Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee is in a trap of his own making. Because he cannot speak the unspeakable he distorts, trivializes and begs the question. With each new word he writes on the Russia-Georgia conflict he becomes the hollowed propagandist dancing around the prickly pear of truth. Where he should he be clarifying the issues, he obscures them.
Newspaper columnists are supposed be scribes of higher learning, bringing insight and analysis to our everyday lives. They are supposed to have a broad knowledge of the subjects on which they write and they are expected to have some degree of objectivity. What happens though when the columnist strips the issue of its context and its real significance and importance?
In his August 15th column, Don’t abandon Georgia to Moscow’s ‘sphere of influence’ he doesn’t even get past the title without tripping himself. For the fact of the matter is that Georgia has been part of Russia’s sphere of influence for at least two centuries. Gee would have us believe that Moscow’s action is some unprovoked belligerent act. But in fact Moscow has been provoked.
Gee goes on to try and trivialize the issue by stating in his first sentence: “Foolish Georgians for baiting the Russian bear. Silly Americans for egging them on.”
Georgians may be “foolish” but not for the reasons implied by Gee. Nor are the Americans “silly.” Saaskashvili is an American puppet, armed and financed by the US. As Gee states Saaskashvili came to power in the Rose Revolution of 2003, but as F William Engdahl points out in his authoritative Asian Times article, Saaskashvili was brought to power with US financing and US covert regime change activities in what was called the “Rose Revolution.”
Saaskashvili may indeed be the most foolish of Georgians as the US has a long standing tradition and is highly expert in covert regime change. They are also ruthless in abandoning installed puppets once their usefulness expires or becomes embarrassing. The late Saddam Hussein was at one time a US ally and fought a proxy war against Iran on their behalf that brought his country to ruin. He made the mistake of thinking Kuwait might be his reward through a now famous meeting in 1990 with US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. Hussein was led to believe he could attack Kuwait with impunity when in fact it was a gambit on the part of the US to justify an attack on Iraq and the ensuing Gulf War. Saaskashvili might just want to double up on his life insurance and keep a suitcase packed. He is clearly playing out of his league.
The US is far from “silly” on this issue as Georgia and Saaskashvili are mere pawns in a much bigger game and the game is called global domination. The unspeakable that Gee refuses to address is that the US is boxing in Russia on the issue of Missile Defense even though Valdimir Putin has, as reported in the Globe and Mail some time ago, petitioned Bush not to proceed with Missile Defense as it would lead to a new arms race. Another unspeakable that Gee fails to acknowledge is that the US is blatantly using NATO as an instrument of US foreign policy- a Trojan horse to advance its imperial ambitions and as it proceeds eastward towards what could ultimately be a confrontation with China. It is little wonder that China and Russia have signed a mutual defense alliance and have held joint military exercises.
In this most recent column Gee states:
Far from urging Saakashvili to lash back Washington urgently and repeatedly urged him to show restraint. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice privately told him he should not get into a fight with Russia that Georgia could never win.
Gee should recognize such a statement by the Machiavellian Rice for what it is-posturing. Whatever she tells Saakashvili she will also be working to manipulate this conflict to America’s strategic advantage.
Gee closes this column with another of his absurd conclusions:
True, Washington can’t back Georgia with military might, any more than it could back Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. But there are other ways to respond to Russia’s aggression: downgrading political and military ties, revoking its status as a G-8 country, barring it from the World Trade Organization. Georgia has been a setback, but it is wrong to think the West has no options for response. It has several and it should use them.
Gee’s conclusion might command a token of respect if it weren’t for the fact that we are in an era of serial warfare. The US has left a bloodied trail in Iraq, is fighting an expanding war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the speculation goes on as to when it is going to mount a nuclear attack on Iran. Only the naïve would believe that these are wars of liberation and the spreading of democracy. These are wars of occupation for strategic advantage.
He is right that intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia was not possible but that was before the Soviet Union imploded. The Russia of today is a vastly diminished country whose main wealth is its oil and gas reserves, and a diminished military capability. But it does have a nuclear capability. How “accidental” is this Russian-Georgian conflict will become a minor historical debate but there is every likelihood it was manufactured for American strategic advantage, to test Russia’s resolve-rattle a stick across the bars of the bear’s cage and see if it reacts.
It is also noteworthy that in the aftermath of the collapse
of the USSR the US was quick to cancel arms limitation agreements and other international obligations that could limit or hold it to account as it embarked on this bold new unilateralism.
In the very same August 15th edition the Globe and Mail reports: Poland risks nuclear attack; Russian General.
Poland is of course one of many former Warsaw Pact countries that has been coerced and bought off by the US. This threat comes from General Anatoly Novovitsyn in response to US plans to install a missile defense base in Poland, and of course US officials claim, according to Gee… “the timing of the deal was not meant to antagonize Russian leaders at a time when relations are already strained over the recent fighting between Russia and Georgia”
More posturing, more duplicity! Gee might want to start reading the very paper for which he works. For it appears what is unfolding here is a concerted drive to corner Russia and a possible reason for boxing in Russia at this time is Iran. The attack on Iran may be be stalled because the US would be further discredited and Iran actually has some ability to retaliate. By neutralizing Russia, who might come down on Iran’s side, an attack might not be necessary. If Russia is neutralized Iran would be further isolated and that regime may collapse of its own accord. In other words, the US may well be trying to kill two birds with one stone and is playing a very dangerous game of brinksmanship in the process.
It is an interesting phenomenon that so many US cheerleaders are willing to invoke memories of the old Soviet Union in order to vilify modern Russia which is in a fight for its life under siege to US imperialism.
The absurdity of Gee’s logic, if he can be to held to some consistency, is that the USSR should have been allowed to establish ballistic missile bases in Cuba in 1962, just as the US is attempting to build missile defense installations on Russia’s very borders and ring both Russia and China with weapons that would give it nuclear primacy all the while generating a horrendous new arms race, and a huge potential for further wars of unprecedented lethality.
The term “Missile Defense” is in itself a not so cunning deception. It is really about missile offence and nuclear primacy and being the enforcer of an American global hegemony and potentially the instrument to enforce a global totalitarianism. The Russia-Georgia conflict and Russia’s threat of a nuclear attack on Poland are early warnings; ominous foreshadowings of the dangers of missile defense and the arms race it is precipitating.
Gee and others of his ilk might be reminded news gathering is no longer restricted by national boundaries. It too has been globalized and consumers have long been liberated from single source news and opinion. There are any number of authoritative sources for news and opinion just a keyboard away where information can easily be cross-referenced. News and opinion sources that insist on truncating the truth, not doing their homework and condescend to their readers end up with egg on their face and a rapidly evaporating credibility.
The Globe and Mail treats its readers like the mushroom farmer treats his mushrooms: Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit. Marcus Gee’s intellectualism and grasp of the issues exists in a hazy limbo somewhere between sophomoric propagandist and political innocent.
The Russia-Georgia conflict has been a journalistic pratfall for Gee and the Globe and Mail. Trapped in an uncritical allegiance to US foreign policy the issue was stripped of its larger context, real significance and Russia made the villain. In doing so it abdicates its journalistic responsibility and patronizes its readers. Editorial decisions are of course the paper’s prerogative but this sort of soft Jello journalism consigns such newspapers to irrelevance in any serious debate and becomes but one more chapter in the decline of journalistic standards in North American mainstream media.
Robert Billyard © 2008
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