ccabal86, on 28 Jan 2015 - 09:17, said:
Shahenshah, on 28 Jan 2015 - 07:23, said:
Georgia was stupid enough to start the war with Russia on it's own without concrete Western support, unlike Ukaine. How dumb was that. Generous of Putin to leave them alone after he had them by the balls.
Wrong. Georgia attempted to reclaim its OWN territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from rebels and prevent them from shelling artillery into Georgia, to which Russia responded with an invasion, claiming that ethnic Russians were in danger. Sounds familiar?
As a somewhat unrelated anecdote regarding the just how credible Russia is on well, pretty much anything, I'll leave this here:
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The name "Molotov cocktail" was coined by the Finns during the Winter War. The name is an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was responsible for the setting of "spheres of interest" in Eastern Europe under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. The pact with the Nazis bearing Molotov's name was widely mocked by the Finns, as was much of the propaganda Molotov produced to accompany the pact, including his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs "Molotov bread baskets" in reference to Molotov's propaganda broadcasts. When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the "Molotov cocktail", as "a drink to go with the food". Molotov himself despised the name, particularly as the term became ubiquitous and generalised as Soviets faced increasing numbers of cocktail-throwing protesters in the Eastern Bloc in the years after World War II.
No they arent Georgian territories, they're independant, just like Kosovo is. Why are you having hard time applying same standards to yourself that you impose on others? :-)
By your logic, we cannot then, recognise the declaration of independance of Georgia itself then.
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The then Russian President Vladimir Putin described the recognition by Western powers of Kosovan independence as a "terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over centuries."[55] He then went on to say, "they have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face."[55]
The following summarises what I'm trying to say here:
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In the United States, in hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said:[56]
"Now we can talk until we're blue in the face trying to say there is no analogy here, but it doesn't cover up the obvious analogy between Kosovo and what's going on in Georgia where you have breakaway republics similar to what the Serbs face. Now the only difference is of course, we're Americans and they're Russians. And the people trying to break away there were pro-Russian.
And either we're for democracy — either we're for those people in Kosovo and in Ossetia and elsewhere — and in, I might say, in Georgia and their right to be separate from Russia in the beginning — to begin with — if we lose that, we've lost the high ground. We're already losing our credibility right now, let's not lose the high ground."[
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Russia is about as credible as any other nation state playing the game, least of all USA, still looking for WMDs right?
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You arent more moral or righteous than anyone else as far as government FA is concerned, you dont have the moral high ground, nor does anyone else. You do what you do for your self-interest, not for morality, not for human rights, not for democracy, just like how other nations states do what they do, purely for their self-interest. You actually believe the whole spin of morality, democracy, freedom, justice, bla bla bla. You're actually naive enough to believe that, cmon man. The FA policy is full of contradictions and paradoxes on any given day for any number of nation states, certainly this is true for the more powerfull nation states,
I'm not singling out just the US, mind you, but pointing out the hypocracy of the whole 'righteous' justifications that start flowing from some friends from there, who feel there is no opposing narrative and we're to take all claims at face value with eyes, ears and minds closed.
Your mandate to be world police, comes purely through your hegemonic power, that right is derived from your might. You guys deserve the benefits of that because you guys worked it out better than anyone else. Absolutely no issues there, there is no one else more deserving, else they'd command such power too. But, yea, lot's not confuse that with the morality or legality spin.
Might is right mate, embrace is it for what it is. Your leaders do.
My argument isnt if Russia or US is right or wrong, but my argument is that all this has nothing to do with what is 'right' or what is 'wrong', what is 'legal' or what is 'illegal', merely, what is 'self-interest'. I can equally write long paragraphs on Putin's duplicities, hell, I can do that for my own country's government too. I'm not here trying to piss in your cereal mate, or that I am against you, just pointing out the holes in the whole 'holier than thou' narrative that keeps popping up.
Edited by Shahenshah, 28 January 2015 - 01:27 PM.