Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Russia and Georgia are now at war. It is a sticky situation for the U.S. because Georgia has 2,ooo troops in Iraq and the U.S. has troops in Georgia training its army. The U.S. certainly do not want to get into a fight with the Russians. So we can only call for peace. But who will listen?

The problem is that the the Russians are supporting the South Ossetians, a minority group that wants to break away from Georgia. The Russians are upset at Georgia, a republic that broke away from the USSR, because of its leanings to the west. Georgia has applied to join NATO. The Russians don't want the U.S. have more influence in the region. The U.S. argues for the integrity of the Georgian territory. But the problem is that the U.S. supported the breakaway of Kosovo from Russian-backed Serbia last year. The Russians said at that time that we will see other minority groups breakaway from countries and cause all sort of chaos. I would not be surprised if the Russians encouraged the South Ossetians to prove their point. They do have a point, however. The majority of Kosovo were ethnic Albanians. I had said that to allow them to breakaway from Serbia would be like allowing California to breakaway from the U.S. someday when ethnic Mexicans are the majority of our state. Well, how do the U.S. argue not allowing the South Ossetians breakaway from Georgia? Georgia, afterall, left the USSR.

The only hope is that the Russians won't get involve too deeply. I don't think they want an Afghanistan or a Chechynia in Georgia. It would be a quagmire like Iraq is for the U.S. I hope they learned that to conquer and hold a mountainous country with people who hate you is a difficult task.