Forward march!

Georgian soldiers avoided a bombardment in the city of Gori, 50 miles from Tblisi. Heavy fighting raged in the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Saturday morning, reportedly killing at least 1,500 civilians. [Photo: Gleb Garanich/Reuters]

Just a couple of snips from Week in Review in the vaunted NYT:

[F]rom the time of Pushkin, Russians viewed Georgia as a romantic, exotic frontier. During the long puritanical deep-freeze of Communism, Georgia served as Russia’s Italy — a warm, lotus-eating sanctuary of singers and poets and swashbuckling gangsters. The elite had their beloved dachas on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. At the same time, Stalin, though himself Georgian, kept the republic subdued through brutal purges. The head of the Georgian Communist party was Lavrenti Beria, a cold-blooded killer who would become the master architect of Stalin’s terror. The Georgians, though helpless, never accepted their Soviet identity, and preserved their language, culture, religious practice and sense of national identity, as they had under the czars. And when, at last, the Soviet empire collapsed as the czarist one had, Georgia immediately broke away and declared its independence, in 1991. ::snip::

Reminds me of something the Bushiters said, a few years ago, on the eve of our wars:

Georgia ardently aspires to join the peaceable kingdom of Europe; but to talk to Georgians about Russia is to enter a cold war time warp. I was speaking one evening to the owner of a fine antiques shop in Tbilisi when the conversation somehow swerved to Russia.

“These Russians are so stupid,” he cried. “They do not know what is friend. They would rather have angry enemies than real friends.”

IIRC, the Bushiter version was, we’d rather be be feared then loved. America and Russia should have a blood test, DNA swab, see if we shared a mother, that she-wolf, outside Rome, mother to twins.

Here’s another:

Alexander Rondeli, the director of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, recited to me a thought he attributed to the diplomat-scholar George F. Kennan: “Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals.”

Still sounds like us. If you look SOUTH.

last, lenin at Lenin’s Tomb has reached some conclusions… an interesting post on Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russia and that other party to intrigue, murder and people in diaspora, us..

Even if Bush was somehow taken by surprise, which I think is unlikely, there is no doubt that the US government and its supporters are now throwing their weight decisively behind Georgia, and are about to get a bloody nose for their trouble. […]

You have to wonder how far the US is prepared to take this – they aren’t going to commit troops and, no matter how much Saakashvili may wish it, NATO is not going to overstretch itself even further. There are also rumours going around sites like DEBKAFile and other sites that Israeli advisors are assisting the Georgian side of the conflict. Yossi Melman of Ha’aretz has apparently supported this claim. It is no secret that there are Israeli military advisors in Georgia, but Israel has a delicate relationship with Russia that it doesn’t want to upset. That is presumably why Israel froze defense sales to Georgia on Tuesday. Israel is clearly far more beholden to the US than to Russia, but I suspect the Bush administration would rather Israel stayed out of any explicit involvement. So, unless I drastically underestimate the Georgian military, I can’t see any other outcome than a decisive Russian victory here.

Bush is going to leave a full platter for whomever is next, I doubt he’d be all that much kinder to McCain frankly. A little maybe. In the end, Bush was a violent radical, who pushed thru his agenda. The opposition was not great, nor lasting. He’ll be leaving some final mark, to laugh over.