On The Fighting In South Ossetia

So, I haven't exactly been the best at keeping up to date with current events lately. When I was in high school, I made sure I knew what was going on, reading/watching a variety of sources. And I cared, and I protested and volunteered and wrote letters and op-eds and voted with my wallet, and all that good stuff.

And then I graduated from high school and entered this state of complete disinterest and apathy about the world I live in. I guess I've become a lot more cynical and pessimistic in the past few years, to the point where I feel like nothing I, or anyone, can do will make a difference. I know how that sounds, and believe me, I feel bad about it. I still try to do a little bit here and there, and I probably do more than the average (American) citizen, but I still think that my 16 year old self would kick my 20 year old ass for thinking this way.

Which is why I feel so incredibly guilty when people ask me my opinion on the Georgian-Russian conflict in South Ossetia. I'm a Russian major and plan on being a Russian translator, for fucks sake, I should really know more about the situation. Meeting new people this month, when they find out what I'm going to go to school for, one of the first follow up questions is what I think about the conflict. I admit, the first time someone asked me, I had zero idea what they were talking about. I had no clue where South Ossetia was (luckily I at least guessed right, that it was part of the former Soviet Union.)

But I had read nothing about it. I don't watch TV, I don't get the newspaper, and I don't live with my incredibly intelligent, informed, politically active, and awesome father anymore, so I suppose these sources aren't really available to me. But, I have the internet. I can check any website I want to find out whatever I want, and I don't ever take advantage of it. But today, I decided to read up on it.

Now, I've only read a few articles on the BBC website. I realize that everything has a bias, and I realize that I really need to look at several more sources before I can even begin to form a concrete opinion. Add to that the fact that the US, Russia, Georgia, and S. Ossetia are all saying opposing things, so it's pretty confusing, and I'm not 100% sure what is going on.

But I do know this. The citizens of South Ossetia are the ones suffering, no? Georgia was the one that launched an attack on them. The majority of South Ossetians are Russian citizens, and support Russia/Russia supports their separatist movement. The US says we want to send humanitarian efforts, etc...

So why the fuck are we supporting Georgia? If they just fucking let South Ossetia secede, like they wanted, this whole thing wouldn't have been an issue.

Oh yeah. Georgia has troops in Iraq. Makes sense why we're supporting them now. But really, Russia is a pretty powerful country all said, why do we want to alienate them? Especially now that the US is quickly falling from the top spot, we're going to need all the help we can get from as many nations as possible if we're not going to completely end up in tatters.

I don't know. Just frustrated. With the US government. With myself for not knowing enough about this or any other thing in the world.

I could be completely misinformed, by the way, so don't quote me on any of this. This is just what I thought of after reading a couple of articles.