They just dont have the populace, they are out gunned and out manned.
Russia is rolling over them and Europe is watching, spineless.
Turkey is the most likely to make a move in my estimation, But if they do I think Iran will counter.
I base all this on my gut feeling. I really dont have a clue.
This is very scary stuff 2k dead and world energy markets in the flux
This really, REALLY makes one think about Obama being President rather than John McCain.
To be honest, and I haven’t been a big McCain fan, he has been right on Iraq and foreign policy issues moreso than Bush. He would have, IMO, had a larger force during the invasion, and even if he hadn’t, he would have done the “Surge” at least a year earlier...but I daresay we wouldn’t have needed the surge.
I say this as someone who criticized McCain at the time, but he was right. He also was right on Putin.
I may disagree with him on some domestic issues, but the idea of Obama being president now instead of McCain simply scares the “Putin” out of me.
I think Georgia did something without thinking about the consequences. I think it is clear we, and maybe even THEY were caught completely off guard, while Russian was just waiting for something to happen.
In fact, I read a speculation somewhere that what may have started this was some of the “rebels” taking a few shots at the Georgians and they got fired up and boom...here we are.
Whatever the truth, there isn’t much to do in the near term but hope to prevent an overthrow of the Georgian government and hit the pause button. I would love to “do something” but in the short term, it is hard to see what there is to “do”
I suppose we could start talking about Russia invading Georgia and compare it to Saddam and Kuwait...and try to make the Russians at least think about consequences. It would be interesting to see what Turkey is willing to actually “do” as well. With the current Iraq and Afghan situation, along with the domestic mood, the Russians know we are in the weakest possible position.
If we can hit the PAUSE button, it might be time to start talk of setting up a permanent US base in Georgia and see what the reaction is.
My son an I are talking about WW2 now, and how similar this is to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.