Now its Americas fault Frank that the rest of the world runs into the arms America.Oh how we Americans forget our short history and when trying to create one we are knocked.But I do remember a little history of russian,along with the chinese jets, bombing Americans in Vetnam, as the French retreated again. So now we try to build a history or remember what they did to our troops there we are to forget .Not quite yet. Our history goes back further than most Americans remember Frank.How about most presidents are trying there best and it always dosent appeal to some people.

So now Kosovo was all about Israel. It had nothing to do with Europe, I suppose. The mere fact that this continent has been the center of US security concerns for a century. Of course, we didn't intervene in Rwanda but we did in former Yugoslavia. Why the difference? It must be about Israel It has nothing to do with the casual racism of valuing European lives more than African ones. No, it all comes back to Israel, the familiar bogey man.

As much as I admire the scholasticism of this piece, it ignores an essential question, which seems to have been ignored by a lot of people: Specifically, What Happened? Who attacked who? Did Georgia raze the cit of Tskhinvali, as claimed by Gorbechev and Larzov (sp?)? Or did Russia attack the Georgia troops without provocation, and if so, how did Tskhinvali get destroyed.

So far, only the Russian side has stated, unequivically, that they moved against the Georgia forces after Georgia attacked a city in South Ossetia, where Georgia has no territorial claims and certainly no right to attack innocent civilians.

Any speculation about the motives of world leaders has to be preceeded by simply answering; What Happened? What comes before why.

As an Orthodox Christian, I must protest this mischaracterization of the Russia-Georgia conflict as Orthodox Christian self-defense against an encroaching heterodox West.

Both Russia and Georgia are Orthodox Christian cultures, so this war is not about faith, but about politics, self-determination, geopolitical ambition and international alignment.

Russia cannot pose as a "defender of faith." Atheistic Marxism has fallen and the Church is freer there now, but the wounds of eight decades of religious persecution and forced secularization will not heal overnight. Spiritual and moral recovery after brutal erosion takes time, like the Hebrews wandering the desert for forty years between slavery in Egypt and freedom in the Promised Land.

And as in America nowadays, religious talk in Russia isn"t always religious. Both are misusing religion as cover for political agendas. When pagan persecution ceased and Christianity became respectable in the Roman Empire, many converted merely for social acceptance and advancement. The Church in Russia now faces the same "nominal Christian" dilemma, but Orthodox Christianity is about following Jesus Christ -- not a "replacement ideology" for social cohesion, ethnic identity or political statehood in the vacuum left by communism"s demise there.

An old Russian saying, attributed to Saint Alexander Nevsky, comes to mind in this conflict: "God is not in might, but in right." Would to God that all involved in this conflict took those words to heart!

But please, don't misuse Orthodox Christianity as a pretext for this latest bout of human sinfulness.