A comment on Carpetblogger asks:
but I don't get what is the difference between Russia protecting Osethians and US protecting Kosovo Albanians? Those were both small national entities that decided not to live with the majority Georgians/Serbs. So why is US intervention humanitarian and Russian intervention criminal?
One reason is that the South Ossetians had been living quietly for more than 10 years since the last war, until this blew up, with only minor attention. South Ossetia has about 20,000 people.
The Kosovo Albanians had had 10 years of oppression by Slobodan Milosovic in Yugoslavia before it broke up, and there had been wars provoked by him in Croatia and Bosnia, with charges of genocide generally accepted now. So people knew exactly what he was planning when he started driving Albanians out of Kosovo. And there were something like 2 million Albanians driven out of Kosovo across the border into Albania and Macedonia. Without the bombing he would not have stopped.
Bigger is not better, and war is never right. But Saakashvili, with all his faults is not Milosovic.
Technorati Tags: kosovo, georgia, south ossetia
