LET'S PLAY HISTORICAL ANALOGY BINGO

There is, of course, no such game but there oughta be. The American right has been comparing the crisis in the Caucusus to Munich because they love to use the word appeasement. It rolls off the tongue I suppose. I think it's because their knowledge of history is so slight that they need to keep falling back on the same tired old analogy. I'm barking up an entirely different tree altogether but unlike the Vice I'll refrain from marking it.

The situation in Georgia reminds me not of the Czech crisises of either 1938 *or* 1968 BUT of Hungary in 1956. In the Fifties, Ike's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles claimed that the US would "rollback" Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Dulles encouraged the people of the "captive nations" to rise up against the Russians. His brother CIA director Allen Dulles was covertly funding anti-Soviet forces in Eastern Europe. The Hungarians took this posturing from Washington seriously and rose up. Russian tanks rolled in and crushed the uprising. I hate to be so repetitive but sound familiar?

The Bush administration's words of support for Georgia were just as empty as those uttered by the Dulles brothers more than half-a-century ago. One difference is that there was adult supervision in the Fifties: President Eisenhower reigned in his bellicose and moralistic Secretary of State after the Hungarian debacle. But the inmates are running the asylum now and the *next* bull goose Republican looney is even more hawkish than the Current Occupant. 

The reality is that Georgia was part of the Russian Empire under both the Romanovs and the Bolsheviks. Putin regards it as a part of his sphere of influenece. Imagine if the Mexicans tried to retake San Diego. A more realistic US policy towards Georgia would not have encouraged them to act so foolishly. And then they naively expected their "friend" W to bail them out when all he can do is to huff and puff and threaten to blow Putin's house down. The Georgians are just the latest to be lied to and slimed by the Bushies. President Saakasvili should have talked to former Spanish PM Aznar and Tony Blair before believing any assurances from this administration. They wreck stuff. It's what they do.

UPDATE: There may be a cease fire in Georgia but the terms are onerous. Heckuva job, Sarko.

tags: war  politics  georgia  russia  europe  

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