[GPCA Updates] Release: Md. Green candidate for US House speaks out on the Russo-Georgian conflict

[Green Party of California Updates]

Distributed by the Green Party of the United States
             http://www.gp.org

Gordon Clark for Congress http://www.clarkforcongress.net

GORDON CLARK: RUSSO-GEORGIAN CONFLICT SHOWS BANKRUPTCY OF POST COLD-WAR ORDER


Silver Spring, Maryland (August 13th, 2008) - The Clark for Congress
campaign issued the following statement today on the Russo-Georgian conflict
by 8th District Green Party congressional candidate Gordon Clark:

"The brutal Russian invasion of neighboring Georgia exemplifies the worst
aspects of nation-state behavior. Yet it also demonstrates the complete
failure of our current system of international relations, one still based
largely on military alliances, confrontation and conflict.

"The beginning of the current crisis can be marked to the end of the Cold
War. The NATO military alliance that stood against the Soviet Union's Warsaw
Pact should have been dismantled when the Soviet Union broke up. Instead,
NATO not only continued, it grew - by accepting former members of the Warsaw
Pact, a strategy that inevitably antagonized Russia (as does our building of
missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact nation Poland). In response,
Russia looked to protect its borders.

"At the same time, Georgia's U.S.-educated leader, President Mikheil
Saakashvili, has been regularly encouraged with words of strong support from
President Bush and other Western leaders - words that are easily
interpreted, in the current context, to be backed by force. So, rather than
attempt to resolve peacefully the confrontation with Georgia's breakaway
region of South Ossetia, which has strong ethnic ties to Russia, Saakashvili
launched an ill-advised military operation there last week. A predictable
(if extreme) Russian military response followed, leaving the Georgian
president waiting for U.S. or western military support that never materialized.

"The U.S. is utterly unable to influence Russia's behavior because of our
own government's invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, as well as our
military involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our threats against
Iran. It was painfully disturbing to watch U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations (and former Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan) Zalmay Khalilzad
trying to lecture the Russians that 'the days of overthrowing leaders by
military means' are over. He had to add the phrase '…in Europe' -- a
transparent rhetorical attempt to excuse our own invasions and regime changes.

"In a world filled with national, regional, and ethnic tensions - and now
overflowing with armaments, thanks in no small part to U.S. weapons sales -
the path to peace and stability will not come from military action. The
Russian invasion of Georgia must be strongly condemned, but no differently
than the U.S. invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq, and U.S. threats
and military action elsewhere in the Middle East. Unless our nation turns
away from our own militarized foreign policy and toward diplomacy and
peaceful dispute resolution, other regions of the world will continue to
explode in violence - and there will be nothing that the U.S. can do about it."


Gordon Clark, the Green Party candidate for U. S. Congress from Maryland's
8th District, has for over twenty years been a community activist in the
peace, environmental, nonviolence, and social justice arenas. He is a former
National Executive Director of Peace Action, the founder of Iraq Pledge of
Resistance (now the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance), and a
former Field Director for Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

For more information on the Clark for Congress campaign, call (301)
589-2355, email info at clarkforcongress.net, or visit
http://www.clarkforcongress.net and http://www.myspace.com/clarkforcongress


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