There seems to be general agreement, even among media figures, that the media are letting us down badly (again!). Reporting about Georgia gives only bare minimum. The Bush administration, stuck with an impossible policy, is playing its cards close to the chest. And then there's McCain's position...
This morning, on the Diane Rehm show, it good callers to the show to lift the discussion onto another plane. First caller came from Indiana had a Russian? Polish? accent. The second, calling from North Carolina, was an African who was living in the Soviet Union even as it was collapsing and becoming, once more, Russia.
The panelists on the show were Karen DeYoung, senior diplomatic correspondent, Washington Post; Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief for Al-Arabiya TV and Washington correspondent for An-Nahar; and Paul Starobin from the National Journal.
The excerpt from the discussion begins with the caller from Michigan:
Alex, calling from Fort Wayne, Indiana: ...All I wanted to say is that I think President Saakashvili is a dead man walking, pretty much ... He knows that all he's trying to do is drag the US into a full-blown conflict with Russia. I don't understand why the Americans are playing into it. And yesterday, him being on CNN in front of the European flag? I think it was funny, presenting Georgia to be a democratic, free, advanced European nation. Come on! This is not Switzerland! And also I don't understand why the media in America is taking a totally anti-Russian approach. Many people now are printing books and profiting from talking about the Iraq situation and how nobody stood up to the administration. This administration dragged us into a a big conflict with Iraq and they're trying to do the same thing with Russia.
Paul Starobin: I think there's a fair point here about the media coverage. There is a neglected thread to this story, and that thread is that Georgia nationalism was resurgent in the late 1980's and '90's. They trashed Abkhazia, its cultural institutions, and the Abkhazians haven't forgotten that! The Ossetians are very clear about not wanting to be part of Georgia. They are a different people. They are orthodox Christians as Georgians are, but they speak this language that's connected to Persia. They have these long-standing, ancient differences. I don't think the American media has completely focused on that thread and just how complicated and fragile this mosaic is in the Caucasus.
Daniel, calling from North Carolina: I have two things to say, based on what the earlier caller said. I was going to say the same thing! He took the words right out of my mouth! I have lived in the former Soviet Union for six years. I went in to study there and I went out -- I'm from Africa -- when it collapsed. This is what typically happened: most of the republics started discriminating, and besides discriminating, forcing the ethnic Russians out. It was just like someone living in Florida or someone living in North Carolina and all of a sudden the union collapses, and then they say, "Hey! You're not a native of North Carolina, you don't belong here anymore -- your job is gone." So this kind of thing, I believe, is happening in Georgia, in Abkhazia. When the Georgians went in there, they started a form of ethnic cleansing which the media is not talking much about. It's all about the overwhelming force of what the Russians are doing. I don't condone what the Russians are doing. However, there's the nationalism with the Georgians. They know it and they are using this "democracy." I don't even believe that the second election that was held, that Saakashvili won as was portrayed. He did something there. He knows he's not entirely as democratic as he's being perceived.
Karen DeYoung: I think that's absolutely right. I think the Bush administration has sort of put itself between a rock and a hard place here. They have used the situation in Georgia as the part of their whole "democracy spreading around the world" and "this is our legacy." At the same time, they will say privately that they're very much aware of the excesses of the Georgians, of what's been happening in these so-called breakaway territories. They have said again privately -- much more so than they've said publicly -- that they were trying very hard to get Saakashvili not to respond to what he saw as Russian provocation, and to get them to back down in South Ossetia where they admit (again, privately) that they were abusing the people there. So I think they're kind of stuck in their public position. Although the interesting thing is, if you look at, say, what John McCain is saying, he's been even farther in this direction that the Bush administration. He's saying that "we are all Georgians now" and basically taking upon himself the defense of this little democracy. So the administration is trying to focus attention on what it calls "Russia's disproportionate response," while making clear that it agrees that the Ossetians and the Abkhazians have legitimate grievances.
