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Blame The Victims?
by Dale Brown, 2008

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, August 18, 2008

I'm getting REALLY sick and tired of the media portraying the Republic of Georgia the instigator of the Russian attack earlier this month.

First: Georgia has been under mortar and rocket assault by South Ossetian separatists for weeks. I agree with Georgian president Mikhail Saakasvili: the separatists were being funded and equipped by Russia.

Second: There is no question that the Russians were waiting to pounce on Georgia the minute they acted to try to put down the rocket attacks. The Russians left a lot of troops and equipment behind after a July military exercise, and they already had "peacekeepers" on the ground. They simply kept those forces on alert, waiting for Georgia to act.

Do you possibly think it's a coincidence that so many tanks, troops, and bombers were able to strike so quickly when Georgia made its move? The Russians knew the Georgian military would respond because they set up the circumstances for such a response.

Russia wants all of its breakaway republics and client-states to heel, and now they have the money and political will to do it. Russia has been flexing its military muscle in other ways: this year they flew Tu-95 "Bear" bombers near Guam on mock cruise missile attack runs, and reports today said that Russia is arming its warships in the Black Sea with nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992.

The question is: what is NATO going to do about it?

I'm also getting tired of the media saying there is nothing the U.S. or NATO can do about Russia. Other than kicking Russia out of the G-8 and blocking membership to the World Trade Organization, we should immediately:

1) Send troops to all of our NATO allies who might be threatened by Russian aggression, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They would be tripwire forces at best, but Russia might not be so hasty to invade if American troops are present, and it would be a show of support for these nations;

2) Send military advisers to potential targets who are not yet allies but are close and important friends, such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine;

3) Retarget U.S. strategic nuclear forces with Russian targets. Currently all of our sea- and land-based intercontinental missiles are targeted to open ocean or ice packs in case of accidental launch--we should announce that we're putting REAL target coordinates back in;

4) Put the B-52H and B-2 bombers and F-15E tactical fighter-bombers back on nuclear alert, in America and Europe, and restore the nuclear weapon capability on the B-1B bombers;

5) Put nuclear weapons back on U.S. Navy surface warships.

All of these above steps don't involve the U.S. Army and Marines to a great extent. There is no doubt that the Army and Marines are overextended and exhausted, and that the Navy and Air Force haven't participated as much in Iraq or Afghanistan. These responses mostly involve the USAF and Navy.

Future ground force deployments to Iraq could be redirected to Eastern Europe instead of Iraq--they'd be available for action in the Middle East if necessary, but until then they would bolster the security of our NATO allies.

We've got to stop pussyfooting around with our enemies. Russia was a third-rate power for the past 15 years, and a little bit of extra cash over the past two years is not going to change that overnight. The vast majority of the Russian navy hasn't left their ports in years; the army is underpaid, undertrained, underequipped, and demoralized after years of neglect; its air force hasn't been modernized in decades.

It is true that we're negotiating with Russia on matters such as trying to get cooperation in the United Nations to shut down Iran's nuclear weapons program. But is it worth surrendering allies and friends in eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia over Iran?

Like or believe it or not, the Cold War is back. Have we forgotten what it's like to prepare to fight a nuclear world war?

Some of us haven't.

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