Wednesday, August 13, 2008

... more South Ossetia

OK - so now there are claims that the Russians violated the ceasefire (crossing the border, not actual shooting from what I've heard). Dan Froomkin reports (although I didn't read the whole article) that Bush responded by agreeing to send in aid. This is potentially an explosive situation, again, if an accident were to occur. If something happened to our military while they were distributing aid we could get much more involved than we are now. And Saakasvili is bitching that this isn't enough.

BBC reports a little more detail on breaking the ceasefire... sounds like its unclear whether they are still trying to stabilize Gori, or moving toward Tbilisi or what. Some reports of looting, but not confirmed and who knows how bad this is.

I imagine if they are doing anything other than stabilizing the area, we'll find out soon.

So the "accidental war" possibility is rearing its ugly head again. I can't emphasize enough how bad this would be. We can have arguments about whether Russia was justified or not - but there is a huge difference between an unjustified Russia and a Russia that needs to be met by the U.S. military.

2 comments:

JoshSN said...

Nah.

War's over.

America would know if Russia was moving troops closer to Georgia, I gather that's not happening.

If that's not happening, there's no reason whatsoever for Russia to delay, if there plan was to try to take another foreign, mountainous country whose population doesn't with their presence.

The last scary moment was, OH!, this post was from yesterday. That was the last scary moment, alright.

dkuehn said...

Oh ya - I know the war is over. But it sounds like troops still might be in Gori, and as long as the US population is so polarized against Russia on this one, I'd still worry about an accidental death of one of our soldiers delivering humanitarian aid. you never know what kind of accidents could swing public opinion.

However, today Krauthammer completely ruled out any possibility of militarily engaging russia. If he's writing that off, that's a good sign.