Russia returns to its history..

The Russians refuse to move past their sordid history; blind to its lessons, they cannot escape the vice-grip of their own brutal past. They were waiting for an opportunity, spoiling for a fight with Georgia, and they got one. This was not an innocent reaction to Georgian aggression; it was a pre-meditated attack that sought to use the excuse of Georgian involvement in South Ossetia as a way to send in their forces and message to the world.

The Russian attempt to blame this on Georgia and cry wolf is a laughably transparent attempt at obscuring Russian motives, which are singularly dark and brutal. Once again, Russia returns to its past, a time of autocratic brutality that has always failed in the end. The intermediate time may prosper Putin and his pet, Medvedev, but this return to a dark past will impoverish the Russian people, as autocracy always does.

In the end, Russia will fail. Humiliation, rather than the greatness they have always desired, will be their fate. Freedom and opportunity is the only end-state that will ever allow true greatness. State power is a cheap imposter.

Unfortunately, Russia has not learned the lessons of history. This is their great fault; brutality and aggression are all they offered to the world for the last 100 years. Rather than learn from the deaths of millions of their people, the collapse of communism, and the bankruptcy of state control, they have closed their eyes to the truth and blustered blindly down the path to autocracy.

This will all end in failure. It is sad that Russia refuses to avoid this future by changing its present course. How many will have to die before Russia learns that true strength does not lie in military domination, but in democratic freedom?