By Greg Moses
The USA President makes loud threats about how he’s going to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Yet last week in Iran’s back yard an American-backed invasion proved that a nuclear arsenal may be the only deterrent to war that the USA President truly respects.
If the people of the USA want a less dangerous world, let them first demand less dangerous leadership. As long as USA propagandists continue to drum up the image of Russia as the lone aggressor, we should not stop demanding that journalists pursue the
question of who stood behind last week’s provocative and bloody military incursion into South Ossetia.
Georgian soldiers returning from that failed invasion of South Ossetia were reportedly quite vocal in disappointment that the USA had not backed them up more forcefully. But why has the USA declined to get more involved?
According to retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, last week’s little war was the closest the world has come lately to nuclear combat.
“Let me just say,” said Col. Gardiner to Amy Goodman, “that if you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been in the past few years, this would be above Iraq, this would be above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.”
On Col. Gardiner’s account, military strategists for the USA would have known that for the past two decades Russia has embraced a published policy that if they were ever directly threatened with an American-style assault of precision weapons, they would have to resort to a tactical nuclear response. Last week, the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia tested that policy up against the Russian border.
Sharing the widespread assumption of retreating Georgian soldiers, Russian strategists last week believed that the USA very likely “was going to intervene,” said Col. Gardiner. “At a news conference on Sunday, the [USA] deputy national security adviser said we have noted that the Russians have introduced two SS-21 medium-range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia.” And since those missile launchers could deliver tactical nukes, they became a very likely reason why further USA involvement has been deterred.
In other words, the armored push toward the Russian border was a kind of military dare: show us your nukes, or else! And, if I follow Col. Gardiner’s line of analysis, it was only Russia’s willingness to call that nuclear dare that saved South Ossetia from becoming one more lasting theater of reckless adventure backed by the USA.
True enough, Russia has done more than was necessary to repel the Georgian attack. They pushed back further than they had to. They killed more people than had to be killed for purposes of defending the attacked populations of South Ossetia (a population whose pain does not count for much in Western media reports – we have much preferred to share stories of the Georgians clear and present horror). In the end, however, the Russians have done less than they were dared to, because the military question put to them had virtually demanded a tactical nuclear answer.
Don’t count me opposed to condemning or prosecuting Russia’s military excesses this week; what the Georgians are suffering is wrong. Just make sure that any lineup for suspects of thuggerdom in Georgia begins with the smirking mug of the President of the USA for not discouraging in the strongest possible terms the Georgian military assault on the people of South Ossetia and their local militia.
In the end, thanks to our mainstream media, the lesson of South Ossetia remains quite hidden from the people of the USA. If we want a world where nuclear proliferation is less likely, we cannot settle for anything less than an immediate demand for leadership that will advance the world toward peace through peaceful means.
If democracy is as democracy does, then the people of the USA will have to lead their leaders in ways that will be marvelous to see.
MoPress 