beyondBeijing2008.com

How remote is the former Soviet republic of Georgia to most Americans?

Here’s one measure: I recently received an e-mail from a viewer wondering if this Georgia was where our Georgians (as in our Carolinans or our Virginians) originally came from.

Silly, perhaps, but the comment raises a serious concern. It’s true that, as the six-day conflict in Georgia - followed by a week of shaky cease-fire - unfolded, each dateline became more exotic, and unfamiliar, than the last: Tbilisi, Gori, Poti, Tskhinvali.

Every day, our dispatches tried to answer the questions we all seemed to be asking: why had a phalanx of international reporters parachuted into Georgia to cover spiraling violence in a breakaway region? Why - at the very height of hype and excitement about the Beijing Olympic Games - had so many of us come to witness what started out as just another ethnic skirmish in the Caucasus?

Of course, there was the obvious, quick answer: This war, like previous proxy wars, was really about what you could not see - or report.  What kept your adrenalin pumping in the wee hours of the morning: that primal fear of a military - even nuclear - confrontation between Russia and the United States.

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