Russia: Other Points of View, predictably enough, has had a plethora of “rich” (in the “yeah, that’s rich!” sense of the word) materials to condemn the Western’s media’s tendency to present opinion and sensationalist rhetoric as fact in the service of one point of view (the West’s, or more particularly, America’s neocon foreign policy elite). Click on the links in the headings below to read a detailed breakdown of the dirty tricks the authors use to smear Russia in its response to Georgian aggression.
Russia’s War Is The West’s Challenge
by MIKHAIL SAAKASHVILI, Washington Post, Aug 14, 2008
RMW Analysis by Russia:Other Points of View
The Washington Post continues its anti-Russian campaign by supporting Georgia in its war against Russia; a war Georgia initiated by storming the capital of its breakaway republic of South Ossetia and killing and wounding hundreds of South Ossetian residents and Russian peacekeepers in violation of an internationally mandated ceasefire. Here, the Washington Post provides space to perhaps the main instigator of the war himself, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.
To be sure, Russia had neither the moral nor legal right to move beyond the breakaway republic in retaliating. But neither did Georgia have justification for its actions. In addition to Georgia and Russia, their allies have blame to bear as well. The U.S. armed and trained the Georgian army as its president refused Russian, Ossetian, and Abkhazian offers to sign an agreement rejecting the use of force to resolve the ‘frozen conflict.’ The breakaway republics, like Georgian and Russian forces, staged numerous provocations over the years designed to undermine the ceasefire.
Instead of presenting at least some of the complexity of the situation, the Washington Post, like the entire Western mainstream media has endeavored to blame Russia entirely for the war, using Georgian statements as a news source and ignoring Russian and Ossetian claims. One wonders whether in the interests of long-forgotten journalistic objectivity some Western mainstream media organ will give space for a Russian or South Ossetian official to respond and why one was not invited to provided space simultaneously with Saakhashvili.
Putin Makes His Move
by ROBERT KAGAN, Washington Post, August 11, 2008
RMW Analysis by Russia:Other Points of View
In this Washington Post op-ed piece international relations observer Robert Kagan offers a badly one-sided interpretation of the causes of the Russo-Georgian war that recently broke out as expected by ROPV. He urges readers to ignore inconvenient details regarding the run-up to the conflict and then provides his own to accuse Russia at every turn. In Kagan’s view and the unanimous view of the Western mainstream media and academia only Russia should be blamed for the outbreak of war. All other parties are entirely innocent, and any mistakes they may have made are to be discounted; this, despite the fact that the Georgian army attacked South Ossetia first in an all-out offensive that included artillery fired at population centers. This is the kind of attack that Western governments and NGOs condemned Russia for in its wars in Chechnya.
That site has also reproduced three excellent articles, A Path to Peace in the Caucasus (Mikhail Gorbachev), The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power (George Friedman) and McCain’s People and Obama’s People Are Heading For Moscow (Andrei Terekhov).
