Does anyone think that Russia’s move on Georgia might actually be the thing that gets our troops out of Iraq?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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It depends upon our real priorities, and I can’t divine the answer to that. All I know is that we’re about to learn that everything has its limits. Everything.
Wall Street is telling us we got bigger problems; money problems not to worry about the Georgia-Russia conflict.
At this writing, the PPT boys and gals are working hard:
OIL IS DOWN – hit $112 intra-day. Go figure that one, a drizzle of rain wouldn’t sent the price higher.
DOW UP 100-points. Nasdaq up 50-points
Oil will continue to drop, IMHO. This is just a guess on my part, but high oil prices gives Russia the money they need to finance more oil wars.
Now, all of a sudden, low oil prices benefit keeping our own empire sputtering along. The elites know this and will manipulate the prices back down.
Anybody who knows better can correct me if I am wrong on these assumptions, as simplistic as they are.
$100 a barrel is low?
Well, considering what one can do with a barrel of oil, I suppose that oil should remain priced high, this will propel the green economy forward. Lord knows too many power brokers out there (T. Boone Pickens comes to mind) only act if there’s profit to be made.
depends. If leaving is losing, than no. I don’t know that shipping them from one battlezone to another counts as “getting out” but since we’re using our soldiers as the pieces in a petulant child’s game of risk, who knows at this point.
I’m still thinking pump-head Cheney’s pushing for nukes. Just my personal, and probably totally uneducated, opinion.
As the poster before me said, I think we’re about to learn what limits are.
Methinks Cheney has always had a bloodlust for nuclear destruction. He’s also insane.
“If leaving is losing, than no.“
Are you saying that it is OK with you for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq and keep killing and destroying and being killed and maimed until they can leave without “losing”?!
I am genuinely shocked. I never took you for someone who thinks that way at all.
I suspect what he’s saying is that as long as taking troops out of Iraq is generally perceived as losing, it’s not going to happen. At least that’s how I read it.
No because yesterday (Sunday) Reuters: Iraq has asked for a clear definitive timeline for troop withdrawal.
and
there’s still war profiteering $$$ to be harvested and future oil profits to be secured. Georgia has no oil:
all subject to Saudis’ blessings and Israelis’ approval.
Everyone flexing up the muscles, are empowered by America’s decline.
It seems appropriate for everything to come apart at the seams just as we get ready to start the election in earnest. Why not?
Trouble was, the seams were frayed to the breaking point. And our rulers like that just fine. Who needs messy democracy?
Pakistan is Taliban and this will be the focus. Ignore at our peril.
Well, I don’t know, sounds like it got Georgia’s troops out of Iraq . . .
and where would they go?
Georgia?
What the hell are you drinking?
out of the pan and into the fire? ain’t gonna happen.
the military and most of it’s equipment, is all but depleted, with the possible exception of the air force, and you’re not going to win a mano a mano showdown with the bear with them unless you go nuclear…and MAD is still in effect, thanks to BushCo™.
it would appear, imo, that the speculation by some in the foreign press that the end goal of saakashvili’s blunder: …”to globalize the conflict and turn it into a central front of a new struggle between Moscow and the West.”…has been, at a minimum, partially successful.
rock, meet hard place. realpolitik rears it’s ugly head.
I am currently imagining, again, what was going on in the minds of Russia’s leaders and China’s leaders when we went into Iraq.
I think it went something like this: “let’s just wait and see how it goes. if it goes as well as the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, we may have some serious fucking leverage. So I just think I’ll be patient and play along with all this ‘Pooty-poot’ crap, and wait til the Idiot Bastard Son really digs a hole.”
And so they did. Frankly I won’t be surpirsed if Russia tries to take back quite a few recently-autonomous states. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. It’s not liek we can do all that much about it.
I won’t be surpirsed if Russia tries to take back quite a few recently-autonomous states.
What would be the point? Do you think Russians think they don’t have enough land? Russia was an empire, but I’m sure Russian leaders understand that the age of colonialism is over: nationalism is now a nearly universal phenomenon: people want to rule themselves (something the neocons are too stupid to understand).
Besides the two regions in Georgia that Russia has taken, the only area I can see Russia being interested in is an area that used to be part of Russia that went to the Ukraine after the breakup, and the port of Sevastopol, but I don’t think that Russia will do anything about those unless the Ukraine presents them with a good opportunity, the way Georgia did.
I don’t think Russia will try to take very much land. I think they are trying to re-establish a sphere of influence. This is a warning to all their close neighbors to stop sucking up to NATO.
to answer BooMan’s serious question: maybe. This certainly is a badly needed reminder that USA has other interests that might need defending, and tying our entire military force down in Iraq could be dangerous.
Don’t forget, Georgia has 2 pipelines running through it.
Where are my manners, here’s a useful link
.
The new energy deal Russia signed with the energy-rich Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan casts a shadow on the European and American strategies of energy diversification. The deal that was signed in Turkmenistan’s Caspian Sea port Turkmenbashi allows Russia to block Western countries from having direct access to Turkmen gas, ensuring Moscow’s virtual monopoly on transportation routes from the Caspian. The deal is a severe blow to the Western trans-Caspian pipelines projects.
What consequences for the trans-Caspian pipelines?
Besides securing gas exports to remedy possible domestic gas shortages, the deal is a significant step in Moscow’s geopolitical objectives of jeopardizing European and US energy diversification policies. The European Union (EU) and the United States have supported several pipeline projects to gain a direct access to Caspian energy resources, using Georgia and Azerbaijan as transit countries.
Russia’s new energy deals in Central Asia are also a severe blow to the Nabucco pipeline which involves several EU companies. The planned Nabucco pipeline will transport Caspian gas to Europe through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. Like the BTC pipeline, the Nabucco project also foresees eastward expansion to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Umm.. Russia closing in on energy transportation lines will NOT get our troops out. It will make staying on indefinitely look like an imperative to more establishment types.
“If Russia is doing it, why can’t we?”
Solomon: Divide S. Ossetia in such a way to destroy it’s value to both sides. This is no longer a possibility.
Effective: Firebomb Moscow. Their missiles and nukes don’t work anyhow. Perhaps it’s time to sit the bear back down, permanently.
Probable: Whine a lot and slowly realize who won the cold war: George Bush. Sorry, Georgia.
Best Case Scenario: Georgia loses 2 provinces, but keeps remaining territorial integrity and US/Western troops occupy border regions. The region will remain a flashpoint, but energy supplies will be a few miles and a world war away, instead of just a few miles.
good point, but there are real assets and then there are theoretical assets. Which to protect first?
Much of the Caspian oil is very heavy and of lower quality, thus, much less desirable oil. It is not sweet crude, and estimates of the size of these fields are not in any way precise. Would an oil pipeline really be a flashpoint for nuclear war? I’d look to Israel/Iran for that flashpoint before Capsian crude.
Again, the MSM/US Govt. propaganda machine has made a mess of another important event and sad story. We’ve been speculating all day here, and much has come up, and come out. But regardless of what the “truth” is about these matters, as you have made clear, it’s how we respond as nations to the events involved that ends up mattering.
Oy Vey! I just don’t trust any of these governments! What to do?
And so Bush may indeed have added another stone to his legacy for the Republicans. For the party who worshiped ‘Tear down that wall” Reagan, Bush is well on his way to re-instating the Cold War during his watch. Talk about full circle.
Admittedly, I’m little dumb about the whole preexisting scenario in the Caucus states.
Anyways, how does this end our involvement in Iraq? I can see the allusions, corollaries and whatnot between the situations in that mind-blowing discussion in the comments of the immediately previous Georgia thread, but I’m not able to put it together, even with Booman’s “coming apart at the seams” idea. I think the seams, like someone else mentioned, have been coming apart, if not totally split, for some time. It just seems like now we can hear “the piper playing” and he’s much nearer than before or “the chickens,” for real this time, are finally coming home to roost or <insert stupid and probably wrong analogy here>.
<levity> How many PUMAs, do you think, first read or heard “Caucus states” in the news today and said “See! I told you they were bad!”?</levity>
Don’t berate yourself, you think that even 1% of the American public could find Georgia on a map? Or even Russia?
Admittedly, I had to hit Google maps to get a refresher on exactly where it was. When I was a kid in the 80’s all we learned about that part of the world was RUSSIA/COMMIE/BAD!!!
I’m curious as to how many Americans thought that the Russians invaded Atlanta…
Funny that there were complaints in some of the Army establishment in recent times that the focus on Petraeus-designed counterinsurgency tactics was damaging the Army’s effectiveness in set-piece mass warfare. If we were to go into Georgia, it would be that kind of war, not a counter-insurgency like in Iraq.
Scary.