A lot of people are probably thinking the Georgia crisis is a tempest in a teapot.
Unfortunately, it isn't. It goes to the heart of U.S.-Russian relations.
The lack of comments to my previous post here, as with others on foreign affairs, shows how little interested even "aware" Americans are about the rest of the world. That's precisely the justification the corporate media uses for not providingmore foreign news.
It wasn't until this morning that CNN told its listeners about the Caspian oil pipeline, or the fact that Georgia wants to join NATO.
Imagine how Washington would have reacted if Mexico had asked to join the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet answer to NATO) during the Cold War!
On the other hand, President Bush's saintly pronouncements about Georgia's territorial integrity represent a new high in hypocrisy. The far left is comparing what's happening in Georgia with international backing for Kosovo's independence, since that former Yugoslav republic also sits on or near an oil pipeline. I don't see what Yugoslavia would have had to gain by remaining indefinitely outside of a European Union that includes about thirty states, but Georgia's desire to join NATO at this point in time can only be read as a threat by Russia.
But however you read it, the news from Georgia this morning was competing with pundits speculating about John Edward's' affair. Maybe if the media had paid more attention to "foreign" news and less to Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, 911 wouldn't have happened. And I note that the blogosphere today is about a dumb journalist's remark about Obama's trip to the "foreign" island of Hawaii!
Get with it, folks!
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