BHL in Georgia

From the Huffington Post:

One of them, a peasant, wounded in the forehead, still dazed and terrified, tells me the story of fleeing his village in Ossetia on foot, three days ago. The Russians arrived, and in their wake, Cossack and Ossetian gangs pillaged, raped and murdered. As they did in Chechnya, they rounded up the young men and drove them away in trucks, to unknown destinations. Fathers were killed in front of their sons. Sons were killed in front of their fathers. In the basement of a house which they blew up with propane cylinders they had collected, they came upon a family and stripped them of everything they had tried to hide and then forced the adults to kneel down and executed them with a single shot to the head. The Russian officer in charge at the check point listens to the story.

But he doesn’t care. In any case he looks like he has been drinking too much and he just doesn’t care. For him, the war is over. No scrap of paper, a ceasefire, a five or six-point agreement- will change his victory. And this pathetic refugee can say whatever he wants.

That’s Bernard-Henri Levy* reporting from Georgia. Now…I tend to leave the Russo-Georgian conflict to James. That’s his sphere of influence. Lord knows I don’t know too much about the area. But I think I know the following things: that Georgia is (“was,” at this point should I be forced to guess) a putative ally; they’re a fledgling democracy (if an imperfect one); and that Russia is overstepping its bounds in this situation.

If these reports are even half-true…well, what can I say? We let this happen, either through inaction or imperfect action. I appreciate James et al.’s wanting to avoid bellicosity in this situation, I really do. But turning a blind eye to the sort of thing that BHL is talking about…the sort of thing that is being done to a country we called friend and one that gave us aid and comfort when we needed it…man. That’s something else.

*True story: For Halloween last year I dressed up as BHL. Easiest costume ever: Black suit, white oxford unbuttoned half way down my chest, cig constantly in the mouth. I think I slapped on a name tag with “BHL” just to drive it home. It was pretty great.