So Russia and Georgia just went to war

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm no big fan of Saakashvili. He overthrew an authoritarian President only to head down the same path.

However he is completely correct here in the stand against the Russian imperialist pigs. Georgia has my full support.

As for South Ossetia not supporting the Georgian presence there, duh. Of course that's going to be the case after they ethnically cleansed all the ethnic Georgians living there with the assistance of Russia. Now the imperialist pigs are getting greedy again.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Correct Pym, however, you got our two quotes mixed up. I fixed it.

I don't know how I did that. I knew you were pro-Georgian.

If Dazzleman was still here he'd be shocked to see how much I dislike Russia currently. He said all liberals secretly loved the USSR/Russia, no matter what awful things they did.

I don't think the European leftists are disproving D-man.

The European Union (which by the way is mostly made up of conservative governments now but we all know you won't listen to that logic) is pretty much taking the exact same position on this as Bush.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Correct Pym, however, you got our two quotes mixed up. I fixed it.

I don't know how I did that. I knew you were pro-Georgian.

If Dazzleman was still here he'd be shocked to see how much I dislike Russia currently. He said all liberals secretly loved the USSR/Russia, no matter what awful things they did.

I don't think the European leftists are disproving D-man.

The European Union (which by the way is mostly made up of conservative governments now but we all know you won't listen to that logic) is pretty much taking the exact same position on this as Bush.

I'm referring to this forum.

We have a grand total of one European poster here defending Russia.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The most amusing thing about this is the fact that it's Russia's own ethnic minority enclave, Chechnya, that's getting the worst treatment in the former Soviet Union, yet it's also incidentally the only one Russia doesn't support. There are few things more blatant than Russia's double standard here. I say this as someone who was pretty happy when the Russians took out that monster Shamil Besayav.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And I think dantheroman is making the best points here. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are pretty much comparable to the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_State_of_Croatia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Republic_%281939%E2%80%931945%29

Whether or not either state was valid or legitimate was a completely different question than if you supported Croatian or Slovakian independence.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Azerbaijan is actually giving vocal support to Georgia. Not very surprising but does this mean anything?

Well Russia did the same thing to them in the early 1990s over Nagorno karabakh so it makes sense they would have little tolerance for the Russian "we are supporting separatists in your borders under the guise of peacekeepers" game.

Nagorno-Karabakh is not an issue between Russia and Azerbaijan, it's an issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It's something like a 75% majority Armenian region completely surrounded by Azerbaijan.

In response to Idaho's question, unless Azerbaijan commits troops to help Georgia, their support is not worth a rat's ass.

Like Transnistria, the Armenian occupation of the region is mostly Russian-backed. This is one case where I have a lot more sympathy for the secessionist state though, since it's mostly just Armenians trying to be left alone by the people who've treated them like utter garbage for 1500 years (Azeris basically being just a different brand of Turks.)

At the fall of the Soviet Union, most of Azerbaijan, including the capital Baku had a significant Armenian population. They don't anymore, since most were ethnically cleansed immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, through actions though more comparable to pro-KKK white mobs lynching blacks rather than systematic ethnic cleansing (though of course, the government did nothing to stop it, which they could've.) The Azeris also committed quite a few horrific massacres in Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 90s.

The Armenians have pretty much served as the whipping boy for anti-Christian Muslims for the entire existance of the Armenian nation.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I place blame on both countries but this should be a short, quick war in which Russia defeats Georgia in about a week and a half and South Ossentia gets what it wants.

Pretty much this. I don't expect this war too last much longer than 2 or 3 weeks.

Isn't that what they said about Chechnya?

Yes but there won't be the kind of resistance in Georgia as there was in Chechnya after the Russians are finished defeating the Georgians. I expect there to be a fairly strong insurgency for quite a while but it is nothing the Russians won't be able to handle.

Doubtful. If anything it'd be much worse than Chechnya. Georgia is a country prone to guerrilla warfare and the Turks and Azeris will be sure to provide any insurgency with a steady supply of weapons.