Joshua hasn’t disappeared, he just isn’t gracing us with his opinions on the conflict in the Caucasus, but you can find them at Registan.net, here and here.
Heh, Insty links to him, but describes it as peevish (Josh? Peevish? Also, by linking to him kind of undercuts Josh’s complaint.) Great surprise, but Joshua makes a few good points about Russia having pushed the action using mischief in Ossetia to set off Georgia.
Outside of being unfairly peevish about people searching for information, and providing some links of use (as has Lee) I would caution Josh on this:
the plain old wrong (Russia wants to annex Georgia)
Maybe not, but I am not so sure given the behavior of Russia since Josh wrote his last post on this.
About Lance
I want to thank everybody who has encouraged me over the past few years to do this. I doubt it will hold but a few people's interest, but that is okay with me. Special thanks go to Peter over at http://www.liberalcapitalist.com.
I value my privacy a great deal, so I will guess you will have to get to know me over time to find out much. I am in the financial services, wealth management, investing or whatever you want to call it business. I have children, my oldest is entering college.
I have no great or imposing academic background, my grades varied from high enough to get invited to an honors program at my university to frustrating enough to cause my father great grief. My major was history, with a minor in ethics. My main interest towards the end was in the history of economic ideas before life took a turn and I ended up never going on to graduate school. However, I have a fair knowledge of history, economics, investing and would probably be considered well read. My tastes are eclectic and I pretty much find the entire world interesting.
I have an enduring interest in how people learn about and analyze the world; my posts here will examine this topic in detail over time. I make no claims to be above the very biases and errors I see in others, in fact it is my belief that we are incapable of escaping them, only moderating their control over us.
I am a member of no political party, but I would broadly consider myself a man of the right. I am inclined to free market economics, limited government and a fairly narrow view of the role of the state. A small L libertarian if you will. However, if you are looking for broad based "the left believes..." or "wingers are so...." types of attacks on liberals, conservatives, neo-cons or whatever enemy you want to slam, look elsewhere.
Lance
Geez. Joshua has a real problem with appeals-to-authority type arguments. Does it constantly for and against. It’s an unknown vice to him, as I directly confronted him on it in the course of a debate once and he argued that far from being a fallacy, an appeal to external authority demonstrably reinforced his case. A matter of old dogs and new tricks perhaps.
It is far simply than that: Putin does not want to make the same mistake Bush made in 1991: the ouster of Saakashvili is the main goal.