South Ossetia crisis: Diplomatic rubble

But the most telling analogy is with Iraq and its ill-fated invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait indeed had been a province administered from Baghdad for millennia, so Saddam Hussein understandably coveted it, as Saakashvili does Ossetia. Hussein was convinced that the US had given him the green light after he had spent 10 years fighting the US’s latest bete noire, Iran , just as Saakashvili was given a similar ambivalent go-ahead to invade Ossetia . Even Townsend admits, “I think they misunderstand our eagerness and enthusiasm and think we are going to be behind them for anything.” Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said it best: “It is hard to imagine that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili embarked on this risky venture without some sort of approval from the side of the United States......

Saakashvili’s strategy is also reminiscent of the Israeli conquest of 1948: by bombing the civilians he shows he wanted to have Ossetia without its native Ossetians. To this end he bombarded the capital, Tskhinvali, causing half the residents to crossed the mountains to the Russian side. Fortunate for the Ossetians, and unlike the Palestinians, they had a reliable patron


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