New York Post  |  August 16, 2008

Russia's Georgia Win
The Dark Lord's Destiny

By Ralph Peters

AS the Russian Dark Lord's shadow falls across the shires of freedom once again, the response from the West has been confused, belated and inadequate: fear eclipsed courage; ignorance masqueraded as wisdom; and, in "Old Europe," greed vanquished justice.

Russia won. Diplomacy failed. No state or alliance will reverse the decision. When President Bush spoke out strongly on Friday, Moscow ignored him: Words mean nothing to Prime Minister Putin, a man who regards all compromise as weakness.

Instead of backing down, Russia suggested that Poland might become a nuclear target for agreeing to host our defensive missile system.

Georgia will never be whole again. The democratically elected government in Tbilisi may be forced out, despite all the cease-fire agreements Western diplomats can draft. And Moscow won't surrender the stranglehold it's gained over Georgia's economy.

Georgia has been raped. In the West, journalists and politicians rushed to blame the victim, suggesting that the hussy deserved what she got for brassy talk and bare knees.

Knocked off balance politically, American leftists rushed to blame both America and democratic Georgia. Their hypocrisy rivals Putin's.

Our media revealed their fateful ignorance (expensive haircuts don't add brains). When Russia's invasion began, commentators who knew nothing of the issues and less of the region nonetheless felt the need to leap on a mike or rush into print.

Heartbreakingly, they parroted Moscow's line about Georgia's alleged misdeeds - under deadline pressure, they couldn't be bothered with research or serious analysis.

The greatest allies Russia has had in this savage invasion have been Western journalists eager to say something. While Russian-backed Ossetian death squads executed Georgian civilians and looted Georgian cities, the press continued to argue for moral equivalence between tiny Georgia and the Russian Moloch.

What does Moscow's Dark Lord seek?

* Putin intends to dismember Georgia, create a vassal state and take personal vengeance against President Mikheil Saakashvili for defying him. (Putin and President Bush share one trait: They both personalize diplomacy - but, while Bush has a Texan confidence that he can make a friend of anyone, Putin sees enemies everywhere.)

* Putin is sending an unmistakable message to all other independent states that once belonged to Moscow's empire: Russia will not tolerate true democracies or Western orientations on its "eternal property."

* Putin is determined to control all of the oil and gas exported from the Caspian Basin and Central Asia. The three oil-and-gas pipelines running through Georgia threaten his ambitions, since their existence means that supplies could still flow West if Russia closed its taps. Putin wants Europe at his mercy.

Meanwhile, Moscow issued a high-handed ultimatum to the United States, ordering us to choose between Russia and Georgia (easy choice, folks). And the American left went into full-appeasement mode as its anointed leader suggested tossing the problem to the UN - where Russia holds veto power.

The media eagerly repeat Putin's claim that the situation in Georgia simply mirrors that in Kosovo. Yet, Kosovo's freedom-fighters were home-grown, while the KGB and its successor, the FSB, created, funded and protected the thugs recruited for secessionist movements in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

If Moscow insists so indignantly that minorities have a right to secede, why doesn't the same rule apply to Chechnya? Or to Daghestan and other Russian internal regions chafing under Moscow's oppression? Why haven't the media noticed that moral equivalence?

It's been a week of bullets in Georgia and blather in the West. Why was our press so outraged over the mistreatment of a dozen prisoners in Abu Ghraib but indifferent to the massive suffering of the Georgian people - who weren't just photographed in embarrassing positions, but murdered, raped, tortured and driven from homes that the Russian army and its local henchmen destroyed? Is love of freedom a crime to our media?

For Putin's part, he must be thrilled. Apart from some tactical slovenliness on the part of his military, things have gone perfectly for him. His strategic acumen, audacity and ruthlessness easily make him 2008's "Man of the Year."

If any leader breathing today embodies the ambitions and character of his people, it's Putin. He's not a Soviet ideologue. Putin's a Russian nationalist. He would've been as at home in the age of Peter the Great as in our time.

Putin is Russia. He doesn't just come from the KGB, but from a long, unbroken line stretching from Ivan the Terrible's proto-Gestapo, the Oprichniki, through the czarist Okhrana secret police, down to the NKVD, KGB and, now, FSB. Hard-headed in practice, he manifests a mystical belief in Russia's destiny. And he has no reservations about fulfilling that destiny by any means necessary.

This was the week that Russia changed the world.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

Original article here.