Today, as I watched a television news program showing Russian tanks crawling like vermin over the neighboring state of Georgia, I had a flashback to November 1956 when the same thing happened in Hungary (photo below, right). The world did nothing then. The world will probably do nothing now.
Back then the Soviet Union was Communist (whatever that was). Now, Russia is Capitalist (whatever that is). But the country’s rulers are the same breed of thugs. The same kind of KGB spooks who murdered a man on the streets of London by prodding him with a poison-tipped umbrella recently poisoned a man in a London restaurant by feeding him a radioactive pill.
British law enforcement officers have failed to persuade Russia to extradite the chief suspect in the poison-pill case, and I believe he is pursuing a successful political career in his “democratic” homeland.
America’s leaders seem hell bent on bomb-bomb-bombing Iran (and starving the Iranian people through sanctions) because the Bush administration suspects that country of preparing to develop a nuclear bomb. And Bush blasted Iraq into irreparable chaos because he suspected (erroneously) that Saddam Hussein might have “weapons of mass destruction.” But he looked into (former) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw a soul he admires. So, does that mean Russia should be allowed to violate the sovereignty of its neighbor at will?
I don’t believe in bomb-bomb-bomb politics – especially when dealing with a country that can bomb-bomb-bomb right back, as Russia could. But I do think it’s time to end the charade about former Soviet Union states being “democratic” republics. It seems to me that the worst kinds of mobsters have seized control of some (or all?) of those states. And I think the United Nations should have the guts to deal with such thugs when they violate international law.
The United Nations should probably have addressed the issue of Georgia’s breakaway province, South Ossetia. But, whatever moral issues may exist in that conflict, Russia has no authority to intervene in Georgia’s internal affairs.
Rogue nations should not be allowed to remain as members of the United Nations. If Russia persists in imperialistic thuggery, it should be expelled from the UN. And the free world should cease all business dealings with Russia for as long as unacceptable conditions prevail in that country.