What should be done about Russias occupation of Georgia?

[Nilsen]

My problem is with that arrogant twit leading Georgia.  He could have handled the initial problem much differently and avoided giving the russians a reason.

Yup, he gambled and lost. Now the population gets to suffer for his stupidity. Personally (and im not gonna start arguing why again) I feel that SO and Abkhazia or however its spelled should be under Russia. Most of the citizens there wants to anyway. Then russia can leave Georgia alone. They will leave when they are done anyway. The Russians knows it wont do them any good to occupy Georgia in the long run.

[REP0MAN]

Russia is second largest oil producer and second largest oil exporter...

All the more reason for the US to be a self sufficient oil producer and withdrawal from the world Oil market.

[Maniac]

Yup, he gambled and lost. Now the population gets to suffer for his stupidity. Personally (and im not gonna start arguing why again) I feel that SO and Abkhazia or however its spelled should be under Russia. Most of the citizens there wants to anyway. Then russia can leave Georgia alone. They will leave when they are done anyway. The Russians knows it wont do them any good to occupy Georgia in the long run.

It should be said that no confirmation has been done to the claims that Georgia started the conflict. When/If this is confirmed i might start to agree with some of your points in your posts. But certainly not all of them.

[Nilsen]

Well thats the beauty of the BBS. There are almost as many different opinons as there are members 

[Maniac]

Well thats the beauty of the BBS. There are almost as many different opinons as there are members 

And some people try to pass their opinions as fact. I try to refrain from that.

[Nilsen]

Yup some do

[FrodeMk3]

It should be said that no confirmation has been done to the claims that Georgia started the conflict. When/If this is confirmed i might start to agree with some of your points in your posts. But certainly not all of them.

You're probably not gonna get any, either. The Media was having a hard time over there, due to the fact that they were spending quite some time ducking bullets. The Russians' have gone into a Cold-war propaganda mode, and Georgian' official websites' were under electronic attack, so that much of their info was corrupted.

I have read where the initial conflict possibly started when Ossetian' seperatist artillery provoked a response from a Georgian battery, then Pravda ran with it from there.

All of you saying that the Georgians' got what they deserved need to stop and ask yourself why the Russian response was almost instantaneous, with a full-blown invasion...those take time to plan and setup. This was not an accident.

[WWhiskey]

send them all to see a braves game quik!

[Bronk]

Since the US is always told we are meddling in affairs that don't concern us.... I say Europe, fend for yourself. Let's see how that goes over.

[Toad]

Refresh my memory. When was the last time (before this Russian anomaly) a UN peacekeeping force jumped off immediately and took the combat to the enemy?

I recall reading many Euro explanations here that UN peacekeepers were not supposed to fight. It was GScholz's favorite excuse for the Dutch battalion allowing themselves to be disarmed and neutered.

What happened to that ethic Nilsen?

As Frode and others have pointed out

estimated 6,000 to 10,000 Russian troops were on the main highway leading into Georgia. By 1:00 pm on August 8, witnesses reported roads filled with hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, towed artillery, and truck-mounted rocket launchers already travelling into the Roki Tunnel, which passes through the mountainous area that separates Russia and Georgia.[2]

From the number of troops and types of equipment, and given the units of the 58th Army based nearby, it is clear that Russia deployed the equivalent of a motor rifle division. For such a force to move from bivouac into the field, Russian army commanders would have needed time to coordinate the mobilization—distributing ammunition and supplies, establishing the right of way on the only highway to Georgia, and sorting out the proper ordering of the advancing column so that it could combat any resistance it may encounter.

Are any of you still going to pretend that this was just an immediate reaction by Russian peacekeepers?

Gents, this is/was a pre-planned military operation.

[Dowding]

I think we need to get troops on the ground to at least guarantee Tbilisi's integrity, and Turkey needs to be the route through which we do it. I'm not sure where those troops would come from - Britain can barely support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We would need to pull out of Iraq completely I should think, to deploy to Georgia (Afghanistan is too important to scale back). We may not have many troops left in Iraq, but I suspect the drain on logistics is quite severe.

The truth is the international community hasn't got a clue how to handle this one - and that includes the US.

A week ago I woke up one morning with an awful foreboding about all this. It sounds melodramatic, but it was melodramatic. I dismissed it over the following few days, but the more I see Russian forces not pulling back, the more I think something big is about to happen. The last thing we need is Russian-NATO relations going straight to a hot war without even passing through a luc-warm stage.

In the late 1940s the West made a mistake about Russia. Let's not repeat it. The only ray of sunshine that I can see is that the world is a network of multi-national companies now with multi-national CEOs only really concerned with their bottom line. It's not like the 1940s where each nation was pretty much self-sufficient in comparison. Now everything is inextricably linked - and whether you're a Russian oil tycoon or an Arab sheikh, war is destabiling and profit destroying. And generally it is bad business to make war on your customer base. Russia is controlled by energy billionaires these days - there is no politburo any longer. That difference should not be ignored.

[Nilsen]

Refresh my memory. When was the last time (before this Russian anomaly) a UN peacekeeping force jumped off immediately and took the combat to the enemy?

I recall reading many Euro explanations here that UN peacekeepers were not supposed to fight. It was GScholz's favorite excuse for the Dutch battalion allowing themselves to be disarmed and neutered.

What happened to that ethic Nilsen?

As Frode and others have pointed out

Are any of you still going to pretend that this was just an immediate reaction by Russian peacekeepers?

Gents, this is/was a pre-planned military operation.

-edit- lol nevermind

[2bighorn]

All of you saying that the Georgians' got what they deserved need to stop and ask yourself why the Russian response was almost instantaneous, with a full-blown invasion...those take time to plan and setup. This was not an accident.

Georgia/South Ossetia problem wasn't new. After 2006 referendum and earlier Georgia's involvement in Chechnya, Russians were watching closely.

It just means they did their homework (being ready).

[FrodeMk3]

I think we need to get troops on the ground to at least guarantee Tbilisi's integrity, and Turkey needs to be the route through which we do it. I'm not sure where those troops would come from - Britain can barely support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We would need to pull out of Iraq completely I should think, to deploy to Georgia (Afghanistan is too important to scale back). We may not have many troops left in Iraq, but I suspect the drain on logistics is quite severe.

The truth is the international community hasn't got a clue how to handle this one - and that includes the US.

A week ago I woke up one morning with an awful foreboding about all this. It sounds melodramatic, but it was melodramatic. I dismissed it over the following few days, but the more I see Russian forces not pulling back, the more I think something big is about to happen. The last thing we need is Russian-NATO relations going straight to a hot war without even passing through a luc-warm stage.

Your foreboding is apparently correct.

In Moscow, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, told a briefing that "today, according to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun" and said forces were leaving Gori.

But Russian tanks and troops roamed freely around the city and made forays toward the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, 55 miles to the southeast. Russia also kept control of the critical highway that slices through Georgia's midsection.

AP reporters saw four Russian armored personnel carriers, each carrying about 15 men, rolling from Gori to Igoeti, a crossroads town even closer to Tbilisi, passing Georgian soldiers who sat by the roadside.

The Russians moved into Igoeti then turned off onto a side road. As the Russian vehicles rolled past a group of Georgian soldiers and policemen, one swerved and scraped a new Georgian police car. The Georgians looked down at their fingernails.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing intelligence reports, said at least one Russian battalion equipped with more than a dozen SS-21 missile launchers had moved into South Ossetia, within range of Tbilisi. Nogovitsyn disputed the claim.

The RIA-Novosti news agency reported that the leader of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, asked Russia on Monday to establish a permanent base there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080818/ap_on_re_eu/georgia_russia

SS-21's? What do they need SRBM's for? Why do they need to be close enough to hit Tbilisi? Why does it seem like Putin is so adamant about pushing our buttons?

With all of those questions' on top of your heads, fellas, maybe you can come up with an answer to this one for me; What's Putin gonna do if there is some kind of military response...?

[FrodeMk3]

Georgia/South Ossetia problem wasn't new. After 2006 referendum and earlier Georgia's involvement in Chechnya, Russians were watching closely.

It just means they did their homework (being ready).

...Yes, they did do their homework. But it wasn't for a simple peace-keeping mission. They had an invasion in mind for a long time. A simple matter of an artillery duel could have been settled a lot more peacefully than an invasion.