No, that arsonist Sherman hasn't been sighted near Atlanta.
In the years to come most historians–and perhaps us as well, it’s too soon to tell – will recall that 08-08-08 as the date when Russia began reassembling the former Soviet empire in earnest.
When Russian tanks and troops poured into the separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia yesterday, it was not, as the Russian President said, part of a “peacekeeping mission.” It was part of an imperialist mission whose undeclared goal is to reabsorb the whole of Georgia with its critical oil pipeline supplying energy to an increasingly thirsty Europe into mother Russia.
That pipeline is the unacknowledged key to the fighting. An AP story noted, the “U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.” A good thing for the West; but definitively not something Russia (or, for that matter, Iran) wants to encourage.
Reuters reported Russia attacked targets in South Ossetia but also targeted “the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.”
This has happened before. The Times of London reports that the Soviets had initially recognized Georgia’s independence after WWI, but occupied the country in 1921 and brutally put down the revolt that erupted in 1924.
At the time, the president of Georgia made an appeal to the League of Nations. The Times reports that although “sympathetic reference” to Georgia was made in the assembly, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid and the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make an impression upon Soviet Russia.”
That was in 1924. What sort of impression do you suppose the “moral influence” of the successor institution to the League of Nations, the U.N., is likely to have on the uncivilized successor to the U.S.S.R.?