Additional Thoughts on the 2008 Georgia Russian War

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sack-the-Sacks-by-John-Scanlon-080822-409.html#startcomments

An independent inquiry ordered by the EU concluded Georgia violated international law and triggered last year's war with Russia by attacking South Ossetia. The report also found that Russia's invasion of Georgia after the attack was illegal and unjustified, and that Ossetian militias conducted ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages. (1)

I supported Russia's punitive military actions against Georgia proper as I saw them deterring future aggression. It appears, contrary to the EU inquiry, Russia didn't go far enough. Until the recent intervention by the Russian coast guard, US supplied, Georgian gun boats had been blockading Abkhazian ports (2).

My opponents refused to call Georgia's actions aggression because they interpreted the breakaway republics as the sovereign territory of Georgia disregarding the years of their independence and the wishes of their people. My opponents cannot claim to support democracy and self determination and still stand in support of forced union and stand against the right of secession.

After 144 years, Americans still haven't learned the lessons of our civil war. 300,000 Confederate soldiers apparently died for nothing. It is true, they died in defense of slavery their unjust cause, but they also died in defense of the right of secession their just cause. I support the Confederate battle flag as our strongest American symbol of this right. I will only display it, however, in the presence of the black liberation flag or in the colors of the black liberation flag. Those two flags represent the just causes of the civil war, the causes that made the civil war the tragedy it was. The greater tragedy, however, is that half of today's Americans are mired in cowardice and willful ignorance, unwilling to discern the truth.

Sources:

(1) 10/1/2009 San Diego Union Tribune p.A8 "Georgia, Russia faulted in war report"

(2) 10/5/2009 Newsweek p.10 "Russia is spoiling for another fight" by Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova