On 8 August, 2008, the Sunday New York Times covered the war between Georgia and Russia with many columns and whole pages of photos devoted to revealing the utter destruction Russian bombs had wrought in South Ossetia. Suffering on a massive scale in the cities of Gori and Poti, among others, was explicitly reported, with interviews and photos of those thousands evicted from their homes and corralled into camps by Russian soldiers, and tanks and heavily armed soldiers shown to identify them as brutal occupiers after an attack that forced Georgia to defend itself as best it could against the overwhelming power of the Russian military.
The next day, John McCain, then Republican candidate for the US Presidency, bawled « we are all Georgians today », and announced that Russia had crossed « an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia », and calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces, while the blogosphere fulminated with outrage that US Troops were so engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan that none were left to fight the head-rearing Russians, who were clearly trying to reassert and even expand its power over the region, threatening the freedom of sacred oil pipelines. It was soon discovered that one of McCain’s chief foreign policy aides, Randy Scheunemann, was a long-time lobbyist for Georgia, and that they had recently been in close contact with Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili, a friend of McCain’s since 1997. President Nicholas Sarkozy of France quickly brokered a cease-fire, but the fighting didn’t end until Russia had destroyed major Naval and Coast Guard bases.
By 15 September, the Times began to waver in its support of Georgia as the victims of what it originally called a “lopsided war”. While they reported that Georgia had tapes of intercepted telephone calls which proved Russia had initiated aggression, which were “convincing if not conclusive”, the question of who struck first was beginning to be asked.
On 7 November, the Times had all but reversed its position on Georgia, showing a photo of some missiles and citing the evidence of some “monitors”, to state that Russia had only responded to an attack by Georgian forces, all but justifying the mayhem endured mostly by civilians, all but presenting it as some kind of 6-Day War in which the foolish aggressors only got what was coming to them.
“A second briefing was led by Commander Young in October for military attachés visiting Georgia. At the meeting, according to a person in attendance, Commander Young stood by the monitors’ assessment that Georgian villages had not been extensively shelled on the evening or night of Aug. 7. “If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn’t,” Commander Young said, according to the person who attended. “They heard only occasional small-arms fire.””
What are we to believe now, after such “evidence” as this? That Georgia has been thrown under the bus to preserve relations with a powerful “winner”? That one can draw parallels between the crushing military airstrikes which are the usual Israeli response to the home-made bombs of Hamas? That’s perhaps one way of looking at it.