A Second Hand Conjecture

In From the Cold wonders why Russian tactical aircraft proved so vulnerable to an air defense system they knew intimately. I’d merely say that low-and-slow Russian tactics are going to get you shot eventually, whatever the SAM is on the ground. Major Vyacheslav Markovich, one of the Russian pilots shot down, thinks the entire war is absurd, lamenting the state of Georgia-Russia relations. And I still ask why the Georgians were not supplied with Javelin anti-tank missiles in large quantity and immediately. The Russian mechanized attack wouldn’t have made it to Tskhinvali, much less to Igoeti.

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(photo: Pavel Trebukov | blog)

From the gang who brought you the “because Georgia has invaded its own country we had to attack” rationale for the South Ossetian War, Poland has now apparently “made itself a target” for Russian nuclear strike, by agreeing to base an entirely defensive missile system which could not possibly repel even a small Russian ballistic missile salvo.

Alas, this preposterous Russian claim like so many others, can find plenty of eager advocates in the West, who believe it is “aggressive” to create a defensive system against an Iranian missile threat, because Russia (!) says her “right” to target a country with ICBMs could be infringed…only to then confess the lie of that, by targeting the country with missiles. It’s an utterly immoral and entirely ludicrous formula on its face; indefensible from every direction.

And such a painfully helpless claim for erasing or even obscuring the fact that it was Russia alone which invaded Georgia, and it is Russia alone which is targeting Poland — and most sadly of all, it is Russia alone which is destroying Yeltsin’s great security achievement of an international framework for peaceful borders between friendly republics. A squandered and priceless inheritance, traded cheaply, in favor of an engineered frontier war for the vanity of militarism.

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As if the physical invasion of territory isn’t enough, it looks like it was preceded by a cyber-attack.

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Evidently immune to the historical irony, Israel halted arms shipments to Georgia months ago due to fears of a Russian attack. As an IDF veteran interprets that:

“When we found ourselves in a similar situation, we expected the world to act differently.”
(Haaretz)

And the world did act differently, or at least the United States…and at far greater political risk and economic consequence than Israel would sustain now.

Armaments are a problem for Georgia. She must have a method in ample supply to neutralize Russian armor.

(more…)

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Israel Matzav has a video clip of a report on the Al Qaeda attack on the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania. You have to lament for the investigation when your eye witness refers to the scene of the attack as “the embassy of the Zionist Entity.”

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Bill Clinton’s recent emergence as Hillary’s principal anti-Obama attack dog has left a lot of people somewhat uncomfortable. We’re not generally accustomed to seeing this sort of bare knuckled political brawling from a former president (all the effort seems to be wearing Bill out too). Eugene Robinson supplies a reason for Bill’s furious anti-Obama rhetoric: “Obama’s candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton’s legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.” Robinson notices that Barack’s remarks on Reagan possess a deeper subtext. While Clinton merely repositioned the Democrats in the post-Reagan era, Obama wants to transform the landscape like Reagan did, leaving Bill’s accomplishments a historical footnote.

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