Following the media coverage of the bloodletting in the Caucasus, I found myself recalling the words of the old triumphalist Union marching song of 1865:
“We’ll raise the Union banner from Atlanta to the sea
When Sherman goes marching through Georgia.”
The Union had been saved; the secessionist states had been defeated. The USA would never again allow itself to be torn apart.
Was not the right to secede also an issue in this other Georgian question? I suppose that, to some of those with a smattering of history, it might appear that George W. Bush was simply being true to the principles of Lincoln’s GOP in his support for Georgia’s “territorial integrity” when he solemnly warned the Russians that it was “unacceptable in the 21st century to invade the territory of a sovereign state.” What is truly astonishing is that such a statement from the man who led the invasion of Iraq was not met with universal howls of laughter. Before attempting to disentangle fact from fiction, lies from truth, in the Caucasian imbroglio, it may be instructive to turn to another recent example of a federal state torn apart by secessionist forces: Yugoslavia.
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