18 August 2008

Some views on the Russia-Georgia war

Once the media have settled on their chosen "angle" from which to report a particular story, they generally don't let anyone confuse them with facts -- but sometimes ordinary people don't follow the script. Watch this short interview with a woman and (American) girl who escaped the war and are now in the US.

Justin Raimondo takes a dissenting look at history here.

See photos from the war zone here (note: a few are gruesome). Update: If link fails, copy & paste this: http://lsd-25.ru/2008/08/14/voyna-v-yuzhnoy-osetii-89-fotografiy-arkadiya-babchenko/

Finally, since the Kosovo analogy has been discussed to death, I've got one from closer to home: West Virginia.

In 1861, when Virginia declared secession from the United States and ultimately joined ten other renegade Southern states to form the Confederacy, a group of patriotic counties in (mostly) the Appalachian part of Virginia declared their own separation from Virginia, organized the new state of West Virginia, and applied to rejoin the US. I don't know whether many political pundits at the time wrung their hands over the sanctity of Virginia's territorial integrity, but it seems unlikely. Nor, so far as I know, do many modern historians condemn the US for "expansionism" for using military power to liberate West Virginia after the Confederacy tried to reconquer the lost counties.

The analogy fails in one respect, of course. Ultimately the United States used force to reconquer the entire Confederacy, something which Russia (so far) shows no sign of trying to do to the whole of Georgia.

2 Comments:

Blogger Rita said...

An interesting post.
Your analysis & POV of the situation is worth pondering.

I think the first link was very telling.

18 August, 2008 18:14  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very astute commentary. The analogy of West Virginia is solid and forces us to think as individuals and not automatons chained to the network news desks.

20 August, 2008 08:23  

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