EDITORIAL: Saakashvili, Triumphant!

Sweet, sweet victory in Georgia!

EDITORIAL

Saakashvili, Triumphant!

Almost seven decades ago last Tuesday, Russian soldiers marched hand in hand through the city of Brest with the army of Nazi Germany.  They were celebrating the one-month anniversary of the military pact signed by their two maniacal dictatorial leaders, and contemplating dividing up the world between them.  As we look back on that event today, and reflect upon the total failure ultimately met by both regimes, ending in national collapse, we cannot help but draw parallels to the recent atrocity of Russian aggresion in Georgia.  Just as little has come of it. Just as surely, it represents the beginning of the end for Russia.

Returning Russian fire with a withering fusilade last week, Georgia’s valiant president Mikheil Saakashvili first launched a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post and followed it up with a transcendant address to the United Nations General Assembly.  The man Russia’s “president” and “prime minister” (neither of whom have been ever faced a competive election or critical mainstream media, as Saakashvili does on a daily basis) have called  “criminal” fought back with intelligence, civility and facts, and left only smoldering rubble on the Russian side of the field of battle.

In the WaPo Saakashvili expose the Kremlin’s idiotic neo-Soviet lies, roaring:

For years, Russia sought to slander Georgia and my government while also blocking any meaningful negotiations with the separatists. This was part of a campaign to weaken international support for Georgia and lay the groundwork for invasion. As has been reported, Russia began a sharp military buildup this spring in both conflict zones, leading to armed attacks this summer by its proxy militias. Russia then started its land invasion in the early hours of Aug. 7, after days of heavy shelling that killed civilians and Georgian peacekeepers. At the time, Russia announced that 2,100 South Ossetian civilians had been killed by Georgians, thus forcing Moscow’s “humanitarian intervention.” This lie, subsequently debunked by Human Rights Watch (which estimated 44 dead) and others, was an attempt to conceal Moscow’s true motives.

In his speech, he declared:

I come to you as the representative of one of those places, the country of Georgia, a land of fewer than 5 million, that last month was invaded by our neighbor. Despite our small size, the legal, moral, political, and security implications raised by that invasion could not be larger in consequence. Indeed, those issues cut through to the heart of the UN’s founding charter. The principles enshrined in that charter included the inviolability of sovereign borders; the sanctity of human rights; the supremacy of international law; and the global rejection of armed aggression. All of these principles were put to the test by the invasion, and now hang in the balance.

The invasion violated Georgia’s internationally recognized borders. The subsequent recognition of the so-called “independence” of our two regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia challenged our territorial integrity. The ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of our people did violence to the very idea of human rights. This General Assembly, therefore, faces a General Challenge. We are called upon not just to respond to the particular question of one instance of armed aggression in a single place—but to define our attitude toward armed aggression in all places. We are called upon to answer this momentous question: “Will this body stand up for its founding principles, or will it allow them to be crushed under the treads of invading tanks, under the boots of ethnic cleansers, under the immobilizing impact of cyber attacks, and under the pernicious tactics of violent separatism?”

Even without Georgia’s massive broadside in the West, Russia was already staggering under the weight of its monumental failure in Georgia.  Saakashvili not only remains in power, he is now to be the recipient of billions of dollars in aid from the West and placed on the fastrack to NATO and EU admission, with Ukraine being treated likewise.  Civil war is already being contemplated in Ingushetia, with Ossetia as a precedent.  The value of the Russian stock market has fallen by nearly half, and a massive banking crisis is in the offing. Russian inflation is spiraling out of control, the the only nation to side with Russia on Georgia has been the likes of Nicaragua.  Even China has repudiated Russia and moved to extend financial support to Georgia. And, in perhaps Russia’s greatest humliation of the Putin years, even Russia’s “little brother” Serbia has refused to recognize Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In short, Saakashvili could not have planned this better. He has defeated Putin’s Russia just as surely as Afghanistan’s Islamic fanatics whipped the USSR, with far less loss of life on his side and exposed both Russia’s naked evil and fundmental weakness to the gaping, horrified eyes of the world into the bargain.

Putin is man of the year?  Saakashvili is a man of the milennium!