more:

“It is democracy in a china shop,” the New York Times reported on March 28. “A growing number of critics, though, say that the new president is exploiting his popularity to cut legal corners, violate human rights and silence opposition views.” “Saakashvili’s all-powerful party is getting into the habit of ignoring the law, or changing it, when it does not suit their purpose,” reported Agence France-Presse.

Saakashvili, now 36, was an only child with an absent father. He was raised by a divorced, domineering, and ambitious mother, and his tough-talking Dutch-born wife, Sandra Roelof, appears to follow in that tradition. (Saakashvili married her in lower Manhattan in 1993 while he was attending Columbia for a year on a U.S. taxpayer-funded scholarship.) In February, Roelof gave an interview to a Dutch magazine for a breathless Vanity Fair-like profile headlined “Sandra Roelof’s Fairy Tale: From a Zeeuws Girl to First Lady of Georgia.” Roelof seems to have taken to Georgian politics:

Georgia has produced strong leaders. Stalin, Beria, Gamsakhurdia. Even Shevardnadze, before he got addicted to power. They looked beyond Georgia. My husband does the same; he fits in the tradition. This country needs a strong hand. It is incredibly important that respect for authority returns. That laws are less frequently broken, that people simply pay their bills for once. There is hardly a sense of responsibility here. . . . I think my husband is the right person to frighten people. That is not to say it is immediately fascism or something. Should he develop extremist traits he will be alerted to that. All eyes are looking at us now.

What a roll call! Stalin’s birthplace in Gori, Georgia, close to the Saakashvilis’ home in Tbilisi, is still maintained as a public museum, though the crimes of the man against his own people, particularly native Georgians, are beyond repeating, and Sandra Roelof’s citation appears demented. One would think Stalin’s house would have been burned down long ago, the ashes scattered to the cold Caucasus winds–and I’m not speaking just metaphorically. If Saakashvili wants to really make some democratic bones, he might drive to Gori and light the ceremonial match.

The second man to whom Sandra Roelof compares her husband is Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s secret police czar and the Georgian-born father of the Soviet Gulag. Beria, a notorious pedophile, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. He was executed on Khrushchev’s order after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Next on Roelof’s list is Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first elected president of Georgia, a rabid nationalist completely intolerant of any opposition. He was deposed in a coup in the early ’90s and later shot himself in the head (or was murdered). Two weeks ago Saakashvili announced that 2004 would be “the year of Gamsakhurdia,” whatever that is intended to mean.

The last of Roelof’s major players is Shevardnadze, the mentoring father figure Saakashvili never had, who brought him into parliament, appointed him to his cabinet, and guided him along until Saakashvili turned and stabbed him. Despite the relentless encomiums from the last three U.S. administrations, Shevardnadze was brutal and corrupt. (Saakashvili, who lives around the corner from Shevardnadze in Tbilisi, has never had him arrested.)

The British Helsinki Human Rights Group recently compared Saakashvili’s regime to that of Shevardnadze, noting that “Saakashvili has unleashed a wave of arrests against real and imagined opponents, and, like Shevardnadze when he first came to power, his new regime has targeted any media outlet which steps out of line.” The report said, “Since Saakashvili won the grotesque presidential election in January 2004, when he was awarded an even higher percentage of the vote than Shevardnadze granted himself in 1992, waves of arrests and media closures have hit Georgia.”

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=225687

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 1:24 PM

Strange bedfellows, indeed. However, would you really consider that enough to question Saakashvili and the state of Georgia?

MadisonConservative on August 12, 2008 at 1:13 PM

Is the leader of Georgia better than Putin? Yes. Better enough to go to war for?

Diep was better than Uncle Ho. Better enough to have gone to war for? um….

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 1:26 PM

We need to sit back and give full support to folks in Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states, and Ukraine.

That’s what the Bush administration has done so far, and it is the right thing to do. This isn’t a bar brawl where you charge in without thinking.

War with Russia would cost us tens of thousands (at least) of our troops’ lives. We’d better be 100% sure that it is really in our national interest to do it.

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 1:29 PM

sigh Diem

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 1:32 PM

Air support could have been supplied by mid-day Saturday with plenty of time to analyze logistics

Militarly, factually incorrect. 100%. Unless you’re gonna send the B2s out of Whiteman. That’s a single pilot aircraft. Probably at least 2 in air refuelings. No fighter escort.

We have tanker problems, big time.

We simply don’t have the Air Force assets available to support it.

And they would be flying over (IMHO) pre-positioned, well supplied Russians, not Arabs. huge difference.

We have a little thug getting into a fight with a big thug. The little thug is a Soros man. Soros had a big hand in the Yugoslavia wars and knows how to manipulate western media.

That’s why we let Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, and Finland take the lead. We give support. If in several months it looks like war is where we’re going, I sure as hell hope Bush starts infusing money and troop increases into the military RIGHT NOW.

And he needs to flush Gordon “the F22 is too expensive” England right out of the Pentagon.

funky chicken on August 12, 2008 at 1:44 PM