If you haven't been watching the news, Russia attacked it's southern neighbor Georgia last week. Tensions mounted when the Georgian government attempted to regain control of the seperatist South Ossetia region, which wants to rejoin North Ossetia (within Russia). Indeed, the Russian government has gone so far as to declare Southern Ossetians Russsian citizens, granting many people Russian passports.
Russia insists that it is only pursuing military action to protect the citizens of South Ossetia from Georgian oppression. However, thousands of civilians throughout the region have already been killed by Russian airstrikes. The current president, Mikhail Saakashvili, believes that the Russian government is planning to launch a full scale invasion of Georgia, with intent to overthrow the pro-west democracy and suppress the bid for NATO induction, which Georgia has been striving towards. Both sides claim that the other is responsible for war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and illegal military action.
A ceasfire has been drawn up and sent to Moscow, but no word yet of it being signed. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not accept calls for ceasefire from her industrial allies, and criticized the U.S. for seeing Georgia as the victim, not the aggressor: "...the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds -- these leaders must be taken under [custody]," (The Huffington Post).
I know that this is a slight deviation from the current theme of summer vacations and funny pictures, but sometimes things have to be shown that disrupts the status quo and shows the truth. It seems that we as human beings have a very small attention span, and seem to forget easily; something new and dramatic is always at the center of attention, till we have had our fill and we move on. You know Darfur? Hurricane Katrina? The tsunami in 2004? All of these things are still claiming lives, yet we turn a blind eye because it does not pertain to our lives on a personal level. I mean, looking at our lives, it doesn't even cross our minds that we are at war, beside yellow ribbons and the nightly news, and the rising tide of American bodies that come flying back home to loved ones.
So technically this whole Russo-Georgian conflict just really doesn't matter. My family doesn't live there; I have no friends studying in the region. Why the hell should I care? Or why should you care for that matter?
It's simple: because people are dying for foolishly arbitrary reasons, and we are doing nothing to make it stop.
5 comments:
I totally agree. It is almost as if we've become numb to the suffering of others. As long as the events have no direct effects on us, then why should we be the ones to stop it? Until people wake up and start helping out their fellow human beings, we will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again, and again, and again.
I think we're numb, up to a point. When we see a disaster, like Katrina for instance, we say, "Oh, how sad. I'll send some money to the Red Cross." But after a while people don't want to think about it, because it takes too much time and energy on their part. Sure, the French Quarter gets rebuilt, but what about the 9th ward? Nobody gives a sh*t about the slums and the ghettos, but people LIVE there for chrissakes! And it is STILL destroyed, even today! It's simply pathetic...
I agree that we should be aware of world conflicts. But we should also consider the uncountable complications that would arise if we just invaded the area and took control. Lives would not be saved- in fact in the confusion we would lose many more people on all sides. This is an extremely delicate situation, both sides need to assesed fully. We cannot go into this one as we did in Iraq. Not only is it not the same but I believe the we would fail a second time. As much as we would like to "stop it" it's more complicated than that. Many people can care about this situation and the people entangled in it's tragedy, but that does not mean that they will know how to solve the problem without creating ten times more blood shed.
I never said anything about invading Georgia or Russia. I actually have no idea where you got that. But! I agree with you, direct intervention would be disasterous.
Whoa. The amount of destruction is insane. I wish that I was in a position of power to make a change to events like this, it is really cheap and effortless how nothing is done...
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