Isn't This How World Wars Start?

miami,
I think this is how we got involved in Vietnam.

Maybe Bush will find a link to al qaeda or maybe some yellow cake, that should about do it.

It depends on the mindset of the Russians as to whether or not getting in their face is the right policy. All wars are started over land and resources, but the trigger can be different. WW1 was preceded by saber-rattling by the old colonial empires like Great Britain and France and wannabes like Germany. The trigger or excuse for the war was the murder of the Austrian archduke Ferdinand. WW2 was similar only in the fact that the Axis nations wanted to take the land and resources of other countries. The trigger was the perceived cowardliness of the pacifist movements of democracies.

I think we need to keep our noses out of it. Look how long we have been in this last war that was supposed to be in and out. Bush shouldn't start another war to dump on the new President of the United States.

quote:

Originally posted by Extra260:
miami,
I think this is how we got involved in Vietnam.

Maybe Bush will find a link to al qaeda or maybe some yellow cake, that should about do it.

Your statement may be more correctly stated as "maybe Bush will manufacture a link to Al Qaeda ... "

This won’t be the first time the US as been actively engaged on the opposite side of a conflict against the Soviets/Russians. (Soviet pilots shot down around 1300 allied aircraft in Korea without starting another World War.)

What if Russia had invaded Finland or Poland (or any country for that matter) for something one of those countries had done inside their own borders. Should the US/world sit idly by and do nothing?

They also sank a US nuclear attack submarine, the USS Scorpion, in 1968, and although it could have brought about a large scale conflict, it did not.
My hope is that the Russians see their dilemma, and realize that the European nations are united behind the Georgian autonomy, and pull out gracefully, without a progression of the hostilites. I do not want to see US troops on the Ground in a former Russian state. This is a job of the Europeans, we have our hands full enough in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The invasion of Georgia is the first step in a grand design not jus to restore much of the Russian/Soviet empire, but to force the US out of the world scene and to subjugate Europe to their will. The US thru NATO fought off the old ideological struggle. I wonder the will exists in the US and Europe to make such an effort again.

Its not ideological, this time, its a naked power grab. I will try to post in more detail, later.

If America will not stand against aggression towards free Democracies who will? Last time we "kept our noses out of it" Hitler swept through Europe and by the end of it all 80 million people were dead.

Late breaking -- hope its true!

Georgia says Russians pulling out of Gori

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=105&sid=1459562

Reportedly, they're moving out of the port of Poti, also.

on TV news now, 100 Russian tanks moving deeper into Georgia

When I first saw the reports on Russia and Georgia, possible world war was the first thing I thought of. This thing scares the hell out of me.

We seriously need to stay out of this. If we get on the wrong side of Russia again, it won't be a cold war.

It's their fight, not ours. Let them work it out, maybe we can send some humanitarian relief such as food and medical supplies. Other than that, it's none of our business.

I truly wish the US could tend to its business and let the rest of the world go by. However, reality tends to interfere when we do.

Ignoring small grabs for power in the thirties lead to a war with over 80 million dead. When doing the right thing, easily and cheaply was ignored, a much more expensive price was exacted in blood and treasure.

From my days hiking along the John Muir trail, I learned never turn your back on a large bear and run. He senses weakness and that you are prey.

If Russia senses weakness, she will go for the Ukraine, Poland and the Balkans, at least. Iran’s mad mullahs will know they can proceed with their plans for nuclear weapons. All the while, supplied with the means by Russia, who at present is also installing new anti-aircraft defenses in Iran.

China, emerging from their Leni Riefenstah Olympics moment, may well conclude now is the time to proceed against Taiwan.

Needless to say, al Qaeda, fearing its own demise, may be resurrected, as well.

“Chamberlain had a choice between war and dishonor. He chose dishonor and got war.” Sir Winston Churchill.

No, this is how freedom is paid for.

Slavery is free but freedom will always carry a price. As long as there are those who want to take freedom from the free there will always be a price to pay.

All of us, the world over, who are free are brothers. Watching a brother's freedom be stripped and doing nothing is a crime of the highest degree.

Cowboy

Potentially a new "Cold War" is beginning. Putin knows we're stretched beyond thin, and Washington will use this as an excuse to spend even more on defense.

What troubles me, is that the American people, Russians too, are so easily duped into astronomical spending, most of it borrowed in our case and are clueless about the repayment. The American public wants all of this "stuff" and doesn't want to pay for it. So the politicians borrow the money and buy their re-election. All the while cashing in themselves.

Why do we not care?

Regards, miamizsun

Just read this, and I very rarely agree with Pat Buchanan.

Who Started Cold War II?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.

Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.

If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.

From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.

Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did – nothing.

These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.

The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.

Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.

And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?

As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?

For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.

If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?

The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.

What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?

Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.

The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.

The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.

Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.

A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.

Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?

As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Russia is stretched thin. With a population of 140 million, a fertility rate of 1.4 (2.1 is required for a stabile population), an average male life span of 58, and more abortions than births, she is slipping into dissolution. In 10 years, her population will br 125 million and will continue declining.

Russia's main industries are oil and gas extraction and sales of medium tech weapons, not the livelihood of a first world nation.

The equipment used in the invasion of Georgia was Cold War and not likely to be replaced.

Putin and the silovicki olagarchy know this and are systemically looting Russia, while eliminating enemies or opponents. No nationalism or marxism, just thugs looting.

Yes they are despicable, and their military has had some issues, esp after the cold war, however, they are no joke, they do have nukes and natural resources and I wouldn't take them(or China) lightly.

Pat Buchanan is an old Irish bar room bully and a racist. I put no more stock in the man than I would in cheap whiskey.

Putin and his silovicki are not nationalists, only opportunists. I've posted elsewhere the number of persons he murdered or tried to murder to silence any opposition. He would not use the nukes, except in the extreme. Losing the material is more of a problem, than any Russian use. I remember when the US embassy bought new locks and hasps for their stored nukes, just to increase the security marginally.

Pat Buchanan also wrote that the US should have stayed out of WWII, or at least, the European portion. Claimed Adolf wouldn't set off the holocaust if we had kept out -- never mind, the raving in My Struggle. pat exposed his anglophone tendencies in the work, as well.

I really wouldn't like an alternate history with Germany triumphant across Europe, armed with the A-bomb and V-3 rockets. We used some of the captured German uranium in our weapons -- that's how close they came.