Georgia On My Mind
and McClatchy’s as they have a number of good pieces on the the situation:
[Uodate: here’s the CIA’s Map of Caucasus Ethnic groups so you can see what a mess the area is.]
A background piece on the run up to this mess, U.S. knew Georgia trouble was coming, but couldn’t stop it. The Kremlin has been trying to pick a fight for a long time to punish Georgia for it’s preference for the West, and Saakashvili just wouldn’t or couldn’t understand it was a trap.
A report on the latest bombing of the city of Gori, Civilians were only targets left as Russia kept bombing
GORI, Georgia — On the day that Russia declared an end to its war in Georgia, Jumberi, a taxi driver who gave only his first name, took a long drag on a Marlboro Red cigarette and said that after the first bomb hit, all he saw was body parts.
He motioned to the shattered windshield of his Toyota Corolla and the bloody handprints on the side of the car — left there when the wounded and dying collapsed as they begged him to take them to the hospital.
“I heard the sound of the jets, but I did not see them,” he said. “They were just bombing and bombing the city. Everything was out of control.”
It wasn’t clear what military targets were left for Russian aircraft to hit on Tuesday. Georgian soldiers had fled their positions sometime overnight and all that remained of their presence were abandoned vehicles — two transport trucks crashed in the middle of the road and the charred remains of an armored personnel carrier, its bits blown across the street.
Yet explosions boomed across Gori and the valley around it, and their toll was grimly evident.
If the Georgian military thought that their absence would stop the Russians from bombing a city, they haven’t spent much time looking at Russian military history. The Russians were advertising that they know all about “Shock and Awe”.
A statement of reality, Unchallenged air power was Russia’s trump card
TIRDZNISI, Georgia — The Russian fighter jet screamed low to the earth and peeled off so quickly that the bomb wasn’t visible until it hit the ground. The explosion shook everything and sent a shower of debris flying over the head of a young Georgian soldier.
The soldier, lying against an embankment on the side of the road, shouted in a panicked voice for everyone to stay still. His palms were flat on the dirt in front of him. “It’s Russian MiGs,” the soldier said, his eyes wide.
For three days, Russian jets and bombers have unleashed a massive aerial campaign against Georgian forces that, more than anything, dramatically changed the war’s direction.
Until Russian jets showed up, Georgian tanks and infantry looked to be on their way to defeating rebel forces in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.
First you control the air space, then you go in on the ground. When you can’t muster reliable air cover, you are probably going to lose. You can defend without air cover, as Hezbollah proved to the Israelis, but you can’t mount a major attack.
3 comments
My understanding is that once the Russians finished with Grozny, there wasn’t a building there that was more than four feet tall.
I just cannot fathom what the Georgians thought they were doing, poking the bear like that. It’s not like Grozny is all the way around the world. Grozny is just 150 miles as the crow flies from Tsibili. Right across the border. They know how the Russians operate…
“I just cannot fathom what the Georgians thought they were doing, poking the bear like that.” – Badtux
Listening to John McCain, perhaps?
McCain’s foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has a contract as a lobbyist for Georgia.
Even if McCain were president… and he’s damned well NOT president yet… that connection would be a wholly inappropriate conflict of interest. As it is, McCain should discontinue all association with Scheunemann… or publicly acknowledge his conflict of interest.
Badtux, you and I both know that there is an extremely high probability that it was the same crew that put a Carthage level of hurt on Chechnya that were leading this operation, and they were using various and sundry “paramilitary” thugs to fill in. They are still burning and looting today according to McClatchy’s people on the ground around Gori.
The Georgians needed a credible air force and coastal defense before starting anything, and they needed to cut the roads and railroads between Russia and both Ossetia and Abkhazia forcing re-supply by air or sea, before any offensive.
If they were looking for support, they should have been talking to the Turks and lined something up before doing anything. The Turks would have explained it to them. The Turks at least had an interest in the outcome.
The whole thing was apparently predicated on the notion that the Russians wouldn’t respond, which is insane. The whole purpose of having Russian “peacekeepers” was to provide an excuse to respond.
Steve, if Saakashvili was listening to McCain or anyone in his campaign on matters of foreign policy, he needs to be institutionalized. After living under the Soviets any of the older people in the country could have giving him better advice than than people working for a man who can’t remember that Czechoslovakia became two countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.