίσετε με τους, και ειδικά δεν θέλετε να προσπαθήσετε να πάρετε το έδαφος από τους.

Οι Γεωργιανοί περίμεναν το χρόνο τους, κατόπιν πήγαν στο δυσάρεστο, καυκάσιο ύφος, με την προσποίηση να γίνει η ειρήνη και όλη την ώρα τον προγραμματισμό να γλιστρήσει την επίθεση στη Νότια Οσετία. Υπέγραψαν ακριβώς μια συνθήκη χορηγώντας την αυτονομία στη Νότια Οσετία αυτή η εβδομάδα, και έπειτα επιτέθηκαν. Οι της Γεωργίας MLRS μονάδες Tskhinvali, η κύρια πόλη της Νότιας Οσετίας Της Γεωργίας στρατεύματα συγκεντρωμένα πέρα από τα Ossetian οδοφράγματα και εν γένει, ήταν μια μεγάλη, έναρξη whiz-κτυπήματος, αλλά όπως Petraeus ρώτησε για τον τρόπο του Ιράκ πίσω το 2003, τι είναι το τελείωμα σε αυτήν την ιστορία; As in: How do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. It declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they claim difference by being Muslims. And being different means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze, volunteered them to fight to the death for their independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colossus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region — like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting — like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force — and it’s a good one by all accounts — didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of explosives. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: Drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse — truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock and awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then, uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help. And I just saw the little creep on TV, sitting in the stands watching the U.S.-China basketball game. I didn’t even recognize Bush at first; I just wondered why they kept doing close-ups of this guy who looked like Hank Hill’s legless dad up in the stands. Then they said it was the prez. They talk about people “growing in office”; well, he shrunk.

And the more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naive because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the United States, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect, obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and iPods.

Their part of the deal was simple: They sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then, surprisingly, 2,000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than 5 million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the United States and Britain.

You might be thinking, Wow, not a good time to have so many of your best troops in Iraq, huh? Well, that’s true, and it goes for a lot of countries — like us, for instance — but at least we’re not facing a Russian invasion. The Georgians are so panicked they just announced they’re sending half their Iraqi force home, and could the USAF please give them a lift?

We’ll probably give them a ride, but that’s about all we can do. We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline is staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the U.S. Army has learned recently. Now here’s the joke. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in D.C., that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry counterinsurgency force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

The American military’s response so far has been all talk, and pretty damn stupid talk at that. A Pentagon spokesperson called Russia’s response “disproportionate.” What the hell are they talking about? They’ve been watching too many cop shows. Cops have this doctrine of “minimum necessary force,” not that they actually operate that way unless there are video cameras around. Armies never, ever had that policy, because it’s a good way to get your troops killed needlessly. The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible. If you’ve got it, you use it.

If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is — well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”

The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies — but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, just 10 years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: The bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the United States is all tied up in that crap Iraq War; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit-for-tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naive, idiotic allies like Georgia. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the United States is weaker than it was 10 years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year, nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

Even so, the great Russian-Ossetian land grab will make great material for another few centuries of gloating, ballads, blood oaths, revenge and counter-grabs. In this part of the world, there’s always something to avenge.

This is an adapted version of an essay by Brecher that appeared on eXiled online.

Have Your Say: Georgia Tries out the Bush War Doctrine, Loses Badly
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