U-turn of the EU regarding the responsibility for the Georgia war

[Skybird]

In rememberance of the Flak I took when in analysis and conclusion I said this in August last year.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...615160,00.html

An EU enquiry investigating the events of last summer's conflict between Russia and Georgia is shining an unfavorable light on Mikheil Saakashvili. A secret document may prove that the Georgian president had planned a war of aggression in South Ossetia.

(...)

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, the television appearance by General Kurashvili plays a key role in the investigation. His remarks indicate that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was not repelling "Russian aggression," as he continues to claim to this day, but was planning a war of aggression.

This is because Kurashvili may have been quoting directly from Order No. 2 from Aug. 7, a Georgian document that could shed light on the question of who started the war. When the commission questioned the Russian deputy head of the general staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, in Moscow, he quoted from the very same Georgian order. According to Nogovitsyn, the document also contained the phrase "reestablishment of constitutional order." If the order, which Russian intelligence intercepted, is authentic, it would prove that Saakashvili lied.

The Georgian government still refuses to show the controversial decree to the commission. Officials in Tbilisi argue that they cannot do this because the document is a state secret.

(...)

But four days after the war began, when the Russian military had already driven the Georgian army out of South Ossetia and was only 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, Saakashvili made the surprise claim that he had learned at 10 p.m. on Aug. 7 that the Russians planned to send 150 tanks through the Roki tunnel, which connects South Ossetia and North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.
At that point, he claimed, he had "no other choice." Suddenly it was no longer a question of liberation, but of self-defense.

In fact, the Georgian leadership, as Western observers noticed, had already amassed 12,000 troops and 75 tanks on the border with South Ossetia on the morning of Aug. 7. In a decree ordering a general mobilization, which was not published until Aug. 9, Saakashvili noted that the Russian troops had advanced through the Roki tunnel on Aug. 8, which was after the Georgian attack.
(...)
The EU representatives' investigations are already seen as politically sensitive in Tbilisi today, long before their official publication, because more and more former allies of Saakashvili are now blaming the authoritarian president for the war and calling for his resignation.
Irakli Alasania, the Georgian ambassador to the UN during the war in the Caucasus, has become the spokesman of the opposition. Alasania is respected as a serious politician by the Obama administration.

Saakashvili's adversaries include a former prime minister, a former foreign minister, a former defense minister and the former speaker of the parliament, Nino Burdzhanadze, who, together with Saakashvili, led the country's "Rose Revolution" in 2003.

Now Saakashvili's former comrades-in-arms want to mobilize the people once again. In a repeat of the events of six years ago, they want to stage a demonstration on Tbilisi's main thoroughfare, Rustaveli Avenue, calling for the ouster of the current president. For the Georgian opposition, the painstaking investigations of the EU enquiry come at a very opportune time.

Tja-tja...

Putin was right when demanding the head of this lying crook. Time to give Saakashvili the whip.

[Schroeder]

I never really understood why the EU was supporting this clown in the first place.

No Skybird, the "personal" Flak you got was not about Georgias fault...it was about you defending an authocratic regime under the influence of former KGB Agent Putin, justifying his every actions and Russias ambitions for hegemony over other countries with no other reason then them having done that before, thus sanctioning a behaviour rather belonging to 19th century imperialistic powers instead of 21th century progression. It is one thing to realize this behaviour still existing in modern times. It's a completly different affair to legitimize it.

To this I still stand.

For the rest, especially about Georgia, I was indeed wrong.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

No Skybird, the "personal" Flak you got was not about Georgias fault...it was about you defending an authocratic regime under the influence of former KGB Agent Putin, justifying his every actions and Russias ambitions for hegemony over other countries with no other reason then them having done that before, thus sanctioning a behaviour rather belonging to 19th century imperialistic powers instead of 21th century progression. It is one thing to realize this behaviour still existing in modern times. It's a completly different affair to legitimize it.

To this I still stand.

For the rest, especially about Georgia, I was indeed wrong.

I remember quite clearly - and in fact have re-read some of the two major threads back then - that I said something very different, but each to his own rewriting of history, and so you to yours. Such stereotypic cliches like you "quote" me with, bare of any embedding contexts, I certainly have not expressed when having refused to jump onto the anti-russian fright-train.

I am very much aware of what bothers me and what not.
And I am also very much aware of my own motivations for becoming personal, even if that is mixed with other topics in the course of a heated debate or otherwise unclear.

If you want to object to this on the basis of quotes and if that makes you feel better, please go on.
It won't change my impression, however, that you support russian ambitions in the region on the basis of "A superpower has the natural born right to subject and terrorizse it's neighbours to it's will, and these nations have to bow to the big power just because they are small. Everything else is their own fault". Exxegerated, yes, but nevertheless the core of what I percieved you said and what set me up big time. If you want to be a cynic, that is absolutely up to you, but don't be on the expense of people having to live under constant pressure by a big brother with a club and a serious inferiority complex, where the press is subjugated and critics of the regime get shot on the street. Anti Russian fright train? Absolutely. But attacking the US and defending Russia speaks of double standarts way beyond logical comprehension, at least when human rights, democracy and freedom in general are the basis of judgement.

[Skybird]

If simplification and stereotyping like this is your thing, feel free. I expressed my thoughts back then in wider and more complex contexts, and certainly did not leave it to such simplified content as you give an impression now. If you do not want or cannot see that - i cannot help it.

We obviously have to let it stay at that then. Time to move on.

[XabbaRus]

The interesting thing is that though the govt. in Russia isn't democratic as we in the west understand democracy. Sakashvilli isn't exactly any better. Apparently severl members of the Georgian opposition have been arrested for alledgedly trying to buy weapons. Sound familiar? So we shall see what happens with him.

At least Putin never chews his tie. OK he did kiss a boys stomach..just as weird.