Whatever you think about John Edwards, he isn't stupid, and choosing to admit his adulterous affair while our attention was focused on the Olympic opening ceremonies was probably a smart move.
Russia isn't stupid, either. They couldn't hope to invade another country without generating some controversy, but doing so while the eyes of much of the world and even more of the news media are on events in Beijing gives them a good chance of being ignored, at least long enough to accomplish their purposes.
Jim Balk was my World Cultures teacher in high school. I don't know what was supposed to be covered in a course with that title, but we didn't learn much about the cultures of the world. Somehow I would have expected a broad survey course, which this wasn't. Whatever I've learned about ancient Greece and Rome, Chinese history, African civilizations, and the history and culture of almost anywhere else in the world—which isn't much—I had to learn outside of school.
What Mr. Balk did instead was cover in detail two areas of the world of special importance in the late 1960s: the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. No doubt he figured that if his students were going to have opinions on the events of the day they might as well be informed by the history, religions, customs, and politics of the region. He was also big on current events, and tried to make us lazy, self-centered teens pay attention to events of significant import, such as the American civil rights movement, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
I wasn't one of Mr. Balk's greatest successes, I'm sure. Oh, I got A's in his class—I knew how to do homework and take tests—but didn't develop an appreciation for history until long after I graduated, and am not much better than I was back then at paying attention to the news. (To be fair to myself, I think I might do better with the latter if news reporting were less about hype, gossip, entertainment, sensationalism, and trivia.) But I actually learned in his class, learned both facts and ideas that are with me to this day, which is a lot more than I can say about any other of my history classes.
Therefore it is not surprising that the Russian invasion of Georgia made me think of Mr. Balk. If I were in his class today I know he'd be making me keep a diary of the event. He'd force me to turn my eyes from the Olympic glories and pay attention to an event that may turn out to be as significant as Germany's pre-World War II acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
I haven't followed the events that closely, but didn't Georgia begin the fighting this time on the opening day of the Olympics? Yes, Russia reacted (or overreacted), and had already been causing trouble by giving passports to the independence-minded South Ossetians (as far as I remember - I haven't got time to check my facts), but Georgia knew that Russia had threatened action if Georgia sent military into the autonomous region of South Ossetia. The Russians, in this context, were just keeping their word (and, I think, tried to go through the UN first).
It's funny, anyway, how I find myself intuitively siding with a smaller Russian province (like e.g. Chechnya) when it tries to become independent, but when Georgia gets unpleasant on a breakaway region, I intuitively side with Georgia. Why is that?
The underdog factor maybe?
My gut reaction is to support union against separation, which may be an Abraham Lincoln factor, I don't know. Sometimes separation may be necessary, and I know that revolutions and rebellions can bring about good, but more often than not I think the cost/benefit ratio is against them.
I also have an intuitive fear of Russia. I lived through most of the Cold War, and heard at least as many horror stories about the KGB as about Hitler's SS. I have a nasty suspicion that those who were once cruel and powerful are still cruel and still seek to exercise power.
Yes, I understand the union against separation instinct, but Georgia itself just recently separated from what was then the USSR, and there we hailed the separation...
At any rate, it seems that Russia has been provoking Georgia by stoking separatist fires in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Ajaria - but then Abkhazia apparently had declared independence from Georgia in 1992 and Georgia tried to assert its rule by force but got beaten, so it doesn't seem to me that Georgia has the best track record either. (Point of note: even the Abkhaz and Georgian written characters differ!) The current government was democratically elected, and Russia probably sees that as a weakness in warfare, just waiting for an excuse to be imperialist again. And since the Georgian border is internationally recognized, the Russians are invading a foreign country while the Georgians are "merely" using force to quell dissatisfaction and separatist unrest within its borders.
So: how does one solve a conflict that's been there for generations, which involves two countries vying for more influence and afraid of actual local self-government, with more ethnicities than you can shake an AK-47 at, all of them shockingly inclined toward ethnic cleansing?
