The U.S. Government and News Media Are Lying, Again
by Pavel Yakovlev / August 12th, 2008

I lost all faith in the American democratic system and its media when
President Bush initiated a false war against Iraq and got away with it. This
time, the U.S. media and Bush Administration are lying about a different
war - the one between Georgia and Russia. To understand the complex nature
of this conflict, a brief review of history is necessary.

Throughout its long history, Georgia, the country, has had difficult
relations with Russia and its other neighbors, including the ethnically
different Ossetians. Georgians and Ossetians did not always get along. In
one instance, Georgian leaders asked the Russian tsar for permission to
enslave the Ossetians. The answer was no. During the Russian Revolution,
Georgia seceded from the Russian Empire and sided with Mensheviks
(tsarists), thereby starting a conflict with the Ossetians and killing about
5,000 of them until Bolsheviks intervened and forcefully returned Georgia
under Russia's control. During Stalin's rule, Georgia (Stalin's homeland)
was assigned some of the Ossetian and Abkhazian territory together with
their historic inhabitants. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in the
early 1990s, Georgia declared its independence without any resistance from
Russia. However, when South Ossetia and Abkhazia tried to declare their
independence from Georgia, they were greeted by a brutal military campaign
aimed at keeping these tiny regions under Georgian control. Unfortunately
for Georgia, it had to live with their de-facto independence due to strong
resistance from these breakaway regions and Russia's intervention. Long
story short, Russia became the only third party peacekeeper, albeit a biased
one, in this conflict until now.

In 2008, the United States and Europe recognized Kosovo's independence from
Serbia despite Russian and Serbian opposition. Russia warned the United
States that this is a dangerous precedent that could ignite the old conflict
between Georgians and Ossetians, who might seek independence according to
the Kosovo's scenario. Meanwhile, Georgia being lead by charismatic,
pro-Western president Mr. Saakashvilli sought to join NATO and the EU.
However, Georgia's unresolved territorial disputes with South Ossetia and
Abkhazia formally precluded its membership in NATO. Mr. Saakashvilli could
resolve this conflict in two ways: (a) officially recognize South Ossetia
and Abkhazia's de-facto independence from Georgia or (b) drive out or
physically exterminate all Ossetians and Abkhazians because they would never
again want to live peacefully under Georgia's control.

On August 8 of this year, Mr. Saakashvilli, probably inspired by his famous
countrymen, Joseph Stalin (who allegedly said "no people, no problem") chose
plan (b) by secretly launching the blitzkrieg-styled, all-out offensive on
South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers. The date of the attack was chosen
strategically - right before the Olympic Games. Judging by captured Georgian
military maps, Saakashvilli hoped to capture most of South Ossetia in one
day and make Russia's military response (if any followed) look contrary to
the peaceful spirit of the Olympiad. According to numerous Georgian
statements quoted even in the U.S. media, they were assured to receive
American military support in the case of Russian military retaliation. This
raises an important question. What did Bush promise to Saakashvilli so as to
embolden him to carry out a military attack that would likely provoke a
retaliatory response from a giant, nuclear-armed, Russian military?

As we learned from the Iraq debacle, the U.S. news media is not interested
in asking uneasy questions. On the contrary, U.S. news channels neglect to
mention that the Georgian attack has cost over 1,600 Ossetian lives and
prefer to give the bulk of attention to Georgian claims without checking
them for accuracy. The Ossetian accounts of Georgian atrocities, such as
carpet bombing of the Ossetian capital, raping, execution of civilians by
running them over with tanks, and throwing grenades in the basements where
civilians were hiding, failed to make it in to the U.S. news reports as
well. The fact that Mr. Saakashvilli has a spotty democratic record and that
the U.S. government has spent over $40 million of American taxpayers' money
on arming and training Georgia's military has also escaped the American news
reports. On the contrary, Russia's military response to Georgia's initial
offensive on the South Ossetian population is instead portrayed as an
aggression against a small, democratic, and piece loving nation of Georgia
that also happens to be an American ally. Even worse, a statue of Joseph
Stalin still proudly stands in the main square of the city of Gori in
Georgia, reminding all of us whose bloody legacy Presidents Saakashvilli and
Bush are really carrying out. While the American media acts as the
propaganda tool for the U.S. and Georgian presidents known for their
dishonesty, the regular people of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Georgia, Russia,
and the United States have much to lose from this conflict.

It would be nice if the violence in Georgia ended as soon as possible, but
it will not end until the United States puts pressure on Georgia to
recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence from Georgia as the
United States did for Kosovo. Until then, the Russians are forced to defend
Abkhazians and Ossetians militarily by weakening Georgia as much as possible
in order to preempt any future attacks from Georgians. Any attempt by the
U.S. government to back Georgia militarily may provoke a war between nuclear
armed Russia and the United States. So, how many of you are willing to die
in a nuclear holocaust for yet another blunder committed by the Bush
Administration and left unquestioned by the American media?

Pavel Yakovlev, Ph.D. is in the Department of Economics and Quantitative
Sciences at Duquesne University in Pittsburg. Read other articles by Pavel,
or visit Pavel's website.