The craziest world leader of them all
Who is the world’s craziest leader? I’d assume that most people would think of a select handful of America’s more outspoken enemies, with North Korean tyrant and cineaste Kim Jong Il at the top of the list. He’s always reminding us how whacked out he really is — why, just last week he successfully humiliated former president Bill Clinton by forcing him to do a funny little dance in exchange for the release of two American journalists. Then there’s the election-stealing messianic loon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who leaves a seat vacant at cabinet meetings for the 12th Imam, the Shiite messiah who disappeared as a ten year old boy in the 9th century AD and who Ahmadinejad believes is coming back to conquer the world any day now. However I think that when it comes to crazy these two leaders, although extremely unpleasant, pale into insignificance before America’s ally and good friend, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia.
The evidence is there for all to see. As we all know, there’s nothing Mahmoud loves more than to issue blood-curdling death threats at Israel or indeed, the diabolical West. Kim meanwhile enjoys launching rockets and sending sinister ships towards Hawaii. However neither leader is so out of touch with reality as to actually follow through on his threats.
Saakashvili however, well… when he launched his attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia one year ago I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. OK, so he’d sent the bombers in while the rest of the world (including his arch nemesis Putin) was otherwise occupied with the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, and South Ossetia is a tiny scrap of land which (theoretically) even a puny fighting force such as the Georgian army could overrun without too much trouble — but on the other hand he had just killed a bunch of UN mandated Russian peacekeepers, multiple Russian citizens (most South Ossetians had joint Georgian- Russian citizenship) and was threatening to humiliate an already rather prickly Russia in the eyes of the world. And yet there he was on TV, grinning from ear to ear, trumpeting that ‘constitutional order’ had been restored in South Ossetia as crowds of jubilant Georgians waved flags in the street. Did he really think he was going to get away with it?
We all know what happened next. Russia invaded and the hitherto triumphant Georgian warriors were soon filmed fleeing the advance of the Russian army. The president changed his narrative, claiming that Russia had attacked first and that Georgia had bombed Tskhinvali in self defense. To their disgrace, CNN, the BBC and multiple other media outlets allowed Saakashvili to broadcast these claims unchallenged, often for five or ten minutes at a time, even though his earlier declarations about restoring constitutional order — in which he had made no mention of invading Russians — were a matter of public record. Putin called Saakashvili a war criminal and threatened to string him up by the balls. John McCain’s head turned red as he denounced Russian aggression in best Cold Warrior fashion. Obama took two days to think about it and then declaimed some poetry about resolving the conflict via the UN, apparently unaware that Russia has power of veto on the Security Council. Saakashvili rambled on in front of the EU flag, an organization to which his country does not belong, and when things got really bad he ate his tie. Finally after five days Georgia lost South Ossetia and another breakaway republic Abkhazia to Russia forever (yes I know they haven’t been formally annexed but…), while Saakashvili saw his dream of joining NATO dwindle into nothingness. Meanwhile Georgians living in the territories that Saakashvili had attacked were forced to flee their homes as enraged Ossetians carried out a violent purge of their former neighbors. Nice work, Misha!
Now I don’t envy anyone who has Vladimir Putin for a neighbor. But that’s precisely why Saakashvili is utterly demented. He not only provoked this ruthless, infinitely more powerful foe but tried to draw the US into the war with his increasingly wild claims. If Georgia had actually been in NATO, then the alliance would have been obliged to join a nationalist war he had started. Thus he’s not just totally batshit crazy but also dangerous.
Yet crazy does not mean stupid, or at least — not cunning. After months of protests aimed at removing him from power, Saakashvili is still sitting pretty in his presidential palace in Tbilisi. This weekend meanwhile he was at it again, repeating his moonbat nonsense that Russia attacked first, that Putin wants to kill him, etc. But didn’t he notice that while Obama recently visited Moscow, he sent his performing seal Joe Biden to Georgia? Now if that’s not a sign that you’re on your own, I don’t know what is. And yet Saakashvili continues to talk up the conflict rather than cool it down. See what I mean? He’s completely nuts.
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Good analysis. ????? ?????????????.
Oh fuck. So much for trying to type in Cyrillic on WordPress.
Agreed. Saakashvili is a c*nt.