This is a simplistic analogy, but imagine you’re undergoing a home invasion, the police show up and start blaring from bullhorns for you to show “restraint” as the burglars destroy your property and threaten your physical safety and urge you to peacefully negotiate them out of your home.

I also heard Almond on Radio 4 banging on about authoritarianism and poverty in Georgia and neglecting to mention that precisely the same things are true of Russia.

And a good thing too. Be thankful also you’ve not attracted the pro-Russia leftists (aka ‘tankies’) who’ve spent most of the past seven years bleating about ‘Western imperialism’ in Iraq and Afghanistan and who can now be seen swarming all over CiF in praise of Mark Almond’s excreble piece on the situation.

We all appreciate the complexity of the situation but there is nary a word of condemnation for Russia – in striking contrast to the sub ed’s strapline

I also heard Almond banging on about authoritarianism and poverty in Georgia and neglecting to mention that precisely the same things are true of Russia.

In “it’s going to get worse before it gets better” news, Abkhazia is striking Georgian forces in Kodori.

Also worth checking out:

-Yulia Latynina on the South Ossetian business venture that Russia is so valiantly defending (via the comments over at Steve LeVine’s O&G.

-Wu Wei and Doug Merrill of afoe are in Tbilisi.

And what you’ve heard from his ex-class mates gives russians moral rights to occupy Georgia? Saakashvilly did not attack Russia.

By the way, I do not think russians can occupy Georgia.

Russia is a big bully, and bullies can’t fight when there is resistance. Bullies prefer to threaten, not fight.

If the war is long enough, russians will lose moral war.

Seriously, it is one thing to be for something, it is another to act on that belief. Beneath the obvious levels of arming or funding such groups, I don’t even get involved with such movements by, say, joining a group or, even, linking to a website.

I also believe in international action, but obviously not like Iraq. If India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia, France and Germany had been on board from the get-go, I think it would have gone very differently. Heck, that list basically included Russia in 2003.

If you think that resembles McCain’s “League of Democracies” or similar calls from the far left, I’d say you were mistaken.

It’s just a (not yet existing) caucus in the United Nations.