[Peace-discuss] How to be a US client

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This article is by a Republican oil company executive.  It can be compared and 
contrasted with an article of the same date by the editor of The Nation, on the 
same subject: <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080901/kvh>.  Which gives a more 
accurate account? (Hint: vanden Heuvel manages to misrepresent both the Serbian 
and Georgian wars.)  --CGE]


	September 1, 2008
	The 'Stupidest Guy on the Planet' Has Lots of Company
	by John Taylor

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the soldier selected to lead 
the campaign, Gen. Tommy Franks, called Pentagon number-three man Doug Feith 
"the stupidest f*cking guy on the face of the planet." What Feith did to be 
dubbed the world's greatest fool is unknown, but it is certain that Georgia's 
President Mikheil "Misha" Saakashvili's attack on Russian peacekeepers in South 
Ossetia has earned him the global dunce's cap that heretofore rested on Doug 
Feith's brow.

Saakashvili acted with such remarkable stupidity and miscalculation that a 
38-inch yardstick is needed to measure his foolishness against other famously 
bad decisions, like Nasser's 1967 closure of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli 
shipping. Did Saakashvili really think the Russians would stand idly by and let 
him pound their forces in South Ossetia? That the U.S., Israel, or the North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization would come to his aid? Or that Georgia's army could 
hold off the Russians?

Some members of the press got the war wrong, too. For example, Allan Mallinson, 
a retired British army officer and "defense historian" for the UK's Telegraph 
newspaper opined under the headline "Georgia: U.S. Training Gives Georgia 
Military Advantage":

"The Georgians … in the shorter term have several advantages. They are not badly 
equipped. The former Soviet T72 … is a reasonable match for the Russians' T90. 
The army has been American-trained, and increasingly American-equipped, for the 
past 10 years, and strongly focused on NATO admission: there will be some 
capable commanders and staff officers…"

Meanwhile, Alex Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute 
in Philadelphia, yet another neocon think-tank, was somewhat closer to the truth 
when he noted that by Aug. 9, two days after Georgia's army invaded South 
Ossetia, "the Georgian political leadership decided not to resist and began a 
military withdrawal." Decided not to resist? Began a military withdrawal? Chang 
is trying to put several layers of lip gloss on a pig that's already been though 
the sausage machine. By Aug. 9 Georgia's soldiers had abandoned their vehicles, 
thrown away their arms, stripped off their uniforms, and legged it. The road to 
the capital was wide open, except for abandoned tanks and fleeing civilians. Had 
the Russians wanted to take Tbilisi they could have easily done so. No wonder 
President Saakashvili was taped eating his tie.

Misha Saakashvili was born into a well-educated Georgian family and won several 
international scholarships, eventually collecting a law degree from Columbia 
University. While in New York Saakashvili must have observed American 
politicians working assiduously to develop strong ties with the state of Israel 
and its friends in the U.S. When Saakashvili came to power he did all he could 
to build strong links with Israel and its American supporters.

On an official visit to Israel, Saakashvili proclaimed that the Georgians were 
"the Jews of our time" and compared Russian President Putin's anti-Georgian 
policies to the anti-Semitic decrees of the 18th-century Russian Empress 
Catherine the Great. He also asserted that his model when refounding the 
Georgian state was Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. And 
Saakashvili did not hesitate to take his case directly to Conference of 
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York: "We need to 
establish relations with the U.S. Jewish community because you understand better 
than many in this country the international repercussions with the rest of the 
world.… I want your help in having better relations with the United States…."

Relations between the U.S. and Georgia did grow, undoubtedly helped along by 
Saakashvili's acute understanding of how to exploit the importance of Israel in 
the American political calculus. By some estimates the United States has been 
paying 40 percent of Georgia's defense budget for several years. Saakashvili's 
Georgia became part of the Bush administration's program to enlarge NATO, spread 
democracy, and surround Russia with American military bases. George Bush even 
traveled to Tbilisi and promised "the American people will stand with you … the 
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected by all 
nations." Saakashvili's threats to use force against the Russians in South 
Ossetia to alter the status quo were not taken seriously, probably because they 
seemed absurd.

Israel's dealings with Georgia have been both politically much more circumspect 
and a lot more profitable. Over the last few years Israel sold the Georgians 
somewhere between $300 and $500 million in military equipment and combat 
training. Georgia purchased ammunition, tactical and antiaircraft missiles, 
communications equipment, and remotely piloted aircraft, and upgraded tank 
turrets and reactive armor. Israeli Gen. Gal Hirsch, who led Israel's disastrous 
ground campaign in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, owned one of the companies 
providing military training. One of Hirsch's employees summed up what he saw in 
Georgia this way:

"The training companies wanted to finish the projects as quickly as possible in 
order to create more projects and make more money. We knew the training had to 
be completed quickly because the soldiers would soon have to get into real 
military activity. … By Israeli standards, the soldiers had almost zero 
capability and the officers were mediocre."

Several months before Saakashvili's invasion of South Ossetia the Israelis began 
to restrict the types of military gear sold to the Georgians to defensive 
systems only. A number of factors contributed to this decision. The Israelis 
began to think that Saakashvili might actually be foolish enough to act upon his 
campaign promise to reintegrate South Ossetia into Georgia by force. The 
Israelis were, after all, in a position to know, because Israeli/Georgian dual 
nationals held the portfolios of defense and interior in Saakashvili's cabinet. 
Clearly the Israelis were reluctant to upset the Russians. They need President 
Putin's support at the UN to get stronger anti-nuclear sanctions on Iran, and, 
on the whole, relations between Israel and Russia under Putin have been quite 
good, undoubtedly reflecting the ethnic and cultural links the two countries share.

Why had the United States no inkling that Saakashvili was about to attack the 
Russians in South Ossetia? Don't Americans ever talk to Israelis? In Georgia? In 
Tel Aviv? Furthermore, the U.S. has a large embassy and a major military mission 
in Tbilisi. Even if the American intelligence apparatus missed the unmistakable 
signs of an army preparing for battle, couldn't somebody have looked out the 
window and seen the Georgian army leaving its cantonments and heading up the 
road toward South Ossetia? What were the State Department, the Defense 
Department and the CIA doing? How many post 9/11 "intelligence failures" does it 
take before Americans begin to insist upon at least minimal performance 
standards from its representatives posted abroad?

After the U.S.' good friend Mikheil Saakashvili was soundly thrashed by the 
Russians in a war that he himself had started, America responded in eminently 
predictable and highly embarrassing ways. Sen. John McCain claimed that in the 
21st century one state does not invade another, conveniently overlooking the 
little matter of Iraq. Condi Rice decried Russia's overreaction and brutality in 
Georgia, perhaps forgetting that she had worked at the UN to buy Israel time 
back in 2006 to bomb Lebanon from end to end for 35 days. The media tagged 
Russia the aggressor, and neocon pundits and talking heads seemed keen to start 
either Cold War II or World War III. And McCain asserted, "We are all Georgians 
now." With all due respect, Senator, you may choose to identify yourself with 
Mikheil Saakashvili, but I'm not that stupid.


Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/taylor/?articleid=13387