Objective one was keeping the Russians from rolling into Tbilisi and killing the government.
That was accomplished, although it was basically done by the Russians who failed to finish what they started. Moscow did a drive-by shooting and their victim survived. Perhaps the casualties the Russians suffered in their five days of war with only one division, which exceeded the rate that we suffered casualties against Iraq's army back in March and April 2003 over a month and a half with an entire American army fighting, had something to do with that decision. I just don't know if the Russians planned to halt before reaching Tbilisi all along or whether that was a decision made as the war unfolded.
Objective two was getting the invasion force spearheads pulled back out of their forward positions where they could have restarted the war. We did that, though the Russians left small numbers of troops inside Georgia to interfere with rebuilding Georgia's defenses and economy.
We achieved that, too. Prompt American and Western help with humanitarian aid, visits by high-ranking officials, and airlifting 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq back to Gerogia probably helped there.
Now we need to get the residual Russian forces out.
That may happen with the fairly mild pressure the West is putting on Russia:
"Of course, they are not there forever. Their stay will be quite limited in time," Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov said, in reference to some 500 Russia soldiers in Georgia, notably near the vital Black Sea port of Poti.
He could provide no date for the withdrawal nor say how long it might take, but that it would be determined by the time needed to set up an international mechanism to monitor the ceasefire and security developments on the ground.
So we work the problem, taking one step at a time.
Eventually we turn Georgia's military into a miniature version of our V Corps from the 1980s central front in West Germany, ready to absorb and defeat a Russian armored blitz.
