Some informed information about Georgia

We must hope that urgent diplomatic and economic support from abroad, together with some self-critical reflection by Georgians at home, will yet help this proud, long-suffering people escape the humiliation and the debilitating cult of "innocent martyrdom" that has plagued post-Kosovo Serbia. But the Western media that blindly follow the Georgian nationalist line in discounting Ossetian and Abkhazian grievances—viewing their separatist aspirations as largely illegitimate or a Russian invention and casting the entire conflict as the Georgian David vs. Russian Goliath—serve neither the cause of truth nor reconciliation. And American officials who embrace this simplistic narrative—and who reflexively call for Georgia's rapid rearming and accelerated accession to NATO—risk further inflaming confrontation with Russia to the grave detriment of both Western and Georgian interests.

This is an excerpt from and article "Georgia, the Ignored History" by Robert English, published in the New York Review of Books from Nov. 6, 2008: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22011