Stand with Georgia

Our page has been quiet of late, and I have been contributing to the silence more than any of us. I do apologize for my inactivity, though as readers should know, I am an active duty Army officer and, so, at times, my schedule gets the best of me.


But here is a matter on which no page should be silent: the Russian empire has stirred under the conquering hand of Vladimir Putin. He has brought Russia under his full control and now proceeds with an arrogance and hubris that would have made the Soviets blush. Under the guise of aiding a breakaway province in the nation of Georgia, Russia has launched a full scale invasion of one of her smaller neighbors. We have not seen a conquering invasion like this by a major world power since the last great war.

Putin has slain his political opponents blatantly, and he has done so on foreign soil. Why the people of the United Kingdom and other civilized nations have allowed outrage to subside - essentially handing Vladimir Putin a free pass for his actions - is well beyond my comprehension. I am insulted on England's behalf!

He served his two terms as President as a menacing, brooding, secret-police style master of his lands, and brazenly assumed the Prime Minister position, effectively transferring the seat of power in Russia to that office. His nation's constitution was specifically formulated to avoid this sort of consolidation of power.

Vladimir Putin is a dangerous autocrat who will bring the free peoples of Eastern Europe and the Caucases under his rule - and he must be stopped. I only hope larger, more influential pages will have the courage to say the same.

Update: An educational column from Robert Kagan.

But the reality is that on most of these issues it is Russia, not the West or little Georgia, that is doing the pushing. It was Russia that raised a challenge in Kosovo, a place where Moscow had no discernible interests beyond the expressed pan-Slavic solidarity. It was Russia that decided to turn a minor deployment of a few defensive interceptors in Poland, which could not possibly be used against Russia's vast missile arsenal, into a major geopolitical confrontation. And it is Russia that has precipitated a war against Georgia by encouraging South Ossetian rebels to raise the pressure on Tbilisi and make demands that no Georgian leader could accept. If Saakashvili had not fallen into Putin's trap this time, something else would have eventually sparked the conflict.